Quotes About Struggle

O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

Oh! why was I born with a different face? why was I not born like the rest of my race? when I look,each one starts! when I speak, I offend; then Im silent & passive & lose every friend. Then my verse I dishonour, my pictures despise, my person degrade & my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; all my talents I bury, and dead is my fame. Im either too low or too highly prized; when elate I m envy'd, when meek Im despis'd

And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification

And I watered it in fears, Night and morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles.

I will not cease from mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.

In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear.

Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens.

Great things are done when men and mountains meet; this is not done by jostling in the street.

INFANT SORROW    My mother groaned, my father wept:    Into the dangerous world I leapt,    Helpless, naked, piping loud,    Like a fiend hid in a cloud.    Struggling in my father's hands,    Striving against my swaddling-bands,    Bound and weary, I thought best    To sulk upon my mother's breast.

Damn braces...bless relaxes.

Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Feed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill'd with thorns; It is eternal winter there. For where-e'er the sun does shine, And where-e'er the rain does fall, Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall.

One rule for the lion and ox is oppression.

My mother groand! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud; Like a fiend hid in a cloud. Struggling in my fathers hands: Striving against my swaddling bands: Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mothers breast.

My mother groand! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt William Blake: Infant Sorrow

I sometimes try to be miserable that I may do more work, but find it is a foolish experiment. Happinesses have wings and wheels; miseries are leaden legged, and their whole employment is to clip the wings and to take off the wheels of our chariots. We determine, therefore, to be happy and do all we can, tho' not all that we would. - Letter to William Hayley, 26th November 1800

All great artists are doubters.

Feelings of depression; feelings of frustration; feelings of emptiness in the face of all this randomness - done down by the haphazard, yet again.

Take a look at anyone's life. Take a look at your own. In the long fold catastrophe that makes up your three-score years and ten you will encounter many cusp catastrophes along the way.

Those of us who have the luck to enjoy good health forget about this vast parallel universe of the unwell-their daily miseries, their banal ordeals. Only when you cross that frontier into the world of ill-health do you recognize its quiet, massive presence, its brooding permanence.

Isn't this how life turns out, more often than not? It refuses to conform to your needs – the narrative needs that you feel are essential to give rough shape to your time on this earth.

This cackit place ... They poor darkies. A greeshie way to go. He clenched his fists. I'm a snool, a glaikit sumph. Nocht but rain, howdumdied all day o'boot. I've lost my noddle. Camsteerie bloody country. He gave a harsh laugh. No strunt. Any haughmagandie? Never. Dunged into the ground. ... I could greet I tell you ... He could only understand one word in three, but this time he knew how the little man felt.

William Boyd

perception – I was the wrong guy in the wrong place, so it was no surprise that my troubles multiplied.

Polluting his brain with a hunger so base that it would have made him vomit had he had any possession of his own body. The hunger was more than a desire for food, for sex or for power. The hunger was a vacuum, an endless vortex that consumed every thought, every impulse of who and what he was. He tried to scream but it wouldn't let him.