Beautiful Struggle Quotes & Sayings

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream and struggle. — Shane Claiborne

Kindly permit me to tell you, sir, that I hate you. I hate you and your child, as I hate the life of which you are the representative: cheap, ridiculous, but yet triumphant life, the everlasting antipodes and deadly enemy of beauty. I cannot say I despise you - for I am honest. You are stronger than I. I have no armour for the struggle between us, I have only the Word, avenging weapon of the weak. Today I have availed myself of this weapon. This letter is nothing but an act of revenge - you see how honourable I am - and if any word of mine is sharp and bright and beautiful enough to strike home, to make you feel the presence of a power you do not know, to shake even a minute your robust equilibrium, I shall rejoice indeed. - — Thomas Mann

The way to a beautiful, strong, healthy body is to start by trusting yourself right now. Let go of the struggle and surrender to your body's needs. Your intuition will tell you what to eat. It may direct you to exercise vigorously, in which case you'll enjoy it, or it may tell you to slow down and rest. It may tell you to stay in bed all day, or it may tell you to get up early. There are no rigid rules. Your body knows perfectly well what's good for it. — Shakti Gawain

If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being. — Jacob Lawrence

Legionary life is beautiful, not because of riches, partying or the acquisition of luxury, but because of the noble comradeship which binds all Legionaries in a sacred brotherhood of struggle. — Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

It was so risky and so scary, and yet at the same time, so beautiful. Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. — Sarah Dessen

She likes to quote the opening words of the Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union." Beautiful, yes, but as she always points out, "we the people" originally left out a lot of people. "It would not include me," RBG said, or enslaved people, or Native Americans. Over the course of the centuries, people left out of the Constitution fought to have their humanity recognized by it. RBG sees that struggle as her life's work. — Irin Carmon

Yet the integrity of the universe is the context in which creativity is best expressed. The canvas does not limit God's creativity but rather celebrates it. The elegant complexity of creation is a beautiful reminder that the creative mind is a disciplined mind, that the creative act is not a struggle to be free of limitations but a demonstration that when we embrace our limitations, creativity has no boundaries. — Erwin Raphael McManus

There was a village watercolour society and they'd come and paint in my field. I watched them from the window, the way they would struggle this way and that to find the perfect moment. God has made every angle on that beautiful, and I felt that tremendously. — Nicolas Roeg

The world is larger and more beautiful than my little struggle. — Ravi Zacharias

Within you is a spirit that lived before your physical birth and that will continue to live after your physical death. Eternity goes both ways. You lived--not as another person but as yourself--in a spiritual pre-life.

God had clear and beautiful purpose in providing you with this mortal phase of eternity. Part of that purpose has to do with the struggle of being on your own here, without memory of there.

But you do have some sliver of memory--just enough to feel i t is true when you hear it--just enough to believe in the earlier life of your own soul. — Richard Eyre

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion. — T.F. Hodge

Without imagination, we merely see or hear, and even if we see or hear that the objects of the senses are beautiful, we cannot feel that they are so. The difference is this: in feeling the beauty of objects, we enjoy not only the common, shared pleasures of the senses, but also the private pleasures of the imagination, peculiar to ourselves, and such that we have to struggle to articulate them. — Mary Warnock

Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful. — Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Sonata," he says, "means 'sounding together.' It is an argument in which one theme is presented in opposition to another and they struggle until one wins, in the resolution. It is a beautiful form, it has endured into this century. — Eula Biss

She has a choice. She can either accept a life of misery or she can struggle against it. And she chooses to struggle ... she fails in the end but there's something beautiful and even heroic in her rebellion. — Kate Winslet

Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society's struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful. — Yves Saint-Laurent

The elegant and beautiful Lotus flower must toil through the mud and mire of murky swamps and shadowy waters of darkness before it can finally bloom. Above the fray of struggle yet firmly rooted in rugged beginnings, it ultimately lies pristinely above the water, basking in the sun of triumph. So no matter what you've endured or where you come from...you are no different and no less beautiful. There is simply no greater beauty than when a flower blossoms despite its tough and humble beginnings. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

