Quotes & Sayings About Life And How Hard It Is

I recalled how much time i had spent fighting for something i didn't even want. maybe because i had been too lazy to think of other avenues to follow. maybe because i had been afraid of what others would think. maybe because it was hard work to be different. perhaps, because a human being is condemned to repeat the steps taken by the previous generation until a certain number of people begin to behave in a different fashion. then the world changes, and we change with it. — Paulo Coelho

217. "We're only given as much as the heart can endure," "What does not kill you makes you stronger," "Our sorrows provide us with the lessons we most need to learn": these are the kinds of phrases that enrage my injured friend. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to come up with a spiritual lesson that demands becoming a quadriparalytic. The tepid "there must be a reason for it" notion sometimes floated by religious or quasi-religious acquaintances or bystanders, is, to her, another form of violence. She has no time for it. She is too busy asking, in this changed form, what makes a livable life, and how she can live it. — Maggie Nelson

Bible publishers are not selling Bibles. What they're selling is that iconic idea of the Bible. Their value-added biblical content promises to provide answers to questions, solutions to problems, and speaks in no uncertain terms about God's plan for your life and how to live it. Adding value to the Bible almost always means adding "biblical" values that are either missing or really hard to find in the Bible itself but that provide that feeling of Bibleness so many seek. — Timothy Beal

Life works in mysterious ways, Ember, and the secret is to not think too hard on the why or how of it, and to not mourn what is no longer, but live: live hard and love hard. — L.A. Fiore

Sometimes he remembered having heard how soldiers under fire in the trenches, and having nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. It seemed to Pierre that all men were like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in government service. 'Nothing is without consequence, and nothing is important: it's all the same in the end. The thing to do is to save myself from it all as best I can,' thought Pierre. Not to see IT, that terrible IT. — Leo Tolstoy

Sydney, don't leave Adrian because of me."
"It's more complicated than that," I said automatically.
"It's really not," she said. "From everything I've seen and heard, you're just afraid. You've always controlled every detail of your life. When you couldn't-like with the Alchemists-you found a way to seize back that control."
"There is nothing wrong with wanting control," I snapped.
"Except that we can't always have it, and sometimes that is a good thing. A great thing, even," she added. "And that's how it is with Adrian. No matter how hard you try, you aren't going to be able to control your feelings for him. You can't help loving him, and so you're running away. I'm just an excuse. — Richelle Mead

Nobody gives you respect in this life. You must take it, you must earn it, and then you must hold it sacred, because no matter how hard respect is to attain, it can be lost in an instant. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

This is how it needs to be in life. Solomon also wrote these words in Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NIV) "Two are better than one, because if either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls down and has no one to help them up." God didn't intend for us to do life alone. So let me ask you, who do you turn to when life hits you hard in the mouth? Your family? Some trusted friends? A teacher or coach? Are you building relationships today that will be there for you tomorrow when adversity comes your way? Do you have humility to look to others for strength and encouragement, or are you holding to the foolish pride that says, "I need to make it alone"? — Kirk Cousins

Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something and not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do. — Meg Jay

Breastfeeding does not have to be hard. Breastfeeding is natural. With rare exceptions, it becomes hard only because of all the interference caused by the medicalization of birth and unsupportive culture. Animals breastfeed instinctively with no need for supplementation, classes, or support. We as humans also have these instincts. We have become so disconnected. Breastfeeding my children has been one of my greatest joys in life, and I am filled with sorrow when I imagine how many mothers and infants haven't been able to experience this because of misinformation. — Adrienne Carmack

Freewill.
Some have called it the greatest gift bestowed on humanity. It is our ability to control what happens to us and exactly how it happens. We are the masters of our fate and no one can foist their will on us unless we allow it.
Others say freewill is a crap myth. We have a preordained destiny and no matter what we do or how hard we fight it, life will happen to us exactly as it's meant to happen. We are only pawns to a higher power that our meager human brains can't even begin to understand or comprehend. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day. — Ray Bradbury

I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.
Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you. — Susan Fletcher

I have often been asked to help pray in life and death situations, especially when loved ones cannot. It is hard to know how to ask for divine help. I cannot possibly know what should be done. I cannot even pray, "God, make this person live." What I can do is pray that whatever is in the divine plan should happen with grace and with ease. — Megory Anderson

I am sorry.

