hardship and misfortunes Quotes

“Things are not quite as bad as you think.”

Excess of suffering, as we have seen, had made him in some sort a visionary.

Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men; pressure is needed to explode the charge. My captivity concentrated all my faculties on a single point. They had previously been dispersed, now they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, the clash of clouds produces electricity, electricity produces lightning and lightning gives light.

They were eyes no longer, but had become those fathomless mirrors which in men who have known the depths of suffering may replace the conscious gaze, so that they no longer see reality but reflect the memory of past events.

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

There are men who dig for gold; he dug for compassion. Poverty was his goldmine; and the universality of suffering a reason for the universality of charity.

Ill-treatment had made her sullen and misery had made her ugly. Only the beauty of her eyes remained, and this was the more distressing because, being large, they mirrored a greater measure of unhappiness.

“Hardships make or break people.”

“It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”

“I guess no one stays friends for more than thirty years without broken hearts along the way.”

“It has been,” I told him, “the best six months of my entire life.” There was a long silence. “Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.” And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it.

“The trick is to find happiness in the brief gaps between disasters.”

“Misfortune always comes to those who wait.”

“According to the moral absolutism that characterizes McCandless’s beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn’t a challenge at all.”

“I was dimly aware that I might be getting in over my head. But that only added to the scheme’s appeal. That it wouldn’t be easy was the whole point.”

“In my experience, this is the hardest lesson of them all. After a certain age, we are all walking around this world in bodies made of secrets and shame and sorrow and old, unhealed injuries. Our hearts grow sore and misshapen around all this pain - yet somehow, still, we carry on.”

“If you’re a coward--and let’s just say that you are, for the sake of argument--it means nothing. My Aunt Peg, she’s an alcoholic. She can’t handle drinking. It ruins her life and turns her into a mess--and do you know what that means? It means nothing. Do you think it makes her a bad person? Of course not--it’s just the way she is. Alcoholism just happened to her, Frank. Things happen to people. We are the way we are--there’s nothing to be done for it. My Uncle Billy--he couldn’t keep a promise or stay faithful to a woman. It meant nothing. He was a wonderful person, Frank, and he was completely untrustworthy. It’s just how he was. It didn’t mean anything. We all still loved him.”

“Though sympathy can’t alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.”

“But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak.”

“I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.”

“And when you’re in a Slump you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.”

“I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.”

“I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.”

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”

“Somehow, something always happens just before things get to the very worst. It is as if Magic did it. If I could only just remember that always. The worse thing never quite comes.”

“I don’t like it, papa,” she said. “But then I dare say soldiers - even brave ones - don’t really like going into battle.”

“Things happen to people by accident … A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just happened that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them. It just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? I don’t know … how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one. Perhaps I’m a hideous child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials.”

“What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.”

“This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it”

“He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”

“He hated all this, and somehow he couldn’t get away.”

“There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”

“Ay, to the proof; as mountains are for winds, That shake not, though they blow perpetually.”

“I can’t go on living like this, like a mole in a burrow!”

“At length from us may find, who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe.”

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.”

“Then everything goes wrong, for God lets us then go where we like, and when we get poor and miserable and begin to cry about it no one pities us, but they say, You ran away from God, and so God, who could have helped you, left you to yourself.”

“I had no idea,” he said, “that a few reeds would be so heavy.”

“Yet little Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it but did not know it. It was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.”

Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.

“Things are rough all over.”

“Or maybe it was her father’s pragmatic dictum, “You are no better than anyone else, and no one is better than you,” that disposed her to see the hardships of her life as a fate shared by everyone, her good fortunes as an unearned blessing.”

“I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?”

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

“In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life.”

“love will come and when love comes love will hold you love will call your name and you will melt sometimes though love will hurt you but love will never mean to love will play no games cause love knows life has been hard enough already”

“And when I first showed him my scar, he said it was interesting. He used the word ‘textured’. He said ‘smooth’ is boring but ‘textured’ was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever it was that had tried to hurt me.”

“Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”

“Poor ugly creature, how gladly he would have lived even with the ducks had they only given him encouragement.”

“It would be very sad, were I to relate all the misery and privations which the poor little duckling endured during the hard winter;”

“I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”

There we are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

“There was something strange about hearing that word, like it didn’t belong to me anymore or shouldn’t be coming out of his mouth. Maybe it was because it made me face reality; that these past six months weren’t just some perpetual nightmare I was stuck in; that I wasn’t simply waiting for someone to wake me up and tell me none of it was real and that everything was fine.”

“Sometimes it’s about playing a poor hand well.”

“Misfortune is a fact of nature acceptable to women, especially when it falls on other women.”

“The man who is truly good and sensible bears all fortunes, we presume, becomingly, and always does what is noblest under the circumstances.”

“It is plain then that the good or ill fortunes of their friends do affect the dead somewhat.”

“My beauty was the cause of my misfortune.”

“When misfortune comes, The wisest even lose their mother wit.”

“Our worry will steal our peace, and when peace is missing, we find ourselves drowning in anxiety and crumbling under the weight of life’s pressures.”

“We have no control over the reality that in this world we will have trouble, but we have control over whether we decide to allow our hearts to be troubled.”

“Unlucky wretch that I am!”

“There is no road so long and winding as the one that lead you to the finish line. Every bend is meant to test you, every junction made to bring you closer to that place where love and sacrifice meet.”

“Nurture strength of spirit to shield you from misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.”

“The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous.”

“I’m no worse than I ever was. This is just different.”

“We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.”

“Live with a steady superiority over life -don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.”

“Live with a steady superiority over life -don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.”