Quotes & Sayings About A Difficult Journey

I'm attracted to playing things that I find difficult, just because it's a journey that is much more interesting. — Kate Beckinsale

You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
What's it like in hell?"
Same like in heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
He said. "To up, to down
all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below.
I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. "
Love, too," he said.
Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this! — Elizabeth Gilbert

So I come back again to the condition that the Golden Rule, if one adopts it, is a difficult master to serve. The ship's captain will not throw the compass overboard because the wind blows fair and the day is funny. For he knows, from the experiences of the ocean's instability, that the danger days of storm are always "just ahead." So the compass must always be handy and obedience to it must always be loyal. And so with the Golden Rulle - the compass must be ever at hand through life's journey. It will see us through trying times. And perhaps the most trying of all times comes when success is riding high and we may be tempted to "throw the compass overboard." It is then we must remember that all good days in human life come from the mastery of the days of trouble that are forever recurrent. — James Cash Penney

We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. — Robert Falcon Scott

Every writer's difficult journey is a movement from silence to speech. We must be intensely private and interior in order to find a voice and a vision - and we must bring our work to an outside world where the market, or public outrage, or even government censorship can destroy our voice. — Sara Paretsky

Perhaps there has never been a time when we had greater need to pray and to teach our family members to pray. Prayer is a defense against temptation. It is through earnest and heartfelt prayer that we can receive the needed blessings and the support required to make our way in this sometimes difficult and challenging journey we call mortality. — Thomas S. Monson

When the wind is right and the cloud is gone, you can see down this road as far as Darjeeling," I told her. "But it is a long and difficult road, full of perils, and if a traveller on foot were to look at the length of it, his spirit would be overcome and he would sit down and refuse to go any further. You must not look to the end of the road, Portia. Look only to the step in front of you. That you can do. Just one step. And you will not make the journey alone. — Deanna Raybourn

If you walk 100 miles into the life you don't want. Often, you must walk those same 100 miles to get out of that life. This is the answer to why the journey to fulfillment is often so difficult. However, if you can find a shortcut, a new path, you can get to the life you want much quicker. This is the premise of personal development, self-improvement and self-discovery..! — James A. Murphy

In the end, I've come to believe in something I call the 'physics of the quest', a force in nature governed by the laws of gravity. The rules of quest physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting and set out on a truth seeking journey either internally or externally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared most of all to face and forgive some of the most difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be witheld from you — Elizabeth Gilbert

Across the broken apses and shattered naves of a hundred ruined Byzantine churches, the same smooth, cold, neo-classical faces of the saints and apostles stare down like a gallery of deaf mutes; and through this thundering silence the everyday reality of life in the Byzantine provinces remains persistently difficult to visualise. The sacred and aristocratic nature of Byzantine art means that we have very little idea of what the early Byzantine peasant or shopkeeper looked like; we have even less idea of what he thought, what he longed for, what he loved or what he hated.
Yet through the pages of The Spiritual Meadow one can come closer to the ordinary Byzantine than is possible through virtually any other single source.

Dalrymple, William (2012-06-21). From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (Text Only) (Kindle Location 248). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. — William Dalrymple

What I liked was the train ride. It took an hour and that was enough for me to be able to lean backwards against the seat with closed eyes, feel the joints in the rails come up and thump through my body and sometimes peer out of the windows and see windswept heathland and imagine I was on the Trans-Siberian Railway. I had read about it, seen pictures in a book and decided that no matter when and how life would turn out, one day I would travel from Moscow to Vladivostok on that train, and I practised saying the names: Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, they were difficult to pronounce with all their hard consonants, but ever since the trip to Skagen, every journey I made by train was a potential departure on my own great journey. — Per Petterson

It is difficult to understand the journey of a hero," the whisperer said. — Mark Andrew Poe

If any has stumbled in his journey, there is a way back. The process is called repentance. Our Savior died to provide you and me that blessed gift. Though the path is difficult, the promise is real: 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow' (Isaiah 1:18). — Thomas S. Monson

He believes that if talent is demanded of a literary publisher or a writer, it must also be demanded of a reader. Because we mustn't deceive ourselves: on the journey of reading we often travel through difficult terrains that demand a capacity for intelligent emotion, a desire to understand the other, and to approach a language distinct from the one of our daily tyrannies ... Writers fail readers, but it also happens the other way around and readers fail writers when all they ask of them is confirmation that the world is how they see it. — Enrique Vila-Matas