I'm sorry that I feel as if you don't trust me enough to confide me.
This is me being selfish even though this isn't about me, it's about you.
I'm sorry that it makes me upset that in those times you thought about ending your life, I feel like I didn't cross your mind.
I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to talk to me about those toxic thoughts that's trying to push you to end everything, because I know myself that's it is hard to share.
I hate myself for thinking you didn't care enough to think about how horrible it is going to be for me once I learn what you've done.

I'm sorry for feeling like this, it is selfish, I am selfish.
I'm sorry for feeling like I'm not a good friend, I know that's now how you think, I'm sorry.

I just love you and I'm hurt. — Mari

You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, 'I don't care how hard this is, I don't care how disappointed I am, I'm not going to let this get the best of me. I'm moving on with my life. — Joel Osteen

I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all ... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real humility and at the same time, an absolute belief in one's own essential freedom. It is an act of faith. At the last moments, like all great acts, it is pure risk. This is true for me as a human being and as a writer. Dear Heaven, how hard it is to let go - to step into the blue. And yet one's creative life depends on it and one desires to do nothing else. — Katherine Mansfield

How seriously would we take person who said, "I have faith in Adolf Hitler, or in John Dilinger. I can't explain why they did the things they did, but I can't believe they would have done them without a good reason." Yet people try to justify the deaths and tragedies God inflicts on innocent victims with almost these same words.
Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be? — Harold S. Kushner

....she has realized why people believe in a soul. It's because they have to for they have no other choice. It's hard to bear that all the conversations, all the memories you had with your parents,with your sisters, with the person you loved were burnt or buried, snuffed out of life. So conveniently, people invented the soul, not for the benefit of the deceased, but the loved ones he or she left behind, to make them feel that while they suffer, he or she is watching, and that they equally miss them, like they, too, think of them, and they, too, are watching him.
We can't think of the people we love as bodies buried in caskets or an urn full of ashes, so we think of them as a concentrated mist of nothingness which we call the human soul. No matter how hard they we try to make ourselves believe that they are around us, the truth is that they are gone. — Durjoy Datta

There are monsters all around us
They can be so hard to see
hey don't have fangs, no blood-soaked claws
They look like you and me.

But we're not defenseless
We're no damsels in distress
Together we can fend off the attack
All we gotta do is watch our backs.

Your body is beautiful how it is
Who you love is nobody's business
We all contemplate life and death
It's the poet who gives these thoughts
breath.

The monster is strong, don't be mistaken
It thrives on fear-keeps us isolated
But together we can fend off its attack
All we gotta do is watch our backs.

In your darkest hour
When the fight's made you weary
When you think you've lost your power
When you can't see clearly
When you're ready to surrender
Give in to the black
look over your shoulder
I've got your back. — Gayle Forman

People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer
a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer
a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer. — Michael Shermer

It is quite hard when we do things that we couldn't forgive before in others,. but that's how we forgive others and ourselves at the same time. Life pushes us to those situations. — Robin Sacredfire

But really, that is kind of silly,' Abigail tried to explain. 'I mean, a book is much less personal than a programmed screen that can respond to you according to your needs, and concentrate on what's hard for you, and go fast on what's easy. A book stays the same no matter *who's* reading it. And anyway, I don't see how anyone could read a whole long book, it must be so boring!'

'But...but it wasn't,' Peter said faintly. 'I...almost forgot I was reading it. The...the whole story was going on in my head.'

'I still don't understand,' said Oliver. 'I mean, watching a real-life hologram right before your eyes is better than anything you could *imagine.* — William Sleator

HANNAH: It can be very hard to accept how disappointing life is, Harper, because that's what it is, and you have to accept it. With faith and time and hard work you reach a point where ... where the disappointment doesn't hurt as much, and then it gets easy to live with. Quite easy. Which ... is in its own way a disappointment. But. There. — Tony Kushner

