Stoical Quotes & Sayings

The methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age. Some have floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its surface as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at once to the bottom as foundering ships sink. Some have run away from their own thoughts. Some have coiled themselves up into a stoical indifference. Some have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have carried it as a tree does a wound, until by new wood it can overgrow and cover the old gash. — Henry Ward Beecher

Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of '68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath. — Terry Eagleton

In "The Myth of Sisyphus", his most important non-fiction work, Albert Camus suggested that if we believed what most people claim to be the purpose of life, we would feel compelled to commit suicide. If, however, we accept that life has no purpose we would be inclined to soldier on in a cussed, stoical manner like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill only to see it roll down again. — Philip French

Little children are stoical. They cry over bumps, but they take the big things as they come, they don't whine like so many adults. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There's no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator. — Brian Greene

'Dance India Dance' is family to me. I actually miss the madness whenever the season is not on air. — Mithun Chakraborty

Let out your heat!
Unleash your imagination
Let the burning fragrance of your unimpeachable imagination
sparkle through the morning's you.
At night, let the stoical sweat of your day ease your muscles
Relax your feet.
You will need them to walk again tomorrow — Priscilla Koranteng

You shouldn't be embarrassed by the things you do because that's who you are. Your quirks are what separate you from all of the dull, regular and boring people who all look and act the same as everyone else. — Benjamin Jones

Me, I like my woman so tough grown men whimper and hide when they see her coming their way. — Nalini Singh

He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward. Jefferson Davis's future wife describing him at first meeting. — Shelby Foote

Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak. — John Edward Williams

I don't worry. I'm more stoical. Of course I have insecurities. I fear getting older. I fear death and illness. I'm not prone to depression, but I get depressed because everybody gets depressed. Suddenly I'm away from my family or doing a job I'm not enjoying. — David Thewlis

Climate helps to shape the character of peoples, certainly no people more than the English. The uncertainty of their climate has helped to make the English, a long-suffering, phlegmatic, patient people rather insensitive to surprise, stoical against storms,. slightly incredulous at every appearance of the sun, touched by the lyrical gratitude of someone who expects nothing and suddenly receives more than he dreamed. — H.E. Bates

You can't hang out with negative people and live a positive life. Run from them! — Jettie Woodruff

The scene was not a happy one yet we looked upon it in the cold stoical spirit of a soldier; a slight chilling pang and then a return soul and body to the enemy before us. — Knute Nelson

You're easily distracted, aren't you?" Ty deadpanned.
"Not really," Zane said smoothly, dragging one hand down Ty's
chest. "I'm still focused on you. — Madeleine Urban

Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings ... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing. — Victor Hugo

Honeyed oatie cakes, lemon oatie cakes, oatie cakes with dried grapes!" moaned Athena, she and her owl both rolling her eyes.

"I've still got sacks fullin my storage rooms," said Artemis. "I give them to my temple priestesses to hand out to people who pray really hard...or not."

"I use them as fish food," said Poseidon.

"Kindling," said Hephaestus. "They burn great on the forge."

"I've sent a million sacks down to Egypt," said Dionysus. "They ran out of bricks for the Pyramids. — Carolyn Hennesy

We have to start with the little babies who are born now, socialize them in freedom and critical thinking. We don't have to throw away their faith. People confuse the two, thinking if you are enlightened that means apostasy. It doesn't. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Stoical' is the best word to describe her reaction to these compliments, Emma putting up with them as of they were one of my unfortunate foibles. — Carol Lee

It's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote. — John F. Kerry

If you're a sniveler, a whiner, a complainer, you will never be happy. We all have that side. Get a little stoical and just take the pain. — Frederick Lenz

They are all about romance, about life's excitement and adventure and it's essential sadness and transience. They savour everything both fine and bittersweet that life has to offer us - a stoical in the hedonism. — William Boyd

What men call adventures usually consist of the stoical endurance of appalling daily misery. — Louise Erdrich

Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin. — Thomas Hardy

Which is just another way of blaming, and perhaps the best way, because there is solace and a certain stoical peace in blaming everything on the rain, and then blaming something as uncontrollable as the rain on something as indifferent as the Arm of the Lord.
Because nothing can be done about the rain except blaming. And if nothing can be done about it, why get yourself in a sweat about it? — Ken Kesey

High achievers tend to have major weaknesses. People without major weaknesses tend to be mediocre. — Guy Kawasaki

But like all beautiful faces Emily's made you believe that its possessor was a better person than she was. It allowed her to pass for stoical when she was petrified, and mysterious and aloof when she was so filled with self-doubt that she bought presents for other people when it was her birthday, framed most of her conversation in terms of apology and regret, and for all her talent could no longer manage to string twenty-five paragraphs fo prose together to make a short story. — Michael Chabon

He thought of his own by-now legendary novel, American Disillusionment, that cyclone which, for years, had woven its erratic path across the flatlands of his imaginary life, always on the verge of grandeur or disintegration, picking up characters and plotlines like houses and livestock, tossing them aside and moving on. It had taken the form, at various times, of a bitter comedy, a stoical Hemingwayesque tragedy, a hard-nosed lesson in social anatomy like something by John O'Hara, a bare-knuckles urban Huckleberry Finn. It was the autobiography of a man who could not face himself, an elaborate system of evasion and lies unredeemed by the artistic virtue of self-betrayal — Michael Chabon

The heart was a bicameral thing, both stoical and skittish. Who was to say that it mightn't endure the years of separation and the abrupt reversals of fate, only to be repulsed by a misaligned vase, by a lipsticked tooth, by a hundredth of an ounce of ash? — Chris Cleave

I don't know if it's because my father's from Argentina, that I'm the son of an immigrant, I don't know if its because I'm Jewish, but I have always been mindful that the best insights occur when you have some kind of an outsider perspective. — Mark Leibovich

I had feelings: passive as I lived, little as I spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I could feel. About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future - such a future as mine - to be dead. — Charlotte Bronte

Enjoyed the ride?' Janis asked, sarcasm in her voice. 'I never thought you'd actually be scared of flying.'

'Well, it's not everyday I ride unicorns to parallel worlds,' I muttered. — Deepika Kumaaraguru

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet, when we want shoes. — Jonathan Swift

My boyfriends have all been as stoical as queen's guards. They'd been patient, committed, and dispassionate, and I'd had to really debase myself to extract any emotion, either grin or grimace, from them. — Koren Zailckas

I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. — Charlie Chaplin

Oh man sometimes I wake up feel like a cat runover.
Are you familiar with the stoical aspects of hard drinking, of heavy drinking? Oh it's heavy. Oh it's hard. It isn't easy. Jesus, I never meant me any harm. All I wanted was a good time. — Martin Amis

Again, take someone who's crippled or deformed; they can't be tied to the plank without a lot of sweat and heaving, and then the crowds (who can't see much anyway) get bored and start hissing and catcalling. Meanwhile a queue builds up, and the people at the end of the queue get awkward and start screaming or passing out. If all the clients were young, male, stoical and fit, he'd have fewer problems, but it's surprising how few of them fall into all those categories. — Hilary Mantel

Our Ancestors knew that healing comes in cycles and circles.

One generation carries the pain so that the next can live and heal.

One cannot live without the other, each is the other's hope, meaning & strength. — Gemma B. Benton

Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I shall remain so. I have but one prayer at heart; and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last. — Lydia M. Child

What's the good of being stoical if nobody notices? — Mason Cooley