Quotes About Struggle

Perhaps her long dark night fueled her life, where she kept moving anyway, as an act of trust so deep it cannot be rationally explained—and indeed would look foolish if anyone tried. And the result was about as clear a Jesus movement as you can point to in recent history. Mother Teresa learned

But a faith that requires us to hold on to what we "know" becomes, we eventually discover, inadequate for handling the peaks and valleys of our humanity. It's also exhausting to try to hold it all together as it once was.

I am amazed and encouraged by those who have lived through these moments of hell on earth and have continued on in the life of faith anyway. They have something to teach people like me: no matter what we think we know, no matter how sure we happen to think we are, suffering is the place where our sense of certainty about God's ways fades like a dream and forces us to consider that what we know may not be as central to our faith as we might think.

Doubt is God's way of helping us not go there, though the road may be very hard and long.

When Christians feel crushed by such "people of God," faith is exposed as something that just doesn't work here and now. And if something doesn't work, intellectual arguments for staying in the faith lose their appeal over time. Why bother?

You cannot fight entropy.

The universe was not built on integrity. In the face of weakness, force can and will triumph. All you can do is choose who wields that force. Us or the Starflyer.

Start taking money away from the privileged, and they can turn just as savage as any animal that gets shoved into Philippa's arena.

Most people who have failed miserably in life itself have one last resort left available to them. They become politicians.

So government did what government always does when confronted with an opposition which can't be brought down by fair and legal means. It cheated.

war is the result of total irrationality combined with conflict of interest.

We fight them in a thousand small ways each day, my young friend. That is how decent people will triumph in the end.

People will look at you, what you're doing, rewriting the regiment rule book, and they'll want to do the same for themselves. That's when you'll start to run into resistance. That's where the politics begins. And that's the dirtiest fight there is.

One addiction laid you open to others in a fast downward spiral.

the newly arrived Ivets being hunted down and killed. Beaten into the mud with makeshift clubs, or gored by baying sayce to the sound of cheers. If they looked through the window at an angle they would be able to see boats of all sizes sailing hurriedly out of the circular polyp harbours for the safety of the water. I hate Adamists, Lori said. Only Adamists could do this to one another. They do it because they don't know one another. They don't love, they can only lust and fear.

Despite the evidence, that lost part of Jed's heart had wanted to believe in his divine savour and her promises of a better world.

Perfection is what we strive for, it is never what we should achieve. There is no such thing as utopia. Life by its nature is a struggle. Take that away and you take away any reason to exist. (The Evolutionary Void)

You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way.

How you humans survive so much experience is something I shall never understand. To do so much and react to it all in the way you do is as much a curse as a blessing. You never take time to digest and appreciate what happens to you.

Perfection," Inigo said, "is what we strive for; it is never what we should achieve. There is no such thing as utopia. Life by its nature is a struggle. Take that away and you take away any reason to exist.

The balance is the penalty of being human: the danger of allowing yourself to feel. For this we walk a narrow path high above rocky ground. On one side we have the descent into animalism, on the other a godhead delusion. Both pulling at us, both tempting. But without these forces tugging at your psyche, stirring it into conflict, you can never love. They awaken us, you see, these warring sides, they arouse our passion.

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

Only a people trained to accept being ruled by a violent power structure can really question someone's right and need to forcefully defend herself against oppression.

In the immensity of earth, sky and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech – and nothing would happen. Nothing could happen.