After nine nights must come ten and every desperate meeting only leaves you desperate for another. There is never enough to eat, never enough garden for your love.
So you refuse and then you discover that your house is haunted by the ghost of a leopard.
When passion comes late in life it is hard to bear.
One more night. How tempting. How innocent. I could stay tonight surely? What difference could it make, one more night? No. If I smell her skin, find the mute curves of her nakedness, she will reach in her hand and withdraw my heart like a bird's egg. I have not had time to cover my heart in barnacles to elude her. If I give in to this passion, my real life, the most solid, the best known, will disappear and I will feed on shadows again like those sad spirits whom Orpheus fled.
I wished her goodnight, touching her hand only and thankful for the dark that hid her eyes. — Jeanette Winterson

You want to know how to stop this killer? Forgive yourself, and he'll
disappear from your life forever."
"Thanks. I'll be sure to do that."
And I know:
1. This is almost the same conversation I've had with myself many times
before.
2. Gordon's only trying to help.
But it doesn't matter.
I:
1. Say, "See you later."
2. Step outside.
3. Close the door.
I don't want to, really. I want to go back inside and believe Gordon's words,
like a child believing in a fairy tale, and I want to escape this nightmare forever.
But I can't.
I realize now that it's easy to tell the difference between a real problem and
an imaginary one.
It's just the terror of facing the truth that's hard. — Jeremy C. Shipp

One of the most powerful things I'd learned since getting sober is to love and accept life on life's terms. Alcoholics have a hard time doing this; we're little id-driven crybabies, guzzling and complaining about how nothing in this life goes the way we think it should. Accepting and even embracing the world as it is can be radical, and it can have powerful, positive results. — Michelle Tea

Because that happened to me when I was little, this is how I will now treat other people"; "Because so and so beat me up and hurt me a long time ago, that gives me the right to treat people the way I treat them, today"; "Because life was hard on me, life should be hard on everyone else around me" - does this sound/ look familiar? It's called victim mentality. When people choose to be the direct product of everything that happened to them, the direct product of every single pair of hands that hurt them. And the world, to these people, must bend over backwards in order to accommodate their wounds. Some people don't want to be loved; they just want to make the world pay. — C. JoyBell C.

. In order to love yourself really, tests will be provided by life. All that is for your benefit, no matter how hard it is, no matter what the physical end result is. Physical things come and go, your Soul is part of the eternal. We promise you this. — A. Antares

Oh, Anyone can make a quilt,' she said modestly. 'It's just scraps, from the clothes you've sewn.'
'Yes, but the talent is in joining the pieces, the way you have.'
'Look,' Om pointed, 'look at that - the poplin from our very first job.'
'You remember,' said Dina, pleased. 'And how fast you finished those first dresses. I thought I had two geniuses.'
'Hungry stomachs were driving our fingers,' chuckled Ishvar.
'Then came that yellow calico with orange strips. And what a hard time this young fellow gave me. Fighting and arguing about everything.'
'Me?Argue?Never.'
...
He steeped back, pleased with himself, as though he had elucidated an intricate theorem. 'So that's the rule to remember, the whole quilt is much more important than the square'. — Rohinton Mistry

My lowest self says: "That person is acting like a total jerk!"
My slightly higher self says: "That person is acting like a total jerk right now only because he's going through a really hard time in life, and his parents never taught him how to behave better, and he might have some sort of mild mental illness, and also he has a drinking problem ... so I should try to be more compassionate and generous toward sad, tragic, miserable people like that."
My even higher self says: "We are all just flawed and frightened human beings in an uncertain world, struggling to survive."
Then finally my VERY highest self says: "Lord, please help me stop acting like a total jerk."
... and that's when it finally stops being about the other person at all. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The future sometimes looms like a monster, a horrible scary one with teeth and claws.It's hard to plan your life when all the news talks about is how screwed up the world's become. — Ann Aguirre

Because I know." Daemon appeared in front of me, eyes narrowed. He thumped his hand off his chest, directly above his heart. "Because I know what I feel in here. And I'm not the type of person to run from anything, no matter how hard it is. I'd rather face-plant against a brick wall than live for the rest of my life wondering what could've been. And you know what? I don't think you were the type to run either. Maybe I was wrong — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the one thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human. — Nicole Krauss

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life. — Katherine Mansfield

It became clear to me how men die. I saw that it is not so hard. Or easy. It is nothing. One just starts living less and less, being less and less, thinking, feeling and knowing less and less. The rich flow of life dries up, and only a thin thread of uncertain consciousness remains, more and more meager, more and more insignificant. And then nothing happens, there is not anything, there is nothing. And nothing matters - it is all the same. — Mesa Selimovic