Cool morning shadows sadly shift across the floor
Each time we say goodbye it's harder than before
Even after all the pain of parting still we find
That we must mourn the death of the dreams we leave behind
As I turn my back on all that means the most to me
The sounds and smells, the light that dances on the sea
The greatest gamble is to act on the belief
That only the slave who leaves it all is truly free
The sacrifice that we both lay before His feet
A thousand moments that belonged to us
That now will never be
By faith we hold a better dream inside our hearts
A time when our family will never have to be apart
Till then we struggle with just what it really means
And we will mourn the death of our beautiful dreams
Mourn the death of our beautiful dreams — Michael Card

I do struggle because I'm attracted to beautiful things, yet at the same time I am actually very aware, in some sense, their lack of value and that the most important things in life are your connections to other people. — Tom Ford

There are women who struggle to GAIN weight who are beautiful. There are women who struggle to LOSE weight who are beautiful. You know who is the most beautiful? Those who learn to love themselves the way they are. You don't need to change for ANYONE. — Teresa Mummert

And yet, or just for this reason, it's so fascinating to be a woman. It's an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that's never boring. You'll have so many things to engage you if you're born a woman. To begin with, you'll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you'll have to struggle to explain that it wasn't sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience. — Oriana Fallaci

Communion is at the heart of the mystery of our humanity. It means accepting the presence of another inside oneself, as well as accepting the reciprocal call to enter into another. Communion, which implies the security and insecurity of trust, is a constant struggle against all the powers of fear and selfishness in us, as well as the seemingly resilient human need to control another person. To a certain extent we lose control in our own lives when we are open to others. Communion of hearts is a beautiful but also a dangerous thing. Beautiful because it is a new form of liberation; it brings a new joy because we are no longer alone. We are close even if we are far away. Dangerous because letting down our inner barriers means that we can be easily hurt. Communion makes us vulnerable. — Jean Vanier

Richard looked up at the beautiful, big pines spreading over them, illuminated in the firelight. A spark of understanding lit in his mind. He saw the branches stretched out with murderous intent in a years-long struggle to reach the sunlight and dispatch its neighbors with its shade. Success would give space for its offspring, many of which would also shrivel in the shade of the parent. Several close neighbors of the big pine were withered and weak, victims all. It was true. The design of nature was success by murder. — Terry Goodkind

The beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I work pretty hard, and struggle, and things are hard, but the most important thing to remember is that I have beautiful children that I love, and I love them. — Steve Kimock

I am more greatly moved by people who struggle to express themselves ... I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion. — Daniel Day-Lewis

most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." Elizabeth Kubler Ross — Sandi Gamble

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task ... — Albert Einstein

The struggle to leave the cocoon is what strengthens the butterfly's wings so she can fly. I am about to become something beautiful. — Tricia Stirling

Perhaps not everything happens for a reason. That is, until you make it so; because for everything there is a season, which can, in fact, become beautiful. — Criss Jami

Maybe it's not about having a beautiful day, but about finding beautiful moments. Maybe a whole day is just too much to ask. I could choose to believe that in every day, in all things, no matter how dark and ugly, there are shards of beauty if I look for them. — Anna White

God will restore the South African economy and He will heal our beautiful land because He is an unchanging and forgiving God. He is the same God who liberated us from decades and decades of racial struggle. Let's come together in one, seek for His forgiveness and admit that we really messed up big time. Let's also pray 'for all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.' His mercies are new every morning. — Euginia Herlihy

Life is a beautiful struggle, but life is worth living — Jaeson Ma

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle. — Malcolm Gladwell

From the shore, the ocean is forever. It's a beautiful, dangerous place. Music is tied to the sea, born from the struggle, looking for hope. Because hope belongs in the dark places. — Jon Foreman

Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life
birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it. — Michael Shermer

Life lessons build strength, and life is truly A Beautiful Struggle — Andrea Walker

One day, I saw a tiny nopalito (cactus sapling) growing not too far from an old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house in Zacatecas. I told my mom that I would protect it from the wind and that I would water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and strong. My mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's a nopalito, it is it's struggle that makes it so beautiful... — Jose N. Harris

Apathy might be the reason for your struggle with sleep in the night. High above everything , there exist a peaceful world that will fix your insomnia.
Light will bring you out of the darkness of your apathy, you will be free from pain and LOVE, it will bring you happiness.
You may feel that you are doing some wrong even you are on the right way.
Everything that kills you will make you feel alive.
When your world has stuck on past and pain is unbearable, love will bring you happiness and nature will fix you up in the beautiful world to enjoy strawberries.
LIGHT WILL GUIDE YOU HOME. — Jitendra Bhardwaj

