“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
“Let me take a moment to tell those of you who are dealing with and fighting through something painful: it is a miracle that you’re sitting here. You are nobly doing your best to battle your way through it. You are a warrior because of the trials you are going through, but don’t you dare squander the strength you have earned just because the acquisition of it was painful.”
“She stood up and took the book from him, and as he smiled over her shoulder at some other kids, she threw it away and kicked him as hard as she could . . . on the way down, he was punched in the ear. When he landed, he was set upon. When he was set upon, he was slapped and clawed and obliterated by a girl who was utterly consumed with rage.”
“And it is I, Raksha [the Demon], who answer. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-killer, he shall hunt thee!”
“Ay, roar well,” said Bagheera, under his whiskers; “for the time comes when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing of Man.”
“All the jungle is thine, and thou canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.”
“And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.”
Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up—to be killed in his turn.
“Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding.”
“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she has practiced denying them in herself.”
“And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”
“She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
Between Silver and myself we got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable—not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit.
“Would that I were still young and strong as I was in those days, for then some one of you swineherds would give me a cloak both out of good will and for the respect due to a brave soldier; but now people look down upon me because my clothes are shabby.”
The weak suffer more, where the trial is the same, than the strong. And, what are the elementary principles, we may ask, which compose human strength? Is it not - more than anything else - exercise, habit, experience?
“Johnny almost grinned as he nodded. “Tuff enough,” he managed, and by the way his eyes were glowing, I figured Southern gentlemen had nothing on Johnny Cade.”
Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.
Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.
“Stand up to an obstacle. Just stand up to it, that’s all, and don’t give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break, and it won’t be you, it will be the obstacle.”
“Words rose in me, filled my mouth, pushed against my lips. Yes, I’ll marry you. Yes, I love you. Yes! Yes! Yes! I swallowed, forcing them down, but they tore at my throat. A strangled noise erupted from me, but not words, not consent.”
“As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.”
“He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived.”
“The old man pulled free of his sons, and stood straight and tall, then. He was, for a heartbeat, the lord of Stormhold who had defeated the Northern Goblins at the battle of Cragland’s Head; who had fathered eight children who had killed each of his four brothers in combat, before he was twenty years old.”
“He became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke plainly as speech in the way he carried himself.”
“stay strong through your pain
grow flowers from it
you have helped me
grow flowers out of mine so
bloom beautifully
dangerously
loudly
bloom softly
however you need
just bloom”
“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.”
“Don’t wish me happiness
I don’t expect to be happy all the time...
It’s gotton beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all.”
“A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.”
″‘The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst into flames. I am the mockingjay. The one that survived despite the Capitol’s plans. The symbol of the rebellion.‘”
“I was ready to join [Edward’s] family. The fear and guilt and anguish I was feeling now had taught me that much… The next time something came at us, I would be ready. An asset, not a liability.”
“Katsa,” he said. “Listen to me. You’re the most powerful person I’ve ever met. You can do whatever you want, whatever you want in the world. No one can make you do anything, and your uncle can’t touch you. The instant you walk into his presence, you have all the power. If you wish not to hurt him, Katsa, then you have only to choose not to.”
″[Katsa] practiced every day. She learned her own speed and her own explosive force. She learned the angle, position, and intensity of a killing blow versus a maiming blow. She learned how to disarm a man and how to break his leg. She learned to fight with a sword and with knives and daggers. She was so fast and focused, so creative, she could find a way to beat a man senseless with both arms tied to her sides.”
“LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body.”
“Stanley couldn’t see his feet, which made it difficult to walk through the tangled patches of weeds and vines. He concentrated on one step at a time, carefully raising and setting down each foot. He thought only about each step, and not the impossible task that lay before him.
Higher and higher he climbed. His strength came from somewhere deep inside himself and also seemed to come from the outside as well. After focusing on Big Thumb for so long, it was as if the rock had absorbed his energy and now acted like a kind of giant magnet pulling him toward it.”
“Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength.”
“So in the summer time they had all set out for America. At the last moment there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona’s. Marija was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer of Vilna, who beat her regularly. It was only at the age of twenty that it had occurred to Marija to try her strength, when she had risen up and nearly murdered the man, and then come away.”