As far as I could tell, my history teacher had three passions in life: quoting Shakespeare, identifying historical inaccuracies in cable TV shows, and berating Ryan Washburn. "Eighteen sixty-three, Mr. Washburn. Is that so hard to remember? Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in eighteen sixty-three." Ryan was a big guy: a little on the quiet side, a little shy. I had no idea what it was about him that had convinced Mr. Simpson he needed to be taken down a notch - or seven. But more and more, this was how history class went: Simpson called on Ryan, repeatedly, until he made a mistake. And then it began. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Hey, I'm not a total idiot," said Nagasawa. "Of course life frightens me sometimes. I don't happen to take that as the premise for everything else, though. I'm going to give it a hundred percent and go as far as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what I don't want. That's how I intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit." "Sounds like a pretty self-centered way to live," I said. "Maybe so, but I'm not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In my own way, I'm working hard. I'm working ten times harder than you are." "That's probably true," I said. — Haruki Murakami

As far as I can figure, the way that it works is this: everyone has something that happened to them. The thing that we each carry. And you can see it in people, if you look. See it in the way someone walks, in the way someone takes a compliment, sometimes you can just see it in someone's eyes. In one moment of desperation, of fear, in one quick moment you can see that thing that happened. Everyone has it. The thing that keeps you up at night, or makes you not trust people, or stops love. The thing that hurts. And to stop it, to stop the hurt, you have to turn it into a story. And not just a story you play over and over for yourself, but a story that you tell. A story's not a story unless you tell it. And once you tell it, it's not yours anymore. You give it away. And once you give it away, it's not something that hurts you anymore, it's something that helps everyone who hears it. It's the kind of thing that's hard to explain. It's probably best if we just show you how it works. — Daniel MacIvor

....there'll be times in your life where it'll be hard to keep your faith. Times when you wonder why God is putting you through a particular trial. But you'll always look back and see clearly how you grew and learned about yourself, and sometimes you'll learn the nature of others.

Whatever Sticks Most — Darren Hogarth

Lifes strange ,times change, but karma always finds the way. Stay strong, hold on. Don't let all your dreams fade away. Yeah life can beat you down, what goes it comes around It's not how you hit the ground, it's how fast you get back up. And go, keep going ,till it feels like I'm giving my life away Gets hard,and harder, happiness is worth the wait. — Nelly

All of us face hard choices in our lives. Some face more than their share. We have to decide how to balance the demands of work and family. Caring for a sick child or an aging parent. Figuring out how to pay for college. Finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it. Whether to get married - or stay married. How to give our kids the opportunities they dream about and deserve. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

What I'm interested in is the exploration of the body and desire as a self-actualising or fulfilling component on the individual's life journey instead of as a part of the social, political, or economic structure of a "society" or "civilization." In this sense all desire is queer desire because it moves against these mechanisms of control. The hard part, the painful part, is for us ourselves to learn how to love one another, have affection for one another, support and be kind to one another. You can spend a life learning how to do it properly. — Kazim Ali

We got talking about how some people were selfish and some weren't, and the difference between right-wing people and left-wing people. You said it all came down to imagination. Conversative people don't usually have very much, so they find it hard to imagine what life is like for people who aren't just like them. They can only empathise with people just like they are: the same sex, the same age, the same class, the same golf club or nation or race or whatever. Liberals can pretty much empathise with anybody else, no matter how different they are. It's all to do with imagination, empathy and imagination are almost the same thing, and it's why artists, creative people, are almost all liberals, left-leaning. a character in The Steep Approach to Garbadale: Iain Banks. — Iain Banks

How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow s hall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure,
is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? — W.E.B. Du Bois

Think, how hard it is to change yourself. How can it be easy to change others? — Radhe Maa

If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything. — Florence Nightingale

Circumstances have rarely favored great men. A lowly beginning is no bar to a great career. The boy who works his way through college may have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life, and will usually take higher rank in school and in after life than his classmate who is the son of a millionaire. — Orison Swett Marden

It is funny you know, you spend 12 years of your life learning about things and about life, but they never really tell you how hard life really is. — Amanda Peterson

