Quotes About Struggle

What was misfortune but the quality of existing as something, or someone else, inside?

Five years of hard labour, Sparrow always reminded her, watching people who had done no wrong disappear, could not be wiped away so quickly, yet still Zhuli wanted to shake her mother, drag her mind back from the camps and make her present. What mattered was the here and now and not the life before, what mattered were the changeable things of today and tomorrow and not the ever, infinitely, unbearably unchanging yesterday.

Evidently it was very easy to fall if one had already fallen.

Doing the right thing often resulted in living the wrong thing forever. -Christian, Marquess of Eastrerbrook

When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn't know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won't light.

It was their favorite bitter joke: those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.

Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect, and age. It was their fate, Prometheus had told me, the story they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke. Meanwhile every petty and useless god would go on sucking down the bright air until the stars went dark.

Later, years later, I would hear a song made of our meeting. [...] I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero's sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.

He is a mortal," she says. "And mortals die." "I am a mortal!" he screams. "What good is godhead, if it cannot do this? What good are you?

We bear it as best we can,

Do you think Aristos Achaion fights in hopeless wars?

Is it not our human tragedy that some men must be beaten like donkeys before they will see reason?

The world is an ugly place. We must live in it.

I could have told him more, of the dreams that left me bleary and bloodshot, the almost-screams that scraped my throat as I swallowed them down. The way the stars turned and turned through the night above my unsleeping eyes.

He had no chance, really. He was only flesh.

In grief, men must help each other, though they are enemies.

It was our weakness that drew the war out, not her strength.

Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

Often those men in most need hate most to be grateful, and will strike at you just to feel whole again.

The world is an unjust place.

But I say this so that you understand what I was up against: that I was worth more to her sick than I was well.

that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

Some things are worth spilling blood for.

How do you bear it?" he said. My eyes gave off a faint light, and by it I could see his face, It was a surprise to realise that he was waiting for an answer. I believed I had one. I thought of another dim room, with another prisoner. He had been a craftsman also. On the foundation of his knowledge, civilisation had been built. Prometheus' words deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. "We bear it as best we can," I said.