Surmount Quotes & Sayings

In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too. — W. Eugene Smith

Sadly, this picture [ Joy] does not go from strength to strength. It sinks into a morass of tedious obstacles to this woman's success. Joy the person may be able to surmount all barriers, but the film with her name on it is not so fortunate. — David O. Russell

To act well in this world, one must sacrifice all personal desires. The people who become missionaries of religious thought have no other Fatherland than this thought. Man is not on Earth merely to be happy, nor even simply to be honest. He is here to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility, and to surmount the vulgarity of nearly every individual. — Ernest Renan

The journey of the development of the ability of transmutation, is quite the journey to be on! First you awaken to the darkness that is in you, then you learn to accept it, then you learn to marry it with your light, and then, finally, you learn how to harness the dark energy through your bright energy in order to transmutate any darkness into brightness, into light and lightness. This is Soul Alchemy and sometimes it is thrust upon an individual and other times it is sought after by an individual. In any case, it is not an easy journey to surmount. — C. JoyBell C.

When something poses as obstacle to you,surmount it and use it as a miracle to move on to greater height. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty. — Joseph Joubert

if one can surmount poverty and can love in moderation, there is no obstacle to happiness for anyone. — Pearl S. Buck

Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them. — Jerome Groopman

One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I was trying to cheat death. I was only trying to surmount for a little while the darkness that all my life I surely knew was going to come rolling in on me some day and obliterate me. I was only to stay alive a little brief while longer, after I was already gone. — Cornell Woolrich

Energy and invincible determination, these two things will sweep away mighty barriers and will surmount the greatest obstacles — William Walker Atkinson

I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity. — Elizabeth Gilbert

If we unite, we can surmount any mountain and make things happen for the betterment of all. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

In diplomacy there are two kinds of problems: small ones and large ones. The small ones will go away by themselves and the large ones you will not be able to do anything about. The biggest challenges in your career will come from the temptation to act. The test of your mettle will be how nobly you surmount it. — Patrick McGuinness

Education is a type of money which surmount when expend. — Azhar Sabri

The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives. The only method of doing this is to assume a perfect resignation to the Divine will, to consider that whatever does happen, must happen; and that, by our uneasiness, we cannot prevent the blow before it does fall, but we may add to its force after it has fallen. These considerations, and others such as these, may enable us in some measure to surmount the difficulties thrown in our way; to bear up with a tolerable degree of patience under the burden of life; and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till we arrive at our journey's end. — Thomas Jefferson

Faith is to fear nothing, to stand unswayed, the power to surmount any obstacle. — Daisaku Ikeda

With the lessons taken from the financial crisis in 1997, the Republic of Korea has been able to surmount the global economic crisis rather successfully. — Lee Myung-bak

We believe that we can change the things around us in accordance with our desires - we believe it because otherwise we can see no favourable outcome. We do not think of the outcome which generally comes to pass and is also favourable: we do not succeed in changing things in accordance with our desires, but gradually our desires change. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant to us. We have failed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us beyond it, and then if we turn round to gaze into the distance of the past, we can barely see it, so imperceptible has it become. — Marcel Proust

We see men who have accumulated great fortunes, but we often recognize only their triumph, overlooking the temporary defeats which they had to surmount before arriving. — Napoleon Hill

The Strategy of Safeguards requires us to take a very realistic - perhaps even fatalistic - look at ourselves. But while acknowledging the likelihood of temptation and failure may seem like a defeatist approach, it helps us identify, avoid, and surmount our likely stumbling blocks. — Gretchen Rubin

Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Why is grief, when inspired by certain types of loss, considered something to surmount, to get over, while when inspired by other types of loss it's given a pass, allowed and even encouraged to go on forever? — Ron Currie Jr.

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beared and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
'Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days. — William Shakespeare

You can surmount the obstacles in your path if you are determined, courageous and hard-working. Never be faint-hearted. Be resolute, but never bitter. — Ralph Bunche

Love has two affirmations. First of all, when the lover encounters the other, there is an immediate affirmation (psychologically: dazzlement, enthusiasm, exaltation, mad projection of a fulfilled future: I am devoured by desire, the impulse to be happy): I say yes to everything (blinding myself). There follows a long tunnel: my first yes is riddled by doubts, love's value is ceaselessly threatened by depreciation: this is the moment of melancholy passion, the rising of resentment and oblation. Yet I can emerge from this tunnel; I can 'surmount,' without liquidating; what I have affirmed a first time, I can once again affirm, without repeating it, for then what I affirm is the affirmation, not its contingency. I affirm the first encounter in its difference, I desire its return, not its repetition. I say to the other (old or new): Let us begin again. — Roland Barthes

Our words were a shaky ladder; all I could do was climb, uncertain if I was about to surmount a glorious peak or fall and smash myself on the rocks below. — Deva Fagan

Belief in oneself is an essential factor for success in life. It helps
you surmount challenges on your road to success. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

If we can still surmount what is natural and believe what we wish to believe, in spite of the force of evidence, then for a while at least we are masters of our fate, and we can paint the world we want. — Anne Perry

It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount. — Henry David Thoreau

If everything was in your favor, if you did not have to surmount any great mountains, then you have nothing to be proud of. But if you feel that you have special difficulties, then you must indeed be proud of your achievement. — Eleanor Roosevelt