“He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.”
“Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.”
“A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength—life itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent RESULTS thereof.”
“It is not the brightest who succeed. ... Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those that have been given an opportunities - and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”
“Men as fit as you, when your everyday strength is gone, can draw on a mysterious reservoir of power far greater. Then it is that you can reach for the stars. That is the way champions are made.”
“It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn’t king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on.”
“Every boy, in his journey to become a man, takes an arrow in the center of his heart, in the place of his strength. Because the wound is rarely discussed and even more rarely healed, every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by his father.”
“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human … the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.”
“His life will be better. I could be the one to change that for him. And suddenly that desire, the desire to help him, is even stronger than my selfish desire to keep him close.”
“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.”
“The unavoidable conclusion seems to be that when the individual faces torture or annihilation, he cannot rely on the resources of his own individuality. His only source of strength is in not being himself but part of something mighty, glorious, and indestructible.”
“The reason King Saul is skeptical of David’s chances is that David is small and Goliath is large. Saul thinks of power in terms of physical might. He doesn’t appreciate that power can come in other forms as well - in breaking rules, in substituting speed and surprise for strength.”
″‘Your mother was a very strong woman, a good mother. She loved you very much, more than her own life. And that’s why you can understand why a mother like this could never forget her other daughters. She knew they were alive, and before she died she wanted to find her daughters in China.‘”
“I clung to my rusted dreams during the times of silence. It was at gunpoint that I fell into every hope and allowed myself to wish from the deepest part of my heart. Komorov thought he was torturing us. But we were escaping into a stillness within ourselves. We found strength here.”
″‘This house was built too steep, and a bad wind from the top blows all your strength back down the hill. So you can never get ahead. You are always rolling backward.‘”
“The last figure of all was the most interesting—a woman even more richly dressed than the others, very tall (but every figure in that room was taller than the people of our world), with a look of such fierceness and pride that it took your breath away. Yet she was beautiful too. Years afterward, when he was an old man, Digory said he had never in all his life known a woman so beautiful. It is only fair to add that Polly always said she couldn’t see anything specially beautiful about her.”
“Walter: We have decided to move into our house because my father—my father—he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors. And that’s all we got to say about that. We don’t want your money.”
“a woman who has adjusted to many things in life and overcome many more, her face is full of strength. She has, we can see, wit and faith of a kind that keep her eyes lit and full of interest and expectancy. She is, in a word, a beautiful woman. Her bearing is perhaps most like the noble bearing of the women of the Hereros of Southwest Africa - rather as if she imagines that as she walks she still bears a basket or a vessel upon her head.”
“The manner of the scout was seriously impressive, though no longer distinguished by any signs of unmanly apprehension. It was evident that his momentary weakness had vanished with the explanation of a mystery which his own experience had not served to fathom...”
“Once he had his hands inside the Munford player’s shoulder pads, he lifted him off the ground. It was a perfectly legal block, with unusual consequences. He drove the Munford player straight down the field for 15 yards, then took a hard left, toward the Munford sidelines.”
“Our strength, in other words, has rested in our determination to reject simplistic absolutes and to redefine and revitalize a productive middle ground, relinquishing outdated solutions and embracing new approaches.”
“Across the grey hillside above them – grey, for the heather was not yet in bloom – without noise, and without looking at them, and shining as if he were in bright sunlight though the sun had in fact gone in, passed with slow pace the hugest Lion that human eyes have ever seen. In describing the scene Lucy said afterwards, ‘He was the size of an elephant,’ though at another time she only said, ‘The size of a cart-horse.’ But it was not the size that mattered. Nobody dared to ask what it was. They knew it was Aslan.”
“Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No one ate or slept and no one wanted to, but they drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and pledged one another silently in deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.”
“What we say and what we do ultimately comes back to us so let us own our responsibility, place it in our hands, and carry it with dignity and strength.”
“Every day, every hour, brought to him one more little stroke of her nature, and to her one more of his. Tess was trying to lead a repressed life, but she little divined the strength of her own vitality.”