Smell and taste are processed in parts of our brains that are reactive and emotional rather than intellectual, which is one reason developing a good vocabulary of aromas is so difficult. It's a long journey from our lizard brain way up to where language is processed. — Randy Mosher

The most difficult journey any of us ever take in our adulthood is the return to our parents' house. A home visit makes us recall all of the childhood events that formed us. Returning home reacquaints us with family members and our former self. — Kilroy J. Oldster

For me, every book is a journey - questioning a really difficult topic that most people don't want to talk about, much less write about. And that's what I need; that works for me as a writer. — Jodi Picoult

Adventure,' then, is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it, which is one thing that Lewis's child characters have learned from reading, 'the right books. — Laura Miller

I wonder what we look for when we embark on these kinds of trips. There is the pat answer that you tell the people you don't know: that you're interested in seeing a place, learning about its people. But then the trip begins and the hardship comes, and hardship is more honest: it tells us that we don't have enough patience yet, nor humility, nor gratitude. And we thought that we did. Hardship brings us closer to truth, and thus is more difficult to bear, but from it alone comes compassion. And so I've told the world that it can do what it wants with me during this trip if only, by the end, I have learned something more. A bargain then. The journey, my teacher. — Kira Salak

A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity ... one must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Love is a hero's journey, and the hero's journey is a noble but difficult path. — Marianne Williamson

Why is this painful journey so indispensable to the acquisition of true wisdom? ... It is as if the mind were a squeamish organ that refused to entertain difficult truths unless encouraged to do so by difficult events. "Happiness is good for the body," Proust tells us, "but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind." These griefs put us through a form of mental gymnastics which we would have avoided in happier times. Indeed, if a genuine priority is the development of our mental capacities, the implication is that we would be better off being unhappy than content, better off pursuing tormented love affairs than reading Plato or Spinoza. (Proust writes) A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and more vital than does a man of genius who interests us. — Alain De Botton

There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it? — Plato

A crisis can knock us off balance, making us afraid, vulnerable, and ripe for change. This also happens in our spiritual journey. We have a crisis in our faith that causes us to reconsider. It might frighten us, at least make us vulnerable. If we become bitter or too resistant, we can get very stuck. But if we let the change or crisis touch us, if we live with it and embrace it as difficult as that is, we are more likely to grow and to move eventually to another stage or spiral in our journey [of faith]. When we are most vulnerable, we have the best chance to learn and move along the way. In the midst of pain there is promise. — Janet O. Hagberg

I think the hardest step in any journey is not the first one -- it's the next one. We are on a journey where each step that God directs us toward is going to seem to require greater faith and sacrifice than the last one. Once we've begun, we look back at the first step and laugh. It was hard then, but it is never as difficult as the next step. We are going to see that the people God involves in His journey are not people who have incredible, unwavering faith; so much as they are normal people who are willing to take the next step down the path. — Claude Hickman

When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth. — Tahir Shah

Being negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult. You may be given a cactus, but you don't have to sit on it. — Joyce Meyer

It is our reaction that creates stress and this we can change"
This book will start you on a journey that will give you the ability to handle
any difficult customer with ease. In order to feel no stress we all have to go through many instances of being stressed, so we can learn one step at a time to be free of it. — Keith H. Maitland

Once a year the Hattifatteners collect there before setting out again on their endless foraging expedition round the world. They come from all points of the compass, silent and serious with their small, white empty faces, and why they hold this yearly meeting it is difficult to say, as they can neither hear nor speak, and have no object in life but the distant goal of their journey's end. Perhaps they like to have a place where they feel at home and can rest a little and meet friends. — Tove Jansson

I learned from my mother that there is a greatness in all of us, and that all of us are delivered to this world with a mission. I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom. — Les Brown

Here is an old Oriental proverb: *A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.* It is difficult to anticipate just how a situation will develop in every detail until you take a step forward and try out your present equipment. Then, if weaknesses appear, you will have clues as to how to strengthen your resources. No scheme or plan is perfect. Perfection is a process, not an end. — Napoleon Hill

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. — Lao-Tzu

This is where we belong, united as one in happiness. It has been a long and difficult journey to where we are today, but through it all, we never lost hope that some day this freedom could be ours again. Hope is the one thing Sinistra could not take from us. Without hope, you are lost. With it, you are never alone... — Krista Bur

