Living Bravely Quotes & Sayings

I can be jailed again at any time, it is very easy. They can say I am a criminal and just lock me up. — Chen Guangcheng

Some point you had to risk the ridicule of the mob, of your own internalized voices, and try to see clearly what had been set in front of you in this life, and try to act on that as bravely and honestly as you could, no matter what kind of rules you'd previously been living by. — Roland Merullo

124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom — Toni Morrison

Always move forward, going straight will get you nowhere. — Billie Joe Armstrong

It was like starting to write a novel. When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing. So — John Steinbeck

Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy. — Viktor E. Frankl

What is happiness? What is a good life? Is it a life without suffering? Something like that doesn't exist ... Life is filled with suffering and sorrow. So it's no wonder that to those who fear suffering, the world seems like a living hell! And still ... those who bravely keep going and try to push through this hell ... They'll find that it's only a small stretch of the road to happiness. The truly great are those who never lose hope, even when thrown into hell ... And as long as we have faith in ourselves, even hell itself can be a paradise! — Naoyuki Ochiai

Disaster doesn't sort us out by preferences; it drags us into emergencies that require we act, and act altruistically, bravely, and with initiative in order to survive or save the neighbors, no matter how we vote or what we do for a living. — Rebecca Solnit

Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living ... therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralising intrude ... — James Joyce

Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen, Voices whisper in the trees, "Tonight is Halloween!" — Dexter Kozen

Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the mind's ability to discern and decide, and so to apprehend and master reality. Nor did he ever betray truth and integrity for a pitiable life of self-deception and semi-consciousness. In seeking relentlessly to align mind with matter and thought with fact, he remained faithful both to himself and to the world, with the result that he is still alive in this sentence and millions of others that have been written about him. More than a great philosopher, Socrates was the living embodiment of the dream that philosophy might one day set us free. — Neel Burton

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. — Sam Davis

Do and dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment. Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying now with what might be. Not in the flight of ideas but only in action is freedom. Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of living. God's command is enough and your faith in him to sustain you. Then at last freedom will welcome your spirit amid great rejoicing. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote. — William James

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain. — David Ebershoff

The art of dying bravely and with honour does not need any special training, save a living faith in God. — Mahatma Gandhi

You've rarely got an artist that's not being chauffeured into the business by some huge-ass names. — Pharoahe Monch

Words tend to last a big longer than things, but eventually they fade too, along with the pictures they once evoked. Entire categories of objects disappear - flowerpots, for example, or cigarette filters, or rubber bands - and for a time you will be able to recognize those words, even if you cannot recall what they mean. But then, little by little, the words become only sounds, a random collection of glottals and fricatives, a storm of whirling phonemes, and finally the whole thing just collapses into gibberish. — Paul Auster

But being brave isn't about living every minute exhilarated. It's about waking up and knowing that despite the worry and the sadness and the deep, dark fear, you're going to go forth anyway. That you're going to try anyway. That you have a choice, and you're going to choose to live, today, bravely. — E. Katherine Kottaras