A man’s emotions are what define him, control is the hallmark of true strength. To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.
“I say that there is no role for women--there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself.
...
A woman’s strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role.”
“Brick, I used to think that you were stronger than me and I didn’t want to be overpowered by you. But now, since you’ve taken to liquor—you know what? –I guess it’s bad, but now I’m stronger than you and I can love you more truly!”
“This is the true division between Silvers and Reds: the color of our blood. This simple difference somehow makes them stronger, smarter, better than us.”
“It is not the content of a company’s values that correlates with performance, but the strength of conviction with which it holds those values, whatever they might be. ”
″...tired of making circles inside a fishbowl, watching life through cloudy glass. Would I ever be Sophie la Fuerte, the strong one, a salmon swimming up waterfalls, leaping over dams?”
“Immediately, Mrs. Ramsey seemed to fold herself together, one petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself, so that she had only strength enough to move her finger, in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion”
“Bathsheba burst into great sobs... but she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived.”
“So this is a pageant.
A violent one, meant to showcase a girl’s beauty, splendor—and strength. The most talented daughter. This is a display of power, to pair the prince with the most powerful girl, so that their children might be the strongest of all. And this has been going on for hundreds of years.
I shudder to think of the strength in Cal’s pinkie finger.”
“If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto. ”
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted.”
“The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary.”
“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.”
“He had proven something to himself; it wasn’t as strong as it had once been. It was changing, unraveling like the yarn of a dark heavy blanket wrapped around a corpse, the dusty rotted strands of darkness unwinding, giving way to the air; its smothering pressure was lifting from the bones of his skull.”
“And that was how, after twelve years of never thinking for as much as five minutes about myself, I became able finally to muster the nerve, and the strength, to start facing the facts, to think for myself.”
“It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules.”
“The duties God requires of us are not in proportion to the strength we possess in ourselves. Rather, they are proportional to the resources available to us in Christ.”
“Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won’t matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.”
“You get Alais and you get the kingdom but I get the one thing I want most. If you’re king, England stays intact. I get that. It’s all yours now-the girl, the crown, the whole black bloody business. Isn’t that enough?”
“The conventional explanation, that God sends us the burden He knows that we are strong enough to handle it, has it all wrong. Fate, not God, sends us the problem.”
“The stag had been showing me my strength--not just the price of mercy but the power it bestowed. And mercy was something the Darkling would never understand. I had spared the stag’s life. The power of that life belonged to me as surely as it belonged to the man who had taken it.”
“Not merely a Master Race whose sole task is to rule, but a Race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength... strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.”
″... all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations;”
Sutra I.20: Shraddha virya smrti samadhi prajna purvakah itaresham
Translation: For those of us who were not born into states of higher consciousness or knowing, we must cultivate self-confidence and conviction to help us maintain our persistence and strength, and to remember our direction so that we may attain our goal of a focused mind and clear perception.
“When we put our faith and trust in God, we’ve done the one thing that a human can do to accomplish superhuman things. We have reached past human strength and knowledge. We’ve touched infinite strength and infinite knowledge.”
“Roman soldiers girded their waist with something similar to what a weight lifter wears to give him strength and support so he won’t hurt the core of his body. It enabled the soldiers to stand stronger against their enemy.”
″‘I don’t think you have particularly good manners with ladies,’ said Pippi. Then she lifted him high into the air with her strong arms. She carried him into a nearby birch tree, and hung him across a branch.”
“Pippi was a very remarkable child, and the most remarkable thing about her was her strength. She was so strong that in all the world there was no policeman as strong as she. She could have lifted a whole horse if she had wanted to.”
“Rebecca held out her arms and the old aunt crept into them feebly, as she did on that day when she opened the grave of her buried love and showed the dead face, just for an instant, to a child. Warmth and strength and life flowed into the aged frame from the young one.”
“You alone, dear lady, gave me the courage and strength to fight the insolent varlet who dared to defy you. The treacherous King of the Mice has been vanquished and lies writhing in his blood. Deign, dear lady, to accept these tokens of victory from the hand of one who will be your true and faithful knight until death.”
