Rugged Life Quotes & Sayings

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. — Charles Dickens

America was built on rugged individualism, and today that has evolved into a culture of narcissism. But God didn't create you to live for you. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to put aside your selfish ambition. — Rick Warren

Youth is rather to be pitied than envied by people in years since it is doomed to toil through the rugged road of life which the others have passed through, in search of happiness that is not to be met with in it and that, at the highest, can be compounded for only by the blessing of a contented mind. — Samuel Richardson

No map to help us find the tranquil flat lands, clearings calm, fields without mean fences. Rolling down the other side of life our compass is the sureness of ourselves. Time may make us rugged, ragged round the edges, but know and understand that love is still the safest place to land. — Rod McKuen

Must be I find you
tough and lusty as the life,
all toil and tempo,
finesse and plain fight,
with values so old they startle me.
Must be I think of you
as I do the rugged flowers
that prove themselves over and over in the spring,
that elsewhere might perish,
but here master the earth,
bloom into gangly lives of high color,
and inhale the sun, knowing the land
better than the land does.
Hardy, savvy,
they will outlive us all. — Diane Ackerman

Many bad golfers marry, feeling that a wife's loving solicitude may improve their game. But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and introspective. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success at the game induces a certain amount of decent humilty, which keeps a man from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs he may achieve in other walks of life. — P.G. Wodehouse

The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-inhouse, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive. — Phyllis McGinley

For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? — Edward Abbey

For our path in life ... is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them! — Charles Dickens

As time went by, I realized that the particular place I'd chose was less important than the fact that I'd chosen a place and focused my life around it. Although the island has taken on great significance for me, it's no more inherently beautiful or meaningful than any other place on earth. What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it's flat or rugged, rich or austere. wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received. — Richard Nelson

She had come out of her first illness alive with new hopes, expecting so much, yet deprived of any subsistence except Dick, bringing up children she could only pretend gently to love, guided orphans. The people she liked, rebels mostly, disturbed her and were bad for her--she sought in them the vitality that had made them independent or creative or rugged, sought in vain--for their secrets were buried deep in childhood struggles they had forgotten. They were more interested in Nicole's exterior harmony and charm, the other face of her illness. She led a lonely life owning Dick who did not want to be owned. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Trees Trees, proud standing people stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying glorious attention, breathing light. strength shelter timeless confidence bending and firm comforting rooted chorus line dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds framing bursts of stars tender rugged celebration absorbing and releasing life each holy branch holding the power of the Universe. There. — Wallace Stevens

You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole. You must stand where you can see the man as he treads the entire path that leads from the cradle to the grave - now crossing the plain, now climbing the steeps, now passing through pleasant fields, now wending his way with difficulty between rugged rocks - tempted, tried, tested, triumphant. — William Jennings Bryan

She had thought, instinctively, that Victoria had a remarkably beautiful face. The face showed an alert awareness of life: her lips- full, overblown like clown-lips liable to laugh at the slightest provocation. She thought that her features were not chiseled but almost rugged, handsome, like a colloquial swear-word or a Vermeer peasant-girl, and a knock out at that. An overdone face, like one having two chins, two noses, that was big and abundantly cheerful but at the same time, there was a peculiarly puffy look about those eyes.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen

There is a special mystique to Texas. Texans represent many things to the uninitiated: We are bigger than life in our boots and Stetsons, rugged individualists whose two-steppin' has achieved world-wide acclaim, and we were the first to define hospitality. — Ann Richards

Simon Cameron: I loved my brother, as only the poor and lonely can love those with whom they have toiled and struggled up the rugged hill of life's success - but he died bravely in the discharge of his duty. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind. — Cornel West

He had always admired his colleagues in the life and earth sciences who could hit the road on short notice with a fully stocked backpack and live rugged adventuresome lives in exotic locales. But he had admired them from a distance. — Neal Stephenson

There can be no conquest to the man who dwells in the narrow and small environment of a groveling life, and there can be no vision to the man the horizon of whose vision is limited by the bounds of self. But the great things of the world, the great accomplishments of the world, have been achieved by men who had high ideals and who have received great visions. The path is not easy, the climbing is rugged and hard, but the glory at the end is worthwhile. — Matthew Henson

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

Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury. — Roger Bannister

The beauties of nature come after the storm. The rugged beauty of the mountain is born in a storm, and the heroes of life are the storm-swept and battle-scarred. — Lettie B. Cowman

To love is for the Soul to choose a companion, and travel with it along the perilous defiles and winding ways of life; mutually sustaining, when it is rugged with obstructions, and mutually rejoicing, when rich broad plains and sunny slopes make journeying delight. — George Henry Lewes

While I can make no claim for having introduced the term "rugged individualism," I should be proud to have invented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life. — Herbert Hoover

It seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Khumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum. — Jon Krakauer

It has no denim-toned house paint. Levi makes what is essentially a commodity: blue jeans. Its ads may evoke rugged outdoorsmanship, but Levi hasn't promoted any particular life style to sell other products. — Naomi Klein

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life. — John Henry Newman

Alas! this is not what I thought life was.
I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others ... And when
I went among my kind, with triple brass
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving. I am no coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the Veil. But hearken, O Death! Is not this my life hard enough, - is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough, - is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter here, - thou, O Death? — W.E.B. Du Bois

Our stories are timeless and tested. They are about us, a people of tremendous strength.Our songs are full of love and life - and the ups and downs of both. They are soulful with the rhythms of a heart that is in sync with nature and wonderment. Our struggles are real and rugged. They beckon our memory to the highest callings of the spirit, to help us rejoice and to overcome. — Deborah L. Parker

I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. You can talk a lot about sex (or its lack) but not about the feelings that are keeping women from sleeping with their husbands. You can talk about society's lack of "appreciation" of mother's and the need for more social validation
but not about policy that might actually make life better. You cannot really challenge the American culture of rugged individualism. — Judith Warner

Rural life in the winter months was rugged: snow-blurred and alcohol-fueled, violent and fast. — John Irving

They Whatever can make life truly happy is absolutely good in its own right because it cannot be warped into evil From whence then comes error In that while all men wish for a happy life they mistake the means for the thing itself and while they fancy themselves in pursuit of it they are flying from it for when the sum of happiness consists in solid tranquillity and an unembarrassed confidence therein they are ever collecting causes of disquiet and not only carry burthens but drag them painfully along through the rugged and deceitful path of life so that they still withdraw themselves from the good effect proposed the more pains they take the more business they have upon their hands instead of advancing they are retrograde and as it happens in a labyrinth their very speed puzzles and confounds them — Seneca.