Quotes About Ordeal

If you didn't play the plebe system as if it were a game, he thought, it could be a debilitating ordeal.

The Nobel Prize has been a disturbance at the beginning of October for some years. It would be gratifying to win, but it would be quite an ordeal, too, with all the events which go on for two days. I'd think carefully about what I was doing the day it is announced and maybe not be around, or be around, but elsewhere.

All armies have expendable items. That is, a part or unit, the destruction of which will not be fatal to the whole. In some ordeals, a man might consider his finger expendable, but not his hand; or, in extremity, his arm but not his heart. There are expendable items which may be lost or destroyed in the field, either in peace or in war, without their owner being required to replace them. A rifle is so expendable or a cartridge belt. So are men. Men are the most expendable of all.

The sharks had, in fact, remained a constant presence throughout the men's ordeal, even during the daylight hours. Not long after [navy pilot] Gwinn showed up, a massive shark attack--involving an estimated thirty fish--had, in about fifteen minutes, taken some sixty boys perched on a floater net.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

The most crucial right established under Magna Carta was the right to a trial by jury. For centuries, guilt or innocence had been determined, across Europe, either by a trial by ordeal—a trial by water, for instance, or a trial by fire—or by trial by combat. Trials by ordeal and combat required neither testimony nor questioning. The outcome was, itself, the evidence, the only admissible form of judicial proof, accepted because it placed judgment in the hands of God.

People without hope do not write novels … [Writing fiction] is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won't survive the ordeal.

Death is perhaps an ordeal, but it is not an expiation

Gil said to Elfine, "I cannot make you an American if that is what you are asking. There is an ordeal all must pass. A trial by paperwork and years of waiting.

Practically every man remains in delirium before marrying the woman that he would not meet the ordeal like that of other husbands at the hands of their wives, but soon after wedding all those thoughts start shattering before own eyes and the lucky one awakens to the marital life's reality the very first.

It is time to end a story that began in sorrow and ordeal and has ended in a deep and lasting happiness. May it be so for others.

The mantram becomes one's staff of life and carries one through every ordeal. Each repetition has a new meaning, carrying you nearer and nearer to God.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

Lirael left in a daze of happiness. She had survived the ordeal. She had been accepted. She was going to be a librarian!

I do not think you quite understand," said Phineas, "how such an ordeal as this works upon a man, how it may change a man, and knock out of him what little strength there ever was there. I feel that I am broken, past any patching up or mending. Of course it ought not to be so. A man should be made of better stuff; — but one is only what one is.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet. 4:12–13 NIV)

Though it affected only one family, he believed the ordeal would be of interest to all; already he excelled at inflating a small issue into a larger one, of salvaging radiant principle from a slag heap of detail.

I tried to find a word for it in my thesaurus, but there isn't one. At least, not one that doesn't belittle the plight of POWs and victims of famine. I guess we can just call it beyond suck. -Lulu Dark

She did not feel in any mood to playact for a whole evening, but she supposed that she would somehow live through the ordeal.

But we have never stopped it [war] and never shall, because war is not the law of one age or civilization, but of eternal nature itself, out of which every civilization proceedes, and into which it must sink again if it is not hard enough to withstand its iron ordeal.

The divorce was rough on all of us. I don't blame Hollywood for my family's problems. But having all of it reported in the press made it more of an ordeal.

Simple words of encouragement subsequently saved many of the Indianapolis' sailors during their ordeal in the summer of 1945, and those men took the lesson to heart.