Quotes About Struggle

So few are the easy victories as the ultimate failures.

En cuanto somos desdichados, nos volvemos morales.

With intelligent people, three-quarters of the things they suffer from come from their intelligence.

Anything we have not had to decipher, to bring to light by our own effort, anything which was already clearly visible, is not our own.

Life is a hard thing that presses us too tightly, forever hurting our souls. Upon feeling those restraints loosen for a moment, one can experience clear-sighted pleasures.

And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech.

We enjoy lovely music, beautiful paintings, a thousand intellectual delicacies, but we have no idea of their cost, to those who invented them, in sleepless nights, tears, spasmodic laughter, rashes, asthmas, epilepsies, and the fear of death, which is worse than all the rest.

To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.

He [Bloch] was one of those touchy, highly-strung people who cannot bear to have made a blunder, will not admit it to themselves, and whose whole day is ruined by it.

However, it was impossible for any love of mine for Andrée to be true: she was too intellectual, too highly strung, too prone to ailment, too much like myself.

Unfortunately the next day was not the vast, extraneous expanse of time which I had feverishly looked forward. When it drew to a close my laziness and my painful struggle to overcome internal obstacles had simply lasted twenty-four hours longer.

The wretchedness of ordinary life, endured so gaily when it is part of our normal existence, is made far worse when it comes as something new, and is exaggerated by the working of the imagination.

I have friends wherever there are clusters of trees, stricken but not defeated, which have come together with touching perseverance to offer a common supplication to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them.

For in this respect love is not like war; after the battle is ended we renew the fight with keener ardour, which we never cease to intensify the more thoroughly we are defeated, provided always that we are still in a position to give battle.

Pero de pronto lo recordé, las irreductibles asperezas de un mundo inhumano se aniquilaron mágicamente; las sílabas del verso llenaron luego la medida de un alejandrino; lo que el verso tenía de sobra se desprendió con tanta facilidad y tan ágilmente como una pompa de aire que sale a estallar a la superficie del agua. Y, en efecto, aquella enormidad con que yo había luchado no era más que una sola sílaba.

She cursed her will, which could rear so impetuously and leap over hurdles so dauntlessly when her desires strove toward impossible goals—her will, so weak, so pliant, so broken not only when she was forced to disobey her desires, but also when she was driven by some other emotion.

He beguiled me almost by surprise into doing wrong, then he got me accustomed to having bad thoughts which I had no will to resist—willpower being the only force capable of driving them back to the infernal darkness from which they emerged.

Muitas vezes, é unicamente por falta de espírito criador que não se vai muito longe no sofrimento. E a mais terrível realidade nos concede, ao mesmo tempo que o sofrimento, a alegria de uma bela descoberta, porque só faz doar uma forma clara e nova ao que ruminávamos há muito sem desconfiar.

É muita vez apenas por falta de espírito criador que não se vai bastante longe no sofrimento. E a realidade mais terrível dá, ao mesmo tempo que o sofrimento, a alegria de uma bela descoberta, porque não faz senão dar uma forma nova e clara ao que ruminávamos desde muito sem o saber.

they imagine that the life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted, and they bring to their regular occupations either a fantastic indifference or a sustained and lofty application, scornful, bitter, and conscientious.

Her memory was a burning pillow which she kept turning and turning.

No banishment, indeed, to the South Pole, or to the summit of Mont Blanc, can separate us so entirely from our fellow creatures as a prolonged residence in the seclusion of a secret vice, that is to say of a state of mind that is different from theirs.

But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with thee Came not all hell broke loose?

How oft, in nations gone corrupt, And by their own devices brought down to servitude, That man chooses bondage before liberty. Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.