Quotes About Struggle

She started for the door, and when she reached it, she turned about. I'm learnin' one thing good, she said. Learnin' it all a time, ever' day. If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.

You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.

Ma put down her head and she fought with a desire to cry.

Adam went on, "Every morning in the army that damned bugle would sound. And I swore to God if I ever got out I would sleep till noon every day. And here I get up a half-hour before reveille. Will you tell me, Charles, what in hell we're working for?" "You can't lay in bed and run a farm," said Charles. He stirred the hissing bacon around with a fork.

Every kid got a turtle some time or other. Nobody can't keep a turtle though. They work at it and work at it, and at last one day they get out and away they go--off somewheres. It's like me.

Jesus, I seen it happen too many times. I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.

Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live- for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live- for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept...

It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

Me puse a formular una nueva ley que describiese la relación entre protección y abatimiento. Un alma triste puede matarte más deprisa que un germen, mucho más rápido.

Now the tents of the late-comers filled the little flat, and those who had the boxcars were old-timers, and in a way aristocrats.

Her life is one of revenge on other people because of a vague feeling of her own lack. A man born blind must in a sense hate eyes as well as envy them. A blind man might wish to remove all of the eyes in the world.

Muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him— goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest.

A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms sutlers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them.

men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them.

He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scares 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children?

They gonna need help. They got to live before they can afford to die.

He wasn' doing nothin' against the law, Ma. I been thinkin' a hell of a lot, thinkin' about our people livin' like pigs, an' the good rich lan' layin' fallow, or maybe one fella with a million acres, while a hunderd thousan' good farmers is starvin'. An' I been wonderin' if all our folks got together an' yelled, like them fellas yelled, only a few of 'em at the Hooper ranch—

The ragged man looked around at the circle, and then he turned and walked quickly away into the darkness. The dark swallowed him, but his dragging footsteps could be heard a long time after he had gone, footsteps along the road; and a car came by on the highway, and its lights showed the ragged man shuffling along the road, his head hanging down and his hands in the black coat pockets.

They were land-hungry, ill-armed hordes too, and the legions could not stop them. Slaughter and terror did not stop them. How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched belles of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

You see a guy hurt, or somebody like Anderson smashed, or you see a cop ride down a Jew girl, an' you think, what the hell's the use of it. An' then you think of the millions starving, and it's all right again. It's worth it.

Boileau said that Kings, Gods, and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation, and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor. . . . And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now." —Steinbeck in a 1939 radio interview

he felt himself hopelessly outnumbered.