tough times Quotes

“Little one, do not worry—it will not matter to us. We will pay them all somehow. I will work harder.”

Of course, I’ve had my troubles, but one can live down troubles.

“I’ve been in jail,” he said, “and I’ve just got out. I walked home all the way, and I’ve not a cent, and had nothing to eat since this morning. And I’ve lost my home, and my wife’s ill, and I’m done up.”

“Young fellow had an amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule; he, too, had felt the world’s injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently, he had struck back, and struck hard.”

“I have a wife and baby, sir, and they have no money—my God, they will starve to death!”

″‘Sheeny’—was a Jew, and had no brains, but he was harmless, and would put up a rare campaign fund.”

“You might as well quit, you people. We mean business, this time.”

That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope. He who had been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his arrest.

It’s quite possible for someone to be temporarily unable to work, but that’s just the right time to remember what’s been achieved in the past and consider that later on, once the difficulty has been removed, he will certainly work with all the more diligence and concentration.

My laundry bill is nearly twenty dollars each week alone—think of that!

All his efforts to draw her into open discussion she confronted with a barrier which he could not penetrate, made up of a sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly everything was the same, but their inner relations were completely changed. Alexey Alexandrovitch, a man of great power in the world of politics, felt himself helpless in this. Like an ox with head bent, submissively he awaited the blow which he felt was lifted over him. Every time he began to think about it, he felt that he must try once more, that by kindness, tenderness, and persuasion there was still hope of saving her, of bringing her back to herself, and every day he made ready to talk to her. But every time he began talking to her, he felt that the spirit of evil and deceit, which had taken possession of her, had possession of him too, and he talked to her in a tone quite unlike that in which he had meant to talk. Involuntarily he talked to her in his habitual tone of jeering at anyone who should say what he was saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say what needed to be said to her.

How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey Alexandrovitch had looked at other men’s faithless wives and other deceived husbands and asked himself: “How can people descend to that? how is it they don’t put an end to such a hideous position?” But now, when the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so far from thinking of putting an end to the position that he would not recognize it at all, would not recognize it just because it was too awful, too unnatural.