Quotes About Struggle

I believe that the majority of times the scale tilts toward the good. It's this amazing thing that rolls on and if we get in the flow of it, that's God. And if we fight it, if we swim the other way, we're swimming away from the purest expression of this life.

I'm glad I don't have a drinking problem,' I confided, 'because I don't think I'd ever be able to quit.

It is one of the great ironies of my life that only when it became virtually impossible for me to keep my body from moving would I find the peace, security, and spiritual strength to stand in one place. I couldn't be still until I could—literally—no longer keep still.

Sure, it may be one step forward and two steps back, but after a time with Parkinson's, I've learned that what is important is making that step count; always looking up.

Part of the disease's 'gift' is a certain stark clarity about the rest of your life.

This is what my lifelong search for room to maneuver had come to: a box of water in a lightless, windowless nine-by-sixteen-foot room—afraid to leave my artificial womb, to go outside where I could only cause trouble, disappoint my family and myself. Best, I thought, to stay right here where I couldn't fuck anything up. And stay I would, day after day, sometimes three or four times on weekends, for hours at a time, just trying to keep my head below water. Connecticut—Christmas

Chris defined hero as "an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure.

People living in democratic republics should know not only of its origins but also of the imperfect democratic struggle it spawned. Such appreciation might alleviate the taking of one's way of life for granted.

Why do you cling to the guilt and deny the love? Why are love and peace more difficult to embrace than pain and discord?

reflect a long-term and slowly unfolding loss of a way of life for the white, less educated working class.

But it is also because, having worked hard to achieve a modicum of success, they had accepted the harsh verdict of the market in their own case, and were invested in it, morally and psychologically.

Of those born poor in America, few make it to the top. In fact, most do not even make it to the middle class.

The other is the despair that arises when people believe the meritocratic promise has already been fulfilled, and they have lost out.

Of those born poor in America, few make it to the top. In fact, most do not even make it to the middle class. Studies of upward mobility typically divide the income ladder into five rungs. Of those born on the bottom rung, only around 4 to 7 percent rise to the top, and only about a third reach the middle rung or higher. Although the exact numbers vary from one study to the next, very few Americans live out the "rags to riches" story celebrated in the American dream.37

I just wish I could understand my father.

No matter who won this battle, a race would be wiped out.

I guess this means we're uck-fayed, don't it Mikee?

My generation must have despair. - Leonard Bernstein Ch 40/Dog Water Free, A Memoir

Is it any wonder that no cure for cancer has ever been revealed?

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." He had an instinctive understanding of the fact that the British as a people dislike boasting, and pride themselves not on victory but on being able to "take it.

Like any man who has two masters with opposing interests, he was torn between them.

It was all about size now: the big ran the world on the sweat of the small, and if the big faltered for any reason, the small were the first to go.

He kept the gun in his lap as he drove, and he prayed. It was the strangest prayer he'd ever offered. He asked for strength to do the wrong thing, and then forgiveness for doing it.

The work was done by hundreds of undocumented Polish immigrants known as the "Polish brigade." The men toiled through spring and summer of 1980 with sledgehammers and blowtorches, but without hard hats, working twelve- to eighteen-hour days, seven days a week, often sleeping on Bonwit Teller's floors. They were paid less than $5 an hour, sometimes in vodka. Many went unpaid and were threatened with deportation if they complained.