How close is the ending, well, nobody knows.
The future's a mystery, and anything goes.
Love is confusing, and life is hard.
But you fight to survive, 'cause you've made it this far. — Adam Young

I want to tell you something." He placed her palm against her cheek, rough with stubble. "In my life, I've been with women I didn't care about and women I cared a great deal about. But I've never been with a woman who makes me feel the way you do." He lowered his head and whispered against her lips, "Sometimes when I look at you, it's hard to breath. When you touch me, I don't care about breathing." He kissed her slow and sweet, and with each press of his lips and touch of his tongue, her heart swelled and ached. It was wonderful and awful and brand-new. Then he pulled back to say, "I don't know how this is all going to work out, but I want to be with you. You are important to me. — Rachel Gibson

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! — Sylvester Stallone

I began to realize how important it is to be able to know your gifts and dreams, to live in the moment, to work less hard and to let things flow. I embraced the fact that worry never is a good thing. I learned that I could control my thoughts, which then affects my feelings and the quality of my life. — Sheri Kaye Hoff

We Americans often say that marriage is hard work. I'm not sure that the Hmong would understand this notion. Life is hard work, of course, and work is very hard work
I'm quite certain they would agree with those statements - but how does marriage become hard work? Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. A recent survey of young American women found that what women are seeking these days in a husband - more than anything else - is a man who will "inspire" them, which is, by any measure, a tall order. As a point of comparison, young women of the same age, surveyed back in the 1920s, were more likely to choose a partner based on qualities such as "decency" or "honesty," or his ability to provide for a family. But that's not enough anymore. Now we want to be INSPIRED by our spouses! Daily! Step to it, honey! — Elizabeth Gilbert

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),
a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.
But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk about things other than the good. — Dante Alighieri

I want you to always think of Mrs. Martin. And I want you always to remember that donkey. Never forget that fear and desire can lead you into life's biggest trap if you're not aware of them controlling your thinking. To spend your life living in fear, never exploring your dreams, is cruel. To work hard for money, thinking that it will buy you things that will make you happy is also cruel. To wake up in the middle of the night terrified about paying bills is a horrible way to live. To live a life dictated by the size of a paycheck is not really living a life. Thinking that a job makes you secure is lying to yourself. That's cruel, and that's the trap I want you to avoid. I've seen how money runs people's lives. Don't let that happen to you. Please don't let money run your life. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

When it's time for you to write how you want your life to go just write right before your pen run out of ink because i know the opportunity is jusT once and if u miss it, then you hustle very hard to get it — Efiba Progress

Jim was the one who told me that my emotional life made him dangle his stethoscope like a snake charmer: my moods weren't hard to see but they were hard to read, and even harder to diagnose. It was ostensibly a complaint, but I think he liked his metaphor, and liked that our moments of distance were subtle enough to require this kind of formulation. Meaning that I was a complex creature and so was he; that he became even more complex in his attempt to bridge the gap between our complexities; that he could create a complicated image to house this complex of complications. This is how writers fall in love: they feel complicated together and then they talk about it. — Leslie Jamison

As hard as it may seem, move forward one step at a time, day by day, knowing that there will be valuable lessons learned and strength gained in each trial. There is a certain peace to be found in knowing that there is a master plan for your life and that your value, purpose, and destiny are not determined by what happens to you but by how you respond. — Nick Vujicic

Be Willing to Pay the Price If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all. MICHELANGELO Renaissance sculptor and painter who spent 4 years lying on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Behind every great achievement is a story of education, training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You have to be willing to pay the price. Maybe that price is pursuing one single activity while putting everything else in your life on hold. Maybe it's investing all of your own personal wealth or savings. Maybe it's the willingness to walk away from the safety of your current situation. But though many things are typically required to reach a successful outcome, the willingness to do what's required adds that extra dimension to the mix that helps you persevere in the face of overwhelming challenges, setbacks, pain, and even personal — Jack Canfield

Sometimes we need to do things we'd rather not do, in order to get the peace that we need; to look after our own well-being and to return to a healthy state. Decisions we may make may hurt others at times. Sometimes it hurts us too. I have found myself in situations like this recently. It a hard choice. But truly, there are times that we have to take care of ourselves. Sometimes there are no good choices, just painful ones ... Sometimes that's just how real life is. — Jose N. Harris