Follow your passion, we're often told. But how do you find your passion? Let me put it another way: what is it that breaks your heart about the world? It's there that you begin to find what moves you. If you want to find your passion, surrender to your heartbreak. Your heartbreak points towards a truer north - and it's the difficult journey towards it that is, in the truest sense, no mere passing idyllic infatuation, but enduring, tempestuous passion. — Umair Haque

The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning. — Nelson Mandela

Focusing on the negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult — TobyMac

How different the world would be if each parent could say to the child: "Who you are is terrific, all you are meant to be. And who you are, as you are, is loved by all of us. You have a source within, which is the soul, and it will express itself to you through what we call desire. Always respect the well-being of the other, but live your own journey, serve that desire, risk being that which wishes to enter the world through you, and you will always have our love, even if your path takes you away from us." Such persons would then have a powerful tool to enable them to change their lives when it was not working out for them. Such persons would be able to make difficult decisions, mindful always of the impact on others, but also determined to live the life intended by the gods who brought us here. — James Hollis

Strive through your adversities with a tenacious mindset and a sincere heart and there shall surely be a great end when you get to the end unrelentingly. You shall surely leave a noble mark when you endure to the end and you shall surely smile in the end and ponder over how the journey to the end was. Note; there is no sweet fruit that is not the product of the dirty soil. No matter what, keep moving on! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

To The Lilies among Thistles, Just like a lily, a beautiful life does not just happen overnight. It is built daily through informed choices, commitment, faith and prayer. The journey towards becoming A Proverbs 31 Lady cannot therefore be taken lightly. It is a difficult, challenging journey filled with both laughter and tears, but a fulfilling one as you will soon find out. If you commit to becoming this woman just one day at a time, it will change not just your relationships but also your whole life.Consider it as a challenge, from one virtuous woman to the other. — Mary Maina

A difficult journey is more revealing of character than any discussion or analysis. — Michael Treanor

The stock market is like a small row boat on a rough sea, bouncing around as it drifts, whereas the macro economy is like a large ocean liner, very ponderous and difficult to maneuver but without such a rough journey. — Clive Granger

It is a long journey, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Take nothing and no one for granted, be humble always, be kind especially when it's difficult and never forget the place where you came from and the people that helped you get where you are. These things will live on in you and through you, long after the words have faded. — C.K. Webb

Out of the new arrivals in our lives
the odd word stumbled upon in a difficult text, the handsome black stranger who bursts in one night through the cat door, the telephone call out of a friend's silence of years, the sudden greeting from the girl-child
we constantly make of ourselves our selves. — Nancy Mairs

If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Getting started is the most difficult thing to do; once you file it out, they rest of the journey is as soft as the straw. Be a good beginner. — Israelmore Ayivor

Like all human beings, Bob [Crane] had feelings and emotions. He danced on the moon, jumped for joy, laughed in ecstasy, and leapt in triumph. He also cried in grief, mourned losses, threw his hands up to the sky in frustration, and felt desperate, scared, sad, and alone. Bob's flaws - the mistakes and bad choices he made, the most difficult moments he faced, and his descent into the jaws of a powerful addiction - were all but a part of his whole life journey. His flaws were merely the specks, like the specks on the Parthenon that comprise any person's entire time on earth... In spite of his flaws, he was a kind person, a joyful person, a talented person, a courageous person - a whole person. — Carol M. Ford

My first and foremost goal when I joined the Yankees was to win the world championship. Certainly, it's been a long road and very difficult journey. But I'm just happy that after all these years we were able to win and reach the goal that I had come here for. — Hideki Matsui

The journey to the realisation of your dreams is difficult; you will have to climb the mountains of despair, brave the storms of self doubt, be resolute in the winds of ridicule but the in the very end you will get a kind of self satisfaction that no one can take away from you — Rassool Jibraeerl Snyman

It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of secual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values.
The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment help us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments - but all of this is transitory it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken. — Paulo Coelho

Your intention is for readers to benefit from your experiences and avoid the costly and time consuming mistakes you may have made. You want to help your readers know the short cuts and what you would have avoided, and why. As you write, keep a clear sense of why writing this is important to you, but also share your why within the body of the book. Why do your readers need to take the steps you describe? Are you saving them time, money, resources? Why did you start your journey to begin with? Did you want to change the world or get from point "A" to point "B"? Why did you keep going even when it was difficult? Was there a light at the end of the tunnel, a reward at the end? Why should they hang in there? All of these things will work magically if implemented correctly and consistently. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