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. — Sigmund Freud

And occasionally I became very sad over that happiness, because I was well aware it couldn't last. I wasn't meant to exist in the lap of plenty and ease; I needed torment and persecution. I felt that some day I would awaken from those beautiful images of love and once be alone, in the cold world of the others, where there was only solitude or struggle for me, not peace or participation. — Hermann Hesse

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. — Emma Goldman

If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. — George Bernard Shaw

There was an exquisitely beautiful conception in my brain when I did this piece of work all alone from midnight until morning after the experience of a wonderful day. But I was not able to make the consummation anywhere nearly as beautiful as the inspiration. That, I suppose, is the cry of every heart struggling for self-expression. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Life is a beautiful struggle.. — Talib Kweli

A peaceful life doesn't mean one that has no conflict or struggle ... a life that avoids conflict never changes. We must live making sounds like the stream of water ... we can produce beautiful sounds in our lives by colliding with obstacles. — Ilchi Lee

Struggles make you stronger and the changes make you wiser and happiness has its own way of taking its sweet time. Life isn't always lovely, but it's a beautiful ride. — Gary Allan

You are stronger than I. I have no armour for the struggle between us, I have only the Word, avenging weapon of the weak. Today I have availed myself of this weapon. This letter is nothing but an act of revenge - you see how honourable I am - and if any word of mine is sharp and bright and beautiful enough to strike home, to make you feel the presence of a power you do not know, to shake even a minute your robust equilibrium, I shall rejoice indeed. - Tristan — Thomas Mann

The social-political future of the United States is one of domination by vast economic interests devoted to ideals of material gain, aimless activity, & physical comfort - interests controlled by shrewd, insensitive, & not often well-bred leaders recruited from the standardised herd through a competition of hard wit & practical craftiness - a struggle for place & power which will eliminate the true & the beautiful as goals, & substitute the strong, the huge, & the mechanically effective. — S.T. Joshi

She made struggle look beautiful; so much, even darkness feared her light — Nikki Rowe

That night Mr. Hale laid his head down on the pillow on which it never more should stir with life. The servant who entered his room in the morning, received no answer to his speech; drew near the bed, and saw the calm, beautiful face lying white and cold under the ineffaceable seal of death. The attitude was exquisitely easy; there had been no pain - no struggle. The action of the heart must have ceased as he lay down. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Morality has been conceived up to the present in a very narrow spirit, as obedience to a law, as inner struggle between opposite laws. As for me, I declare that when I do good I obey no one, I fight no battle and win no victory. The cultivated person has only to follow the delicious incline of his or her inner impulses. Be beautiful and then do at each moment whatever your heart may inspire you to do. This is the whole of morality. — Ernest Renan

No smile is as beautiful as the one that struggles through tears. — Helen Keller

I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I'd look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don't really remember the story, or why the wrestling
just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is ... a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I'm ... It's me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It's not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God's. But you can't not lose. — Tony Kushner

Your life is your artwork and you are to paint life as a beautiful struggle. With your brush, paint the colors of joy in vibrant shades of red. Color the sky a baby blue, a color as free as your heart. With rich, earthy tones shade the valleys that run deep into the ground where heaven meets hell. Life is as chaotic as the color black, a blend of all colors, and this makes life a beautiful struggle. Be grateful for the green that makes up the beautiful canvas, for nature has given you everything that you need to be happy. Most of all, don't ever feel the need to fill the entire canvas with paint, for the places left blank are the most honest expressions of who you are. — Forrest Curran

Frodo drew the Ring out of his pocket again and looked at it. It now appeared plain and smooth, without mark or device that he could see. The gold looked very fair and pure, and Frodo thought how rich and beautiful was its colour, how perfect was its roundness. It was an admirable thing and altogether precious. When he took it out he had intended to fling it from him into the very hottest part of the fire. But he found now that he could not do so, not without a great struggle. He weighed the Ring in his hand, hesitating and forcing himself to remember all that Gandalf had told him; and then with an effort of will he made a movement, as if to cast it away - but he found that he had put it back in his pocket. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I look down at his beautiful face, shining with so much love and admiration for me, and I know that every struggle I've faced up to this point has all been worth it, because it led me to him. — Siobhan Davis