You know how when you step on court your coach is like "go go go!"? And all throughout you just keep telling yourself to hit harder and harder and keep at it? You know how much you treasure those five-minute timeouts? You know how good you feel at the end of a session? You know how you're glad you're tired? No pills, no shots, just plain energy. I want to work like that. Whether I have to write ten thousand words or send five hundred emails, brainstorm for hours at a time, I want to have that energy. To keep fighting. To know it's all worth it.
Oh, yeah. That's my perfect day. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

First, we think all truth is beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain is good because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex is beautiful even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute is as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature and are woven into the design of life! — Irving Stone

How many people can you claim truly care about you? I mean, not just the people in your life who are fun to hang out with, not just the people who you love and trust. But people who feel good when you are happy and successful, feel bad when you are hurt or going through a hard time, people who would walk away from their lives for a little while to help you with yours. Not many. I felt that from Jake and I wasn't sure how to handle it. Because there's another side to it, you know. When someone is invested in your well-being, like your parents, for example, you become responsible for them in a way. Anything you do to hurt yourself hurts them. I already felt responsible for too many people that way. You're not really free when people care about you; not if you care about them. — Lisa Unger

I fall asleep
Call it deep while all is well be-
Cause my life seems like a freestyle mean-
While asleep on the couch I dream it's a written piece and now
The symphony's sounding
Shouting out to these feet whose leaps feel foul but quite loud
But how
I'm allowed to live my dreams
My Chimeran team brings the Siberian breed
Riding reality free 'til these tires they freeze
In mires in dire need of wires, fire and heat but
I love a dark, hard cold heart in the wintery breeze — Criss Jami

He had looked at Jude, then, and had felt that same sensation he sometimes did when he thought, really thought of Jude and what his life had been: a sadness, he might have called it, but it wasn't a pitying sadness; it was a larger sadness, one that seemed to encompass all the poor striving people, the billions he didn't know, all living their lives, a sadness that mingled with a wonder and awe at how hard humans everywhere tried to live, even when their days were so very difficult, even when their circumstances were so wretched. Life is so sad, he would think in those moments. It's so sad, and yet we all do it. — Hanya Yanagihara

There are many diamonds in the world and if you lose your favorite, you can work hard, earn a lot of money and get another one to replace it. But the moments of your life aren't like that. Once they're gone, they'll never return. Each and every one is the most precious thing in existence. You can never meaningfully compare one moment with any other. You can never meaningfully compare your life with anyone else's. No matter how rich someone else may be, no matter how happy they look, no matter how enlightened they seem, they can never be you. Never, ever, ever. Only you can live your life. — Brad Warner

The ethics of reverence for life makes no distinction between higher and lower, more precious and less precious lives. It has good reasons for this omission. For what are we doing, when we establish hard and fast gradations in value between living organisms, but judging them in relation to ourselves, by whether they seem to stand closer to us or farther from us. This is a wholly subjective standard. How can we know what importance other living organisms have in themselves and in terms of the universe? — Albert Schweitzer

But if that is what it meant to win the game, how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, and deprived of what one hopes. [...] There is no peace without hope [...] A warmth of life and an image of death: that was knowledge. — Albert Camus

Those who have not been trained in chemistry201 or medicine may not realize how difficult the problem of cancer treatment really is. It is almost - not quite, but almost - as hard as finding some agent that will dissolve away the left ear, say, and leave the right ear unharmed. So slight is the difference between the cancer cell and its normal ancestor. - William Woglom Life — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Here lies Morris, a good man and friend. He enjoyed the finer points of civilized life but never shied away from a hearty adventure or hard work. He died a free man, which is more than most people can say, if we are going to be honest about it. Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven't the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood - weak blood, diluted - and their memories aren't worth a goddamned thing, you will see what I mean. — Patrick DeWitt

Be prepared. You're up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it's all over but the shouting you'll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You'll need them throughout your life. God's Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out. — Eugene H. Peterson

Yet I, too, know how hard it is to peel back the veneer of your life, and to peek at the real. It's like — Jodi Picoult

