Quotes About Struggle

Why is there so much contention in our world?" Thus agitated, Morihei grabbed the tree and single-handedly moved it to its new location. Onisaburo happened to be present as well and said to Morihei, "That is the power of righteous indignation. Channel that tremendous force into the proper activity and you will accomplish wonderful things.

Century after century, we have prosecuted our insane conflicts from atop their backs, resting on their sturdy necks when we grew weary, eating their flesh when we were starving, disemboweling them and crawling inside their bodies when we were freezing. --Blood Horses

The problem was I wasn't very good at things. Everybody knows somebody like that. And I was the guy I knew. I wasn't very dependable either. And I guess I didn't smell too good most of the time. I didn't have much going for me, to be honest.

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.

Women, fire in their crotch, won't burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works.

I like middles. . . It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

And suddenly she was at him, after him with her fists, her struggling weight; he squeezed her against him, regretfully conscious even now, as her pinned fists flailed his shoulders and her face crumpled into contorted weeping and the sharp smell of perfume was scalded from her, that the expression, of serene superiority, of a beautiful secret continually tasted, was still on his face.

Writers take words seriously—perhaps the last professional class that does—and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.

Part of being human is being on the verge of disgrace.

He showed the world what can be done against the odds, against a superpower. He showed -- and this is where Vietnam and Iraq come in, that in a war between an imperialist occupier and the people who actually live there, the people will eventually prevail. They know the terrain. They have more at stake. They have nowhere else to go.

The beast is dry and mottled, shedding skin as minutes drop from life, a wristy piece of dogged ugliness, its labors meant to carve from language beauty, that beauty which lifts free of flesh to find itself in print

He sees now that he is rich that these were the [shore] outings of the poor, ending in sunburn and stomach upset. Pop liked crabcakes and baked oysters but could never eat them without throwing up. When the Model A was tucked into the garage and little Mim tucked into bed Harry could hear his father vomiting in a far corner of the yard. He never complained about vomiting or about work, they were just things you had to do, one more regularly than the other.

Life is a hill that gets steeper the more you climb.

Pornography and its slightly more demure cousin, advertising, present an ideal world, and the claims of the ideal strain and stress imperfect reality.

You are all of twenty and very much feeling your womanhood. The strange thing about womanhood is that it goes on and on--the same daily burden of constant vague expectation and of everything being just slightly disappointing compared with what one knows one has inside oneself waiting to be touched off. It's rather like being a set of pretty little logs that won't quite catch fire, isn't it?

Also ist mein Sohn ein Simpel.' In einer Hinsicht. Aber der größte Teil der Menschheit ist so. Weil es sonst zu schwer zu ertragen ist, Mensch zu sein. Im Gegensatz zu den Tieren wissen wir zu viel. Sie, die anderen Tiere, wissen gerade genug, um ihren Job zu machen und zu sterben. Um zu essen, zu schlafen, zu vögeln, Babys zu kriegen und zu sterben.

Wir wissen eben nicht, was einer tun sollte, wir haben nicht mehr wir früher Antworten parat; wir wursteln uns bloß weiter durch und versuchen, nicht nachzudenken.

Sad business, being a Negro man, always underpaid, their eyes don't look like our eyes, bloodshot, brown, liquid in them about to quiver out. Read somewhere some anthropologist thinks Negroes instead of being more primitive are the latest thing to evolve, the newest man.

He slouches down and in answer to Springer says, "Things go bad. Food goes bad, people go bad, maybe a whole country goes bad. The blacks now have more than ever, but it feels like less, maybe. We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything.

But it was my way of becoming a human being, and part of being human is being on the verge of disgrace.

Live. Live, brothers, though there be naught but shame and failure to furnish forth your living.

Come here," he asks. The idea of making it while the churches are full excites him. "No," Ruth says. She is really a little sore. His believing in God grates against her.

Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.

Ruth was funny. Her bowling was awful; she just sort of paddled up to the line and dropped the ball. Plok.