Quotes About Struggle

Independence gained through violence could well end in a dictatorship.

It would be so easy—effortless, really—to succumb to her insecurities, to simply sink into them like a rock falling to the bottom of the Thames, and it was the ease itself that terrified her. She would not cower as a duchess the way she had cowered as a debutante.

SECRET #27 When the world gnaws on you day after day, there comes a day when they reach the bone and you just can't take it anymore.

There were times after my marriage ended where, you know, I really felt like I was at the bottom of a mountain, there was a great big, fog up there, and I'm never going to cross to the other side.

Sports and entertainment have always been windows of opportunity for African Americans, when other doors were closed.

The man of many shifts, who wandered far and wide, And towns of many saw, and learned their mind; And suffered much in heart by land and sea, Passing through wars of men and grievous waves.

No battle was ever won by wholly sane men.

For many of the men, returning home meant reaching for some kind of "normal" that remained stubbornly out of reach. There wasn't any notion of "post-traumatic stress" or counseling. Doctors admonished the survivors to just forget about the experience and move on. A good fraction did just that, starting careers as firemen, policemen, salesmen, and engineers. Despite the ministrations of parents and wives, others faltered and stumbled.

Without hope, people become desperate to escape the pain. They seldom see the rhythms in their own lives, how dark phases come before new beginnings.

For that reason, trusting men had never come naturally to Kat, which was why she was still a virgin at thirty-five.

In retrospect, I see it more like this: the true God, in grace, set me free. Even in my desperation, I don't believe I would have had the courage to walk away from my childhood God unless the Spirit of a different God had whispered in my ear: I understand. I know your soul needs to be purged and healed from the wound of the false God. So, do it. Turn your back. Walk away. It'll be okay.

This venture of Fourcade's and Navarre's was a rare phenomenon in France so early in the war. As the historian Julian Jackson observed, "The hackneyed phrase 'he or she joined the Resistance' is entirely inappropriate to 1940–41. Before it could be joined, resistance had to be invented….Resistance was a territory without maps.

Ed Murrow] admitted he was having trouble coming to grips with the idea of peace: "Trying to realize what has happened, one's mind takes refuge in the past. The war that was seems more real than the peace that has come.

If I really wanted to say or ask anything important (to her imposing father) I could not trust my tongue to get it right.

Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema noted that "through the entire war, one dream never left us, not for single day : our homecoming to Holland as we remembered it. We did come home, but the memory was crushed by reality and the dream exploded. Our country lay before us unrecognizable, emaciated like a wretch from a concentration camp. We couldn't cope....

The drama of Dunkirk and the eloquence of Churchill helped convince many Americans that their country must give Britain all possible support in its lonely struggle against Germany.

My dance on the pedestal was my friendship with Maureen. I wasn't sure how I had lost my balance and fallen off. Or whether I was pushed. Everyone around me was trying to get me to dance again. The thing was, I hadn't quite given up on getting back up there. I still believed it was the only place where I could be happy.

He tried to ignore the feather of longing that tickled his heart. But it kept tickling. Because he hadn't quite made up his mind to stay here.

Even to be impaled by a happy fate makes you jerk against the knowledge of inevitability, of final commitment.

Ax? Dent? Enemy dent head with tomahawk?

Parables, yes. We here are to lead life with woe. Tasting bitter.

Yet when we do manage to create ourselves anew, isn't there always a suspicion that the new identity fits over the old like a second skin, at times itchy or uncomfortably tight, not quite covering the most vulnerable patches?

My life felt narrower, and not my own. I gave up some of my life, that's the kind of thought I had, common to us who don't want to do what we feel obliged to do. A sacrifice.

she learned slowly and painfully that it was easier to overthrow a government than to create a one...