Tatiana sat on the bench by the bay, by the morning water, and watched her son push himself on a tire swing. Her arms were twisted around her stomach. She was trying not to rock like Alexander rocked at three o'clock in the morning. Has he left me? Did he kiss my hand and go? No. It wasn't possible. Something's happened. He can't cope, can't make it, can't find a way out, a way in. I know it. I feel it. We thought the hard part was over - but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you're all busted up inside and out - there is nothing harder. Oh dear God. Where is Alexander? — Paullina Simons

If there is anything I want you to understand at the end of this book, it's this: don't settle for a secondhand relationship with God. That's not the life of passion He is calling you to. Knowing God will keep you stable in hard times. It will make you secure and enable you to press past fear. It will cause you to know He is always with you whether you feel His Presence or not. You can know His forgiveness and mercy, His restoration and favor; truly knowing God will fuel your passion for life. When we see how beautiful and wonderful He really is, and realize all He has done for us in love, how can we not pursue Him and His will passionately? — Joyce Meyer

Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game - and life - will take care of itself. — Phil Jackson

A sematary," I say. "A what?" Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it's short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle.
"It's a place for burying dead folk," I say.
Her eyes widen. "A place for doing what?"
"Don't people die in space?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says. "But we burn them. We don't put them in holes." She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. "How can this be sanitary? — Patrick Ness

Safe. No one ever is. No matter how hard we try. No matter how much we plan and prepare. There will always be an enemy at the door and a storm trying to knock us down. Life's not about security. It's about picking up the peices after it's all over and carrying on. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

From the beginning, of course, I had known that the pure forcefulness of my argument would not penetrate deep enough to effect any change. It almost never does. It's never worked for me when I've been in therapy. Only when one feels an insight in one's bones does one own it. Only then can one act on it and change. Pop psychologists forever talk about "responsibility assumption," but it's all words: it is extraordinarily hard, even terrifying, to own the insight that you and only you construct your own life design. Thus, the problem in therapy is always how to move from an ineffectual intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself to some emotional experience of it. It is only when therapy enlists deep emotions that it becomes a powerful force for change. And powerlessness was — Irvin D. Yalom

Because I know what I feel in here. And I'm not the type of person to run from anything, no matter how hard it is. I'd rather face-plant against a brick wall than live for the rest of my life wondering what could've been. And you know what? I didn't think you were that type to run, either. Maybe I was wrong. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Life is hard, Pat, and children have to be told how hard life can be." "Why?" "So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one's mind." I — Matthew Quick

I'm sure some of you get sent to your rooms sometimes by your parents. All I have to say is, the next time it happens and you're lying there all mad thinking about how hard your life is, just picture me standing next to you, ready to smack you upside the head. When I get sent to my room, it's in a freaking dungeon! With rats! — James Patterson

Sadness, disappointment, and severe challenge are events in life, not life itself. I do not minimize how hard some of these events are. They can extend over a long period of time, but they should not be allowed to become the confining center of everything you do. The Lord inspired Lehi to declare the fundamental truth, "Men are, that they might have joy." That is a conditional statement: "they might have joy." It is not conditional for the Lord. His intent is that each of us finds joy. It will not be conditional for you as you obey the commandments, have faith in the Master, and do the things that are necessary to have joy here on earth. — Richard G. Scott

Business, like life, is about how you make people feel. It's that simple, and it's that hard. — Daniel Meyer

I learned that you can't predict your future, there's no crystal ball or formula for happiness. You can't control the weather just like you can't control the way others behave, but what you can control is how much love you give. Surrendering to this crazy thing called life is hard, but we don't have to be the soulless sheets of paper tarrying along in the wind. We can find our people, love, respect them, and then hang on for dear life because it's not where you go on this journey but who you're with that matters the most. — Renee Carlino

I've gone through a really hard divorce, and anyone who has gone through a divorce will speak about how hard the journey is from start to finish. It's a life-uprooting time. — Christina Aguilera

For a very long time now I've been saying to young women, 'You can have it all, but not all at the same time.' How important it is to take very good care of yourself, of your mental and physical and spiritual wellbeing; it's hard to do. It's easier to be a workaholic than to have a truly balanced life. — Quentin Bryce

