Quotes About Struggle

It was a curious thing that I who lacked all ability to become "comme il faut," should have assimilated the idea so completely as I did. Possibly it was the fact that it had cost me such enormous labour to acquire that brought about its strenuous development in my mind. I hardly like to think how much of the best and most valuable time of my first sixteen years of existence I wasted upon its acquisition.

Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort? How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud!

Understand that this isn't love. I have been in love but this is not the same. This is not my feeling, but some external force taking possession of me. I left because I decided it could not be, you understand, like a happiness that doesn't exist on earth; but I have struggled with myself and I see that without it there is no life.

It was as if that lofty infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him had suddenly turned into a low solid vault that weighed him down, in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.

but are you really so in love? - Oh, it is not that at all. It is not that, it is some kind of power that has seized me and holds me. I do not know what to do.

It occurred to him that what he had taken for a perfect impossibility—that he had not lived his life as one should—might in fact be the truth. It occurred to him that those scarcely detected impulses to struggle against what the people of highest social rank considered good, those feeble tendencies that he barely noticed and immediately suppressed, might in fact be what was real, and everything else what was false.

He fought as a prisoner sentenced to death fights the executioner, knowing that he cannot prevail; and with each minute he felt, despite all the efforts of his struggle, that he was getting closer and closer to what terrified him.

And they all struggled and suffered and tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it.

I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid. It can't be true! It can't, but it is.

Now, in that moment, he knew that neither all his doubts, nor the impossibility he knew in himself of believing by means of reason, hindered him in the least from addressing God. It all blew off his soul like dust.

This is tantamount to saying, "My hand is weak. I cannot draw a straight line,—that is, a line which will be the shortest line between two given points,—and so, in order to make it more easy for myself, I, intending to draw a straight, will choose for my model a crooked line." The weaker my hand, the greater the need that my model should be perfect.

So much the worse for you!" he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, "Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!

En que estaba pensando? Si, en mi vida; como sea que me la represente no puede ser sino dolor. Todos estamos llamados a sufrir, lo sabemos y queremos disimularlo de alguna manera. Pero cuando nos clava sus ojos la verdad, ¿Que nos queda por hacer?

hydra of revolution,

suffering and freedom have their limits...those limits are very near together.

The main thing he wanted to weep about was a sudden, vivid awareness of the terrible opposition between something infinitely great and indefinable that was in him, and something narrow and fleshy that he himself, and even she, was. This opposition tormented him and gladdened him while she sang.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by which they were bound.

You must understand," said he, "it's not love. I've been in love, but it's not that. It's not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not come on earth; but I've struggled with myself, I see there's no living without it. And it must be settled.

At the bottom of his heart Ivan Ilych knew that he was dying; but so far from growing used to this idea, he simply did not grasp it - he was utterly unable to grasp it.

All's over, and there's nothing more," said Dolly. "And the worst of it all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are the children, I am tied. And I can't live with him! It's torture to see him.

Yes, life was there and now it's going, going, and I can't hold onto it.

Did the Toyon not see that he, too, had been born like the others—with bright, open eyes, in which heaven and earth were reflected, and with a pure heart which was ready to hearken to all that was beautiful in the world. And if he longed now to hide his miserable and shameful self underground, it was no fault of his, nor did he know whose fault it was. The one thing he knew was that there was no patience left in his heart.

He looked back on his past life, which had been so wretched. How had he been able to bear that terrible burden? He had borne it because through the darkness flickered a tiny star of hope. Once when he was alive he thought that perhaps a better lot might still be in store for him. But now that he had advanced toward the end, hope, too, was dead.

It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.