Quotes About Struggle

And this, I realized, is the excruciating scrupulosity, the same maddening, meticulous attention to every last detail that makes you great, that keeps you going and got you through and now is dragging you down. Standing with E. I. Lonoff over the disobedient arm of his record player, I understood the celebrated phenomenon for the first time: a man, his destiny, and his work—all one. What a terrible triumph!

I would quit while you're ahead. Really, it's an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it's not any good. I would say just stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself. That's my advice to you.

the love thrust upon the Swede seemed actually to deprive him of feeling.

Mishima. Rothko. Hemingway. Berryman. Koestler. Pavese. Kosinski. Arshile Gorky. Primo Levi. Hart Crane. Walter Benjamin. Peerless bunch. Nothing dishonorable signing on there.

The law of living: fluctuation. For every thought a counter-thought, for every urge a counterurge. No wonder you either go crazy and die or decide to disappear.

the me who's not me encamped boldly in Jewish Jerusalem while I go underground with the Arabs.

It had cost him dearly to clear a space where he could exist in the world as antagonistically as he liked.

Pero en cuanto quieres apasionadamente lo que se encuentra más allá de tu alcance, estás listo para la frustración, te estás preparando para cuando te obliguen a ponerte de rodillas.

sostuvieron a base de falsas esperanzas y al final nos enviaron a la muerte por vía férrea.

First you make a farce of suicide, now again you make a farce of life." "I don't know any other way to do it, Mother. Leave me be. Shut up. You don't exist. There are no ghosts." "Wrong. There are only ghosts.

You do only the right thing, the right thing and the right thing and the right thing, going back all the way. You try to be a thoughtful person, a reasonable person, an accomodating person, and then this happens. Where is the sense of life?

The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.

Había aprendido lo peor de las lecciones que puede dar la vida: la de que carece de sentido. Y cuando sucede tal cosa, la felicidad nunca vuelve a ser espontánea, sino que es artificial e, incluso entonces, se compra el precio de un obstinado distanciamiento de uno mismo y de su historia.

The drive was interminable. Had he missed a turn or was this itself the next abode: a coffin that you endlessly steer through the placeless darkness, recounting and recounting the uncontrollable events that induced you to become someone unforeseen. And so fast! So quickly! Everything runs away, beginning with who you are, and at some indefinable point you come to half understand that the ruthless antagonist is yourself.

And yet nothing of what he surmised meant a goddamn thing. None of his great ideas disposed of a single one of her difficulties.

But, alas, I could not lift her out of her sacred book and make her a character in this life.

I would quit while you're ahead. Really. It's an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it's not any good. I would say just stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself. That's my advice to you.

They hadna sail'd a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the lift11 grew dark, and the wind blew loud, And gurly12 grew the sea.

Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near.

I have found that living with faith in an unseen world requires constant effort.

Maybe God isn't trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt.

I believe Christians walk a mental tightrope and are in constant danger of falling in one of two directions. On this subject, errors in thinking can have tragic results. The first error comes when we attribute all suffering to God, seeing it as his punishment for human mistakes; the second error does just the opposite, assuming that life with God will never include suffering.

It was not pastoral teaching, or small group fellowship, or worship services, or books of theology — rather, they mentioned suffering. "People said they grew more during seasons of loss, pain, and crisis than they did at any other time." We discover the hidden value of suffering only by suffering — not as part of God's original or ultimate plan for us, but as a redemptive transformation that takes place in the midst of trial.