When Billie Jo is just fourteen she must endure heart-wrenching ordeals that no child should have to face. The quiet strength she displays while dealing with unspeakable loss is as surprising as it is inspiring.
“With every second that went past, with every sentence she spoke, she felt a little strength flowing back. And now that she was doing something difficult and familiar and never quite predictable, namely lying, she felt a sort of mastery again, the same sense of complexity and control that the alethiometer gave her.”
“No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.”
I knew that once I left [Topthorn] I would be alone in the world again, that I would no longer have his strength and support beside me. So I stayed with him and waited.
″‘My name is Jerry Renault and I’m not going to sell the chocolates,’ he said to the empty apartment. The word and his voice sounded strong and noble.”
“Let the risen Jesus enter your life—welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk; you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid. Trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you, and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.”
“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”
“Every form of strength is also a form of weakness,” he once wrote. “Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.”
“Every form of strength covers one weakness and creates another, and therefore every form of strength is also a form of weakness and every weakness a strength.”
A family secret, a miraculous transformation, an Internet stranger, a friendly American scientist, and a girl with the strength to make it all come out right.
“Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity--precisely the time when
you need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more
intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more
able to control your emotions, is internal discipline
and toughness.
No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering.”
“...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.”
“Never depend on the admiration of others. There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source. It is not to be found in your personal associations, nor can it be found in the regard of other people. It is a fact of life that other people, even people who love you, will not necessarily agree with your ideas, understand you, or share your enthusiasms. Grow up! Who cares what other people think about you!”
“And anyhow so much depends on Mark himself and how much he really wants to get better quickly. He’s been a bit lazy about it, you know, and perhaps having this setback will stir him up to take more interest in getting back his strength.”
“But the true lover of an ancient and honorable breed would have recognized the blood and bone of this elderly and rather battered body; would have known that in his prime this had been a magnificent specimen of compact sinew and muscle, bred to fight and endure; and would have loved him for his curious mixture of wicked, unyielding fighter yet devoted and docile family pet, and above all for the irrepressible air of sly merriment which beamed in his little slant eyes.”
“This is the most amazing story of courage and strength. Based on a true story. Set in the wilds of the American West when it was still inhabited mainly by Indians, buffalo, grizzly bears and wolves. This story is sad, touching and amazing.”
“I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal. I was a survivor, and I was strong. I would not be weak, or helpless again. I would not, could not be broken.”
“But Kazu still goes on believing that, no matter what difficulties people face, they will always have the strength to overcome them. It just takes heart. And if the chair can change someone’s heart, it clearly has its purpose.”
“Find the light that makes your lantern shine,” she used to say. “hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame.”
“Find the light that makes your lantern shine,” she used to say. “hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame.”
For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. O, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough!
“Hester Prynne,” cried he, with a piercing earnestness, “in the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what—for my own heavy sin and miserable agony—I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me!”
“What is life to me?—Very little without you, mother; for believe me, but for you I should have ceased to live on the day I doubted my father and renounced his name. Well, I will live, if you promise me still to hope; and if you grant me the care of your future prospects, you will redouble my strength.”
“Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has. remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw stronger in that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.”
“Which I meantersay,” cried Joe, “that if you come into my place bull- baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I meantersay as sech if you’re a man, come on! Which I meantersay that what I say, I meantersay and stand or fall by!”
Hah! He is a promising fellow—in his way—but he may not have it all his own way. The stronger will win in the end, but the stronger has to be found out first.
As I looked along the clustered roofs, with church-towers and spires shooting into the unusually clear air, the sun rose up, and a veil seemed to be drawn from the river, and millions of sparkles burst out upon its waters. From me too, a veil seemed to be drawn, and I felt strong and well.
“I did once, but it’s no use; men are strongest, and if they are cruel and have no feeling, there is nothing that we can do, but just bear it--bear it on and on to the end.”
You don’t understand; I used to think, indeed, that if women are equal to men in all respects, even in strength (as is maintained now) there ought to be equality in that, too.
And I have myself admitted candidly several times already that that psychology can be taken in two ways and that the second way is stronger and looks far more probable, and that apart from that I have as yet nothing against you.