I think that photography has allowed me to have a voice. I used to stutter, and once I overcame that struggle, it felt good to tell people they were beautiful and special. — Jamel Shabazz

At least in the world we know, it takes trials to make something beautiful and useful out of the raw materials of life. The student's struggle with truth develops his intelligence; the athlete's struggle with his records and his opponents helps to develop his muscles and coordination; the musician's struggle with more difficult pieces develops his playing skill; and the soul's struggle with the trials of life helps to build character. — Warren W. Wiersbe

I think the time is coming for struggle and uncertainty. It comes into every serious and beautiful life. I knew all along that it had to come. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

My life is a beautiful struggle. — Hope Solo

To be loved for your best self is hollow. All can be beautiful, for a time. All can be graceful, in turn. But this love cannot endure. To be loved for your true self is fulfillment. It is a deeper magic, dynamic and wild. It celebrates the scars. It forgives the failings. It embraces the struggle. True love is not blind. It sees. Everything. And yet, it still loves. — Heidi Joy Tretheway

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The struggle is beautiful. — Bryant McGill

I will surpass myself in waves, ah, Lord, and may everything come and fall upon me, even the incomprehension of myself at certain white moments because all I have to do is comply with myself and then nothing will block my path until death-without-fear, from any struggle or rest I will rise up as strong and beautiful as a young horse. — Clarice Lispector

I am a part of the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave birth to the light, that supercilious light which now disputes with Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet cannot succeed; no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can't get free. Light flows from substance, makes it beautiful ... — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There's no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There's no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be. — Harper Lee

So, this is to everybody who's ever had a struggle in life being yourself. I think that the most beautiful thing a human being can do is just be who you are inside. So please, everybody, just be yourselves and encourage everyone else to do the same. — Josh Hutcherson

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep lowing concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. — Jefferson Bethke

This is my story. I don't know where I'm going, but I know I'm going somewhere beautiful, and I know I'm on my way ...
It's been a beautiful adventure. It always will be. — Charlotte Eriksson

It seemed that there was no time to catch up with all the things that were happening. I would be at the construction workers' demonstration one day and then marching with the welfare mothers the next. We got down with everything - the rent strikes, the sit-ins, the takeover of the Harlem state office building, whatever it was. If we agreed with it, we would try to give active support in some way. The more active i became, the more i liked it. It was like medicine, making me well, making me whole ...
My energy just couldn't stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of the struggle and i wanted to dance. I was never bored and never lonely, and the brothers and sisters who became my friends were so beautiful to me. — Assata Shakur

In the midst of our struggle to find out who we are, there are infinite possibilities for beauty, and hope, and wonder, and love. — Mandy Hale

Live in the very soul of expectation of better things, in the conviction that something large, grand, and beautiful will await you if your efforts are intelligent, if your mind is kept in a creative condition and you struggle upward to your goal. — Orison Swett Marden

I feel that every human being is beautiful, and I think that each one of us needs to realize how beautiful we really are, I struggle with that everyday. — Randy Fenoli

There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything - millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace. — Richard Pryor

We must never laugh at the struggle of another, even when it is something that we find to be easy and that we have not struggled with. Because we all have our own individual battles that we all need to work as hard at. Another's struggle might be easy for you; but stop to think about yours. Is your battle easy? Or was it? No, it wasn't, it isn't. Well the other person's isn't easy, either. And I think this alone means we all need to give one another a beautiful kind of respect. — C. JoyBell C.

