Quotes About Struggle

For a young American woman, it was all too easy to convince an inquiring stranger that the work she did was menial, or that she existed as a plaything for the men she worked for.

Some days you're Superman, some days you're Clark Kent.

I naively thought that all I had to do to pull this off was toss my fat history out like trash. I couldn't make the deal fast enough.

You see, I could no longer be trusted around beautiful things and my weakness was apparent

This was the problem with having walls so hard and high and unscalable, she supposed. When they came down, they crumbled completely, shattering into nothingness. She felt utterly defenseless right now.

The journey towards oneness emphasizes the opposites and we are caught in their conflict.

There is a time to struggle to achieve what we want and a time to give up any desire, a time to be strong and a time to surrender one's strength.

As a Canadian psychiatrist observed: When a human being is standing with both feet firmly on the ground, with both legs on the earth, and is "quite normal" as we medical practitioners call it, spiritual life is very difficult, perhaps impossible. But if something is not quite right with the mind, a little wheel not working properly in the clockwork of the mind, then spiritual life is easy.

Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.

Our life is like a land journey, too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but, on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view--and feel exalted--and your eyes are full of happy tears--and you want to sing--and wish you had wings! And then--you can't stay there, but must continue your journey--you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten.

A crown is a pitiless master, harsher than the staff of a pig-keeper; while a staff bears up, a crown weighs down, beyond the strength of any man to wear it lightly.

But one of the saddest, most deprecating misuses of power is the withholding of love, affirmation, and delight from other people. Few things keep people in line with our wishes more than an attitude of reserve or aloofness. It is paradoxical that in the power struggle of relationships, the one who loves and encourages the least, gains the most power. This puts people on edge, keeps them guessing, and plays on their need for assurance about their worth.

Both Hegel and Darwin can be mis-used to support a belief in the "survival of the fittest".

The locus of the modern struggle with its enemy of death is clearly the body (not mind, society, or the afterworld). The body is the site of tragedy, the ultimate unresolvable paradox, for it is at once the source of life and of death.

The greatest part of mankind ... are given up to labor, and enslaved to the necessity of their mean condition; whose lives are worn out only in the provisions for living.

Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces any thing for want of improvement.

The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities.

The only remedy against the malady of life is life itself. The bane is its own antidote.

Men are men and women are women. We've tried for tens of thousands of years to lay down hard and fast lines for the sexes to walk upon, and we've failed miserably.

And the devil will drag you under By the fancy tie 'round your wicked throat Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down Sit down you're rockin' the boat!

Me, I'm complicated. But it's a living, I tell myself. Also, every once in a long while this disease manages to produce a fine and beautiful truth--as (they say) some oyster illness makes the wondrously perfect pearl.

Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so jointed that they cannot be separated often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.

Breaking up is hard to do. But, bustin him in the head ain't that easy, either.