Quotes About Struggle

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Those serpents! There's no pleasing them!

It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul.

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.

Disease is war with the laws of our being, and all war, as a great general has said, is hell.

unwed mothers nursing unbaptised infants on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange

It is hard to travel in this fallen world if you lose the power of speech every time evil meets you on the path.

If the Eloquent peasant finally obtained justice, as seems indicated at the point where the document breaks off, it was only, we should remember, after he had been teased and tormented, even flogged, by his betters merely to increase their amusement over his delightful impudence in standing up for his rights and answering back.

The New World vision seemed to enlarge and exalt every human possibility, even though the explorers and pioneers, in turning their backs on the Old World, did not in fact leave the 'cruel sword' or the 'ignominious plague' behind them, for their smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis decimated those natives whom their guns did not exterminate.

The masters of the underground citadel are committed to a 'war' they cannot bring to an end, with weapons whose ultimate effects they cannot control, for purposes that they cannot accomplish.

Wise men say that time is like a river. I say time is like a river of SHIT... and as you float down that river in your little canoe, your paddles are getting smaller and smaller.

A thousand times, when the train slowed or stopped, I thought of jumping off. I wanted to die in a ditch. I wanted to disappear. I wanted a different history and geography. In rhythm with the wheels I said I want I want I want I want I stayed on the train.

Belief and disbelief were the same creature within me.

Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced -- there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail.

I struggled to kick the habit - I would make a decision to give up smoking, but it was hard. I couldn't resist the urge to steal a smoke. It was at that time that I was gifted Allen Carr's book 'The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.' After I read that book, I didn't touch a fag again.

Humans have both the urge to create and destroy.

Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not to give in to this urge but to keep going.

There's a huge part of me that's thinking about perfection. I have to fight that urge, to try to live in the moment, reach for something that I might be hearing, and not second-guess myself.

By the time I received my doctorate in American studies in 1957, I was in the twisted grip of a disease of our times in which the sufferer experiences an overwhelming urge to join the 'real world.' So I started working for newspapers.

Many of us have felt that sense of desperation - of urgency - when we learn that we or someone we love is fighting for their life.

Like so many other young South Asians in America, I am the product of two cultures whose conflicting values pull at me with equal urgency. Never have I felt as torn between the two as I do about the question of marriage.

I am not disgruntled. I am frustrated at a lack of leadership. I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing lifesaving tools for Americans. I'm frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. Those things frustrate me.

Today more than ever we need creative minds to address the issues of the age. And one of the most urgent is this: How can humanity know so much, achieve so much, and still fail so many people so badly?

'Evil Urges' has some stuff in it that's unbelievable.