Quotes About Struggle

Damaged children are all of the same tribe: I can look at any adult and recognize one instantly— we're everywhere. Lost childhood lingers like tribal scars— in an off-kilter smile or a look in the eye— there's always some sign.

Do ye not understand?he said, in near desparation. I would lay the world at your feet, Claire-and I have nothing to give ye! He honestly thought it mattered.

Sassenach, I've been stabbed, bitten, slapped, and whipped since supper - which I didna get to finish. I dinna like to scare children an I dinna like to flog men, and I've had to do both. I've two hundred English camped three miles away, and no idea what to do about them. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm sore. If you've anything like womanly sympathy about ye, I could use a bit!

There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.

Torn between the impulse to stroke his head, and the urge to cave it in with a rock, I did neither.

What possessed ye, woman, to hit me in the heid wi' a fish whilst I was fighting for my life?

There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resources, ignoring the cost until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; Men in Battle. Past a certain point, you lose all fear of pain or injury. Life becomes very simple at that point; you will do what you are trying to do, or die in the attempt...

It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch.

The greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help.

I think perhaps the greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help. Not in having no one for whom to care? Fraser paused before answering; he might have been weighing the position of the pieces on the table. That is emptiness, he said at last, softly. But no great burden

To fight on the winning side was one thing; to survive, quite another.

Once I had thought I was whole -- had seemed to be able to love a man, to bear a child, to heal the sick--and know that all these things were natural parts of me, not the difficult, troubled fragments into which my life had now disintegrated. But that had been in the past, the man I had loved was Jamie, and for a time, I had been part of something greater than myself.

I put a hand up to cup his cheek, warm and lightly stubbled. I didn't fool myself that this was paradise or even a refuge from the war - wars tended not to stay in one place but moved around, much in the manner of cyclones and even more destructive where they touched down. But for however long it lasted, this was home, and now was peace.

Thought of blowing your brains out? William blinked, startled. No. That's good. Anything else is bound to be an improvement, isn't it?

It gave him the same odd sense of dislocation, though; that sense of losing some valuable part of himself that could not survive the passage back to daily life. Each time, the passage became more difficult.

And you know bloody well that you mostly cant help them anyway; they've got to do it--or not--themselves.

He was pressing himself against the wall as though trying to get through it by osmosis.

They're girls," she replied briefly. "They were born in danger and will live their lives in that condition, regardless of circumstance.

Was a struggle to choose one's own destiny less worthwhile than the necessity to stop a great evil?

It's what happens when you live through things you shouldn't have been able to live through and can't reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did.

Quite without warning, I began to cry. No sobbing, no throat-gripping spasms. Water simply welled in my eyes and flowed down my cheeks, slow as cold honey. A quiet acknowledgment of despair as things spiraled slowly out of control.

He said, 'If you're sizable, half the men ye meet will fear ye, and the other half will want to try ye. Knock one down,' he said, 'and the rest will let ye be. But learn to do it fast and clean, or you'll be fightin' all your life.' So he'd take me to the barn and knock me into the straw until I learned to hit back.

I was sorry that I'd told him, but I had no defenses anymore. I could not lie, even for the best of reasons; there was simply no place to go, nowhere to hide. I felt beset by whispering ghosts, their loss, their need, their desperate love pulling me apart. Apart from Jamie, apart from myself.

At the best of times, Father Bain's face resembled a clenched fist.