Time has to be converted, then, from chronos, mere chronological time, to kairos, a New Testament Greek word that has to do with opportunity, with moments that seem ripe for their intended purpose. Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, "Something good is happening amid all this." We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days. Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God's work with us. Whatever happens - good things or bad, pleasant or problematic - we look and ask, "What might God be doing here?" We see the events of the day as continuing occasions to change the heart. Time points to Another and begins to speak to us of God. We — Henri J.M. Nouwen

People don't like to guess. It's easier to know something by how it immediately appears. Dark, hard metal is known as it appears, and so dark, hard people are built from it. Marble is smooth and pale and bright like the faces chipped into it. But that's something about life, what you think you know about a thing is always the first obstacle you face when trying to get to know it better. If they could speak, do you think they'd all be the same? — Devon Michael

Life is hard, and children have to be told how hard life can be ... So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one's mind. — Matthew Quick

Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life
and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion
to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. — Gretchen Rubin

Where is it written in the Constitution that because a guy played football, he has the automatic right to sit in that booth? How hard is football? If I've spent thirty-five years as a sportswriter, you think I don't know you get six for a touchdown? You think I don't know that? You think I don't know you get three for a field goal? C'mon, c'mon. And I can actually speak English okay, so that would be a difference between me and a guy who spent his whole life playing football. Now, not all of them are like that, but it's that thinking that says, "We have divine right of booth." No, you don't. No you don't. — Tony Kornheiser

You are going to do some really stupid and mean things in the name of love. Don't be so hard on yourself when things don't turn out. You are a good person that loved deeply. Anybody worth having will know that hurting someone is not showing someone who you really are. You're a sensitive person that showed the depth of your love, by the depth of your pain. Fairytale love will show you only one face. Real love will show you as many faces as it takes to get you to see how much that person really wanted you in their life. — Shannon L. Alder

When I look back, no matter how hard I try I can see clear break between one phase and another. It is a seamless flow - although flow is too strong a word. More a sort of busy stasis, a sort of running on the spot. Even that was too fast for me, however, I was always a little way behind, trotting in the rear of my own life. In Dublin I was still the boy growing up at Coolgrange, in America I was the callow young man of Dublin days, on the islands I became a kind of American. And nothing was enough. Everything was coming, was on the way, was about to be. Stuck in the past, I was always peering beyond the present towards a limitless future. Now, I suppose, the future may be said to have arrived. — John Banville

Embrace your beautiful mess of a life with your child. No matter how hard it gets, do not disengage ... Do something - anything - to connect with and guide your child today. Parenting is an adventure of the greatest significance. It is your legacy. - Andy Kerckhoff, from Critical Connection — Andy Kerckhoff

For those of you who think that I have my life altogether, I definitely do not. Every season brings new challenges. For example, since I had my fifth child, I am notoriously 5-10 minutes late everywhere no matter how hard I try to be on time. I would like to say that I am "fashionably" late, but that isn't the truth either. Running in a mad dash in a parking lot (all holding hands of course) to make it somewhere 5 minutes late (instead of 6 minutes cause that makes a big difference) while one child is missing shoes and my hair is going in every direction. Yep, that is my family. — Tamara L. Chilver

You can't imagine how hard it is to come home from hell and be expected to pick up the threads of a life. Apply for jobs, go to a factory, punch in, punch out. Put your lunch in a bag and get on the omnibus every day. Like nothing happened. Nothing. — Simone St. James

There is a warning. The path of God-exalting joy will cost you your life. Jesus said, "Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it." In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it. If you live gladly to make others glad in
God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full. This is not a book about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a wasted life. Some of you will die in the service of Christ. That will not be a tragedy. Treasuring life above Christ is a tragedy. — John Piper

One of the realities of life is that few things of value ever come easy. A great marriage takes years of hard work - every day. There is never a time when I can say that I no longer need to work on being patient, tender, and conversant. I believe that marriage is forever, which means that you work through your problems and learn how to relate to each other no matter what it takes. Hog Hole marriages require daily effort and sacrifice. So do Hog Hole careers, friendships, children, and churches. It's never easy; few things of value ever are. A Hog Hole life is available to every person, but it takes determination, sacrifice, and work. In a word, discipline. — Bob Merritt

We tend to think that it's up to others to respect our needs and fill them for us. But that doesn't ever work, and for the following reason:
If you have a hard time knowing what it is you really need, then how on earth can you logically expect someone else to know? — Amanda Butterworth