With some people it makes a regular battlefield of the human heart - this struggle for self-expression," said Philip. "You are going to do beautiful work in the world, and do it well. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Life is filled with tragedy, with long patches of struggle and with, I think, beautiful bursts of joy and accomplishment. Blessed with those moments, you just try to relax as much as possible and focus on the little things, like the joy of changing your baby's diaper. — David Dastmalchian

THIS PAST, THE NEGRO'S PAST, OF ROPE, FIRE, TORTURE ... DEATH AND HUMILIATION; FEAR BY DAY AND NIGHT, FEAR AS DEEP AS THE MARROW OF THE BONE ... THIS PAST, THIS ENDLESS STRUGGLE TO ACHIEVE AND CONFIRM A HUMAN IDENTITY ... YET CONTAINS, FOR ALL ITS HORROR, SOMETHING VERY BEAUTIFUL ... . PEOPLE WHO CANNOT SUFFER CAN NEVER GROW UP, CAN NEVER DISCOVER WHO THEY ARE ... . - James Baldwin — 50 Cent

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I haste to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. — Marilynne Robinson

A typical battlefield of this struggle is Hawaii, America's most deceptively beautiful state. For most residents and visitors, it seems an unspoiled island paradise. In actuality it is a killing field of biological diversity. When — Edward O. Wilson

In every important way we are such secrets from one another, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, intraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us. — Marilynne Robinson

I believe in struggle. And I believe that the struggle is beautiful. You have to try it, or you will never know what's beyond it. — Scott Cohen

Some call it growing up. I call it life, and in my experience, it doesn't necessarily get easier over the years. But the eternal struggle is beautiful, and I'm happy to persevere. — Connor Franta

Being a sensitive empath is a beautiful thing as an artist, and it fosters a deep burning curiosity about why we do the things we do. — Alanis Morissette

Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea. — Lou Dorfsman

It takes resolution to go forth from the ease and beautiful simplicity of a well-formed hypothesis and struggle with amorphous facts. — John Maurice Clark

For the first time in his life, he stopped worrying about results, and as a consequence the terms "success" and "failure" had suddenly lost their meaning for him. The true purpose of art was not to create beautiful objects, he discovered. It was a method of understanding, a way of penetrating the world and finding one's place in it, and whatever aesthetic qualities an individual canvas might have were almost an incidental by-product of the effort to engage oneself in this struggle, to enter into the thick of things. — Paul Auster

Within the beautiful struggle of a cocoon all butterflies are made. — Jason Versey

[B]etter the beauty of struggle and futility than the illusion of accomplishment; for as we struggle, he would seem to say, so are we beautiful. — Evan Dara

I gave him my full American pitch: about how America was a large experiment, and with every generation we struggle to expand and live up to our greatest ideals, to be greater in the future than we were in the past. I told him I fought for my country because I love it, flaws and all. I fought for it because the people who make up our beautiful, diverse tapestry deserve to be fought for. I fought for it so that this experiment can continue, so that we have a chance to become the country that my grandparents dreamed of and that my grandchildren deserve. — Wes Moore

Siken occasionally locates a poem in loss as enacted, not implicit, event. These are among his most beautiful poems, their capitulations heartbreaking in the context of prolonged animal struggle against acknowledgement. — Louise Gluck

But as an adult working in the fashion industry, I struggle with materialism. And I'm one of the least materialistic people that exist, because material possessions don't mean much to me. They're beautiful, I enjoy them, they can enhance your life to a certain degree, but they're ultimately not important. — Tom Ford

The houses have been condemned on Memory Lane
I'm tired of this struggle that leaves everything the same
I've tried so hard to make it work
that I'm dying inside
Well, you can take my past
But you can't have my tomorrow

Promises that remain promises are useless and they're cheap
I wish I could put a price on words so I could make them keep
I put so much faith in you
I lost all my faith in me
Well, you can take my past
But you can't have my tomorrow

I'm giving up on giving up
I can't leave it all to prayer
'Cause the first step in getting better
is knowing what's not there
You said you'd make it better
and that just makes it worse
Well, you can take my past
But you can't have my tomorrow

Yes, I want my life to last
So you can't have my tomorrow
No, you can't have my tomorrow — David Levithan

My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle. — Assata Shakur

All the history of the stage is a struggle, the gasping of a beautiful child born at the point of death. The moralists, censorship and oppression, technology, and now poverty have all tried to destroy her. Only we, the actors and audiences, have kept her alive. — Gene Wolfe

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence. — Isadora Duncan

When, on a moonlit night, you see a wide village street with its peasant houses, haystacks, sleeping willows, tranquility enters the soul; in this calm, wrapped in the shade of night, free from struggle, anxiety and passion, everything is gentle, wistful, beautiful, and it seems that the stars are watching over it tenderly and with love, and that this is taking place somewhere unearthly, and that all is well. — Anton Chekhov