My pilgrimage can be interpreted as a parable of my path through life. It was a difficult birth - which is literally true in my case. At the beginning of the route - and in my childhood - I had trouble hitting my stride. Until the middle of my path through life, no matter how many positive experiences I enjoyed, I experienced many twists and turns that sometimes threw me off-course. But at about the midpoint of my journey, I started moving cheerfully toward my destination. It almost seems as though the Camino has seen fit to grant me a little peek into my future. Serenity might be a goal worth pursuing. — Hape Kerkeling

Going to a concert can sometimes be very difficult. It can be a long journey. There's the ticket prices. But when the music goes to the community - not the community coming to the concert - they say, 'Wow! I didn't know that this music was so amazing!' — Gustavo Dudamel

Most people in this country are very fair-minded; they understand we're in the middle of a very difficult journey of repairing, rescuing, restoring our British economy, and they want us, and they want particularly Liberal Democrats in government, to fight for the fairest possible way of doing that. — Nick Clegg

After accepting love as a stimulus, a man faces the third obstacle: the fear of the defeats he will encounter along the way. A man who fights for his dream suffers far more when something doesn't go well, because he cannot use the famous excuse: "oh, well in fact that wasn't exactly what I wanted anyway ... " He does want it, and knows he is putting everything into it, and also that the Personal Legend is just as difficult as any other path - the difference being that your heart is present on this journey. So, a warrior of the light must be prepared to be patient at difficult times, and know that the Universe is conspiring in his favor, even if he does not understand how. — Paulo Coelho

While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story - their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done. — Alyson Noel

Sometimes a difficult journey does not deliver its full benefit until long after one returns. The trials are brief, but the wisdom gained lasts a lifetime! — Joe Abercrombie

A free ride is life's most difficult journey. — James Cook

Each of my novels features a protagonist undertaking a difficult personal journey. On the way, each of these characters - mostly female - discovers something about herself and at the same time makes an impact on other people's lives. — Juliet Marillier

They will remain shut away behind a hedge of thorns. The journey in search of soul is difficult and even dangerous because it requires that we relinquish the certainty of what we think we know and what we have been taught for generations to believe. It means surrendering the desire to be in control and opening ourselves to a quest, a path of discovery. Many myths and fairy tales emphasize the need for surrender and trust in the strange non-rational guidance offered by animals or shamans on the quest. As the hero follows their guidance, so the hedge opens, the way unfolds. Following the guidance and wisdom of the instinct is the royal road into the realm of soul. — Anne Baring

There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. — Plato

[W]e wouldn't want to read a book about a perfect character who never struggles with character flaws, a difficult past, or interpersonal conflict. Writers can powerfully connect with readers when they venture to these thin places of pain and brokenness because readers can see themselves in the pain and want to journey from pain and struggle toward redemption or some kind of resolution. — Ed Cyzewski

Alternative healing does not always offer a quick fix of a symptom, but it does offer a permanent healing that resonates beyond physical well-being. It creates a total uplift in attitude, enhanced spiritual awareness, and so much more that will change the way you appreciate life everyday. Embracing alternative healing by focusing on the cause and trusting the process as it unfolds will be a journey that can be trying or difficult at times, but it will always be extremely rewarding. — Alice McCall

The life of "peace" is both an inner journey toward a disarmed heart and a public journey toward a disarmed world. This difficult but beautiful journey gives infinite meaning and fulfillment to life itself because our lives become a gift for the whole human race. With peace as the beginning, middle, and end of life, life makes sense. — John Dear

If there is some profound method that offers a quick way, we would rather follow that than undertake arduous journeys and difficult practices. But some manual work and physical effort is necessary. — Chogyam Trungpa

Teachers can make such a profound impact on our lives and should be honored as heroes, I believe. They're working for so little money, under such difficult circumstances, usually for the love of the service to the children. Many of us owe who we are to certain teachers who appeared at just the right time, in the right place, and had just the right words to say to propel us on our journey. (ACTIVITY ALERT: Take this opportunity, partway through this ridiculous book, to reach out to a teacher who made an impact on you and THANK THEM. You'll be so glad you did. And so will they!) — Rainn Wilson

I love to see new talent, new people beginning. It's a wonderful thing, and one wonders where their journey will take them. Sometimes they ask me for advice but it's very difficult to advise people. Everyone has their own destiny really. — Greg Lake