Quotes About Struggle

he decided that his only remaining option was to take his case to Rome.

As soon as the English bishop stepped off the boat he was seized,

assaulted and robbed, and many of his companions were killed.

and a fierce battle ensued.

All we learn is that the fighting lasted a long time,

plucky little Britannia throwing off Roman rule and beating the barbarians into the bargain

The same response that once gave a weary hunter the strength to press on after his wounded prey now powers the tired businesswoman laboring to meet a deadline. But it's also the reason why overtired children appear "wired," unable to fall asleep easily or stay asleep.

At the rate these illuminations appear, it will no doubt take me a long time to gather the material for even one single book. For my inspired double-- this phantom builder of sentences who maliciously impedes my work to dictate his clever discoveries-- always comes at those (infrequent) hours of his choosing, drafts (at best) three little pages, then goes away.

Such is the life of a man. Moments of joy, obliterated by unforgettable sorrow.

Ah, yes, it's the Soubeyrans...Three mad, three hanged, and me all alone with a no-good leg....And nobody after me...Nobody, nobody, nobody...

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and only they who have founded religions and created great works of art.

Everything great that we know has come from neurotics never will the world be aware of how much it owes to them, nor above all what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.

Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.

I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence...

Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning.

These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.

Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.

This malady which Swann's love had become had so proliferated, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so utterly inseparable from him, that it would have been impossible to eradicate it without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his love was no longer operable.

Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind... The body encloses the mind in a fortress; before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind has to give itself up.

one might almost say that works of literature are like artesian wells, the deeper the suffering, the higher they rise.)

We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering.

There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.

You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?' I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.' That is not what I meant,' interrupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky.

Hoeveel bedroevender nog dan vroeger vond ik het sedert die dag (...) dat ik geen aanleg voor schrijven had en ervan moest afzien ooit een beroemde schrijver te worden.