Privations Quotes & Sayings

To the Pilgrim Mothers, who not only had their full share of the hardships and privations of pioneer life but also had the Pilgrim Fathers to endure. — Fanny Fern

In any case, the Christian world is not one, neither is the Islamic, nor does their combined authority speak to or for the entire world, but the world of the fanatic IS one and it cuts across all religions, ideologies and vocations. The tributaries that feed the cesspool of fanaticism may ooze from sources separated by history, clime and race, by injustices and numerous privations, but they arrive at the same destination - the zone of unquestioning certitude - sped by a common impetus that licences each to proclaim itself the pure and unsullied among the polluted. The zealot is one that creates a Supreme Being, or Supreme Purpose, in his or her own image, then carries out the orders of that solipsistic device that commands from within, in lofty alienation from, and utter contempt of, society and community. — Wole Soyinka

The far northern scenery is absolutely desolate but is marvelously beautiful, and I shall never regret that I have seen it, even though it cost me the unbelievable privations and exertions which we suffer here. — Robert Bunsen

The wife of a junior officer cooped up in a horrible canvas partition in steerage for five months wrote:
"I had enjoyed much peace there in the absence of every comfort, even of such as are now enjoyed in jail. I used to say that there were four privations in my situation - fire, water, earth and air. No fire to warm oneself on the coldest day, no water to drink but what was tainted, no earth to set the foot on, and scarcely any air to breathe. Yet, with all these miserable circumstances, we spent many a happy hour by candlelight in that wretched cabin whilst I sewed and he read the Bible to me. — Stephen Taylor

A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest. — Charles Caleb Colton

And then, instead of lamenting past calamities we might all cheerfully set to work to remedy them; and the greater the difficulties, the harder our present privations, the greater should be our cheerfulness to endure the latter, and our vigour to contend against the former. — Emily Bronte

There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations ... What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us. — Daniel O'Connell

It is good to be attracted out of ourselves, to be forced to take a near view of the sufferings, the privations, the efforts, the difficulties of others. — Charlotte Bronte

All sorts of spiritual gifts come through privations, if they are accepted. — Janet Erskine Stuart

To me, life, for all its privations, is a luminous thing. You have to risk it. — Jeanette Winterson

It cannot be doubted that the world crisis and the suffering and privations of the people resulting from the crisis are in some measure responsible for the dangerous upheavals of which we are the witness. In such periods discontent breeds hatred, and hatred leads to acts of violence and revolution, and often even to war. — Albert Einstein

...half the pleasures of life [are] derived from the little struggles and small privations that one had to endure at the beginning of one's married life. Such struggles [are] generally occasioned by want of means, and often helped to make loving couples stand together all the firmer. — George Grossmith

But the punishment-body relation is not the same as it was in the torture during public executions. The body now serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or to make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regarded both as a right and as property. The body, according to this penality, is caught up in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions. Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element of the penalty. From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights. — Michel Foucault

Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body. — Henri Rousseau

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotions,
nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion
the second, above it. — Charles Caleb Colton

The way we experience the pilgrimage is a reflection of our inner state,' the imam said. 'To some of us it will be a strenuous trial, whereas to others every step of the way is a joy, despite the privations and discomfort. — Kristiane Backer

The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know. — Samuel Smiles

I'm not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a fashionable position, or a great name for my girls. If rank and money come with love and virtue also, I should accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune; but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures. — Louisa May Alcott

As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick. — P.G. Wodehouse

There too he had been treated with revolting injustice. His struggles, his privations,his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, had
filled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice - the standard of that notion depending so much upon the patience of the individual. The Professor had genius, but lacked the great social virtue of resignation. — Joseph Conrad

You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' pg. 303 — Diane Setterfield

What is the law of nature? Is it to know that my security and that of my family, all my amusements and pleasures, are purchased at the expense of misery, deprivation, and suffering to thousands of human beings - by the terror of the gallows; by the misfortune of thousands stifling within prison walls; by the fear inspired by millions of soldiers and guardians of civilization, torn from their homes and besotted by discipline, to protect our pleasures with loaded revolvers against the possible interference of the famishing? Is it to purchase every fragment of bread that I put in my mouth and the mouths of my children by the numberless privations that are necessary to procure my abundance? Or is it to be certain that my piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that every one else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat? — Leo Tolstoy

It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. — Frederick Douglass

Happiness is less regulated by external circumstances than inward enjoyment. Whoever is happy in the satisfaction of himself feels imperturbable felicity; but he, who trusts entirely to the world for the disposition of his peace, must inevitably participate [in] many privations and disappointments. — Norm MacDonald

Do not fear the conflict, do not flee it. Where there is no struggle, there is no virtue; where faith and love are not tempted, it is not possible to be sure whether they are really present. They are proved and revealed in adversity, that is, in difficult and grievous circumstances, both outward and inward - during sickness, sorrow, or privations — John Of Kronstadt

The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them. — Sigmund Freud

Certainly, I approve of it. Our culture has sunk into a bog of materialism. Men have lost all spiritual values in their pursuit of material production and technological trickery. They're too comfortable. They will return to a nobler life if we teach them to bear privations. So we ought to place a limit upon their material greed. — Ayn Rand

Heroism is latent in every human soul - However humble or unknown, they (the veterans) have renounced what are accounted pleasures and cheerfully undertaken all the self-denials - privations, toils, dangers, sufferings, sicknesses, mutilations, life-long hurts and losses, death itself - for some great good, dimly seen but dearly held. — Joshua Chamberlain

How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Luck means the hardships and privations which you have not hesitated to endure, the long nights you have devoted to work. Luck means the appointments you have never failed to keep; the trains you have never failed to catch. — Max O'Rell

It is a proverbial expression that every man is the maker of his own fortune, and we usually regard it as implying that every man by his folly or wisdom prepares good or evil for himself. But we may view it in another light, namely, that we may so accommodate ourselves to the dispositions of Providence as to be happy in our lot, whatever may be its privations. — Alexander Von Humboldt

I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing. — Anne Frank

When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself
nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

But the same spirits of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachment. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with ... It would be too hard indeed (with a faltering voice) if woman's feelings were to be added to all this! — Jane Austen

The world can understand well enough the process of perishing for want of food: perhaps few persons can enter into or follow out that of going mad from solitary confinement. They see the long-buried prisoner disinterred, a maniac or an idiot! - how his senses left him - how his nerves, first inflamed, underwent nameless agony, and then sunk to palsy - is a subject too intricate for examination, too abstract for popular comprehension ... And long, long may the minds to whom such themes are no mystery - by whom their beings are sympathetically seized - be few in number, and rare of reencounter. Long may it be generally thought that physical privations alone merit compassion, and that the rest is a figment. — Charlotte Bronte

This, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, — George Orwell

For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not. — John Donne

Our faith, trust, and love are proved and revealed in adversities, that is, in difficult and grievous outward and inward circumstances, during sickness, sorrow, and privations. — John Of Kronstadt

Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy. — Robert Green Ingersoll

What has actually to be said about the Cause of everything is this. Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and, more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since It surpasses all being. Now we should not conclude that the negations are simply the opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privations, beyond every denial, beyond every assertion. — Pope Dionysius

People who seem to enjoy their ill-temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves. — George Eliot

Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The — George Orwell