The world, in resting upon the earth, strives to surmount it. As self-opening it cannot endure anything closed. The earth, however, as sheltering and concealing, tends always to draw the world into itself and keep it there — Martin Heidegger

He was terribly conscious that he only had one life and with seemed to sad to think that he had wasted it. He could never surmount his immeasurable regret. And that's why I tell you that Byring is right. Even though it only lasts five years, even though he ruins his career, even though this marriage ends in disaster, it will have been worth while. He will have been satisfied. He will have fulfilled himself. — W. Somerset Maugham

There are certain things in war of which the commander alone comprehends the importance. Nothing but his superior firmness and ability can subdue and surmount all difficulties. — Napoleon Bonaparte

But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego. — Anonymous

You have a lot to learn, young man. Philosophy. Theology. Literature. Poetry. Drama. History. Archeology. Anthropology. Mythology. Music. These are your tools as much as brush and pigment. You cannot be an artist until you are civilized. You cannot be civilized until you learn. To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of our art and your world. To surmount the past, you must know the past. — John Logan

Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind's pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery? — Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Mistletoe. I surmount all obstacles. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

The epitome of empathy is said to be the capacity to look at the world through another's eyes. Though our glance on the planet is largely distorted by our crooked perspectives, we may nevertheless, with luck or agility, accede to a privileged glimpse of the view from another's shoes - and in the process claim to have been able, for a moment at least, to surmount our relativity. — Alain De Botton

A man of adequate vitality and zest will surmount all misfortunes by the emergence after each blow of an interest in life and the world which cannot be narrowed down so much as to make one loss fatal. To be defeated by one loss or even by several is not something to be admired as a proof of sensibility, but something to be deplored as a failure in vitality. All our affections are at the mercy of death, which may strike down those whom we love at any moment. It is therefore necessary that our lives should not have that narrow intensity which puts the whole meaning and purpose of our life at the mercy of accident. — Betrand Russell

Trust in your story, it's powerful enough. Oftentimes, it is not the lack of power that is our struggle; but it is our unawareness of the power that we do have, which is our biggest hurdle to surmount. — C. JoyBell C.

This necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessing of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue. — Thomas Paine

Women can less easily surmount their coquetry than their passions. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but surmount our difficulties. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Men who can, when they wish to write a document, shut themselves up for days with their thoughts and their books, know little of what difficulties a woman must surmount to get off a tolerable production. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A truly successful person knows how to overcome the past, use the present, and prepare for the future-but unless we can first surmount the past, we cannot effectively cope with either the present or the future. — Sydney J. Harris

Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate?
And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?
Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!
Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.
And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Our opponents maintain that we are confronted with insurmountable political obstacles, but that may be said of the smallest obstacle if one has no desire to surmount it. — Theodor Herzl

Women manage, quite brilliantly, on the whole, and to stunning and unforeseeable effect, to survive and surmount being defined by others. They dismiss the definition, however dangerous or wounding it may be
or even, sometimes, find a way to utilize it. — James A. Baldwin

Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings? — Graham Swift

Each great work has to pass through three
stages - ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those
who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high
obstructions? If the whole world stands against you - sword
in hand - would you still dare to do what you think is
right? — Sandeep Gupta

Are you sure of that? Baptism into the Christian Faith doesn't ensure one going to Heaven, why should this other sprinkling be a guarantee of anyone going to Hell?' 'It's such a big question, Rex, but briefly it is like this. Heaven and Hell are only symbolical of growth to Light or disintegration to Darkness. By Christian, or any other true religious baptism, we renounce the Devil and all his Works, thereby erecting a barrier which it is difficult for Evil forces to surmount, but anyone who accepts Satanic baptism does exactly the reverse. They wilfully destroy the barrier of Astral Light which is our natural protection and offer themselves as a medium through which the powers of Darkness may operate on mankind. — Dennis Wheatley

But underneath it all I tell myself the tiny glow-worm of the Leave event will be blinking. Up to me to surmount the trial, everything is dependent upon my will, impotent, tenacious, helpless, dogged, with a swollen sense of honor, I tell myself. I know me. Not that I'm the strongest as my friend used to claim, but I've always had the strength - weakness maybe - to believe that if "in the end we die, too fast," as he puts it, later on, as sequel, there's a chance that someone-I-don't-know-who - or I-don't-know-what - may come back. No keeping oneself from dying. Afterwards nothing stops one returning. — Helene Cixous

His body was tubby but his arms apparently couldn't understand that, for they were long and scrawny. From his brow to an inch below his eyes, his nose turned up; from there on, down. His short upper lip slanted sharply toward his tonsils, which had the effect of making his chinlessness positively jut.
( ... )
The bartender was fascinated by the way the teardrops proceeded down Biddiver's amazing nose. One drop would dash almost halfway, and then hesitate, daunted by the hump. Then it would be joined by another teardrop, and the two, merging, would surmount the obstacle and slip down to hang glittering over the disappearing lip until a sob came along to shake them off. — Theodore Sturgeon

Maybe my sadness is too much to surmount. I can't be his wings, the person who lifts him up from the sad days. I'm hopelessly earthbound, and I'm in no position to safe anyone else. — Emery Lord

Yoga is the rule book for playing the game of Life, but in this game no one needs to lose. It is tough, and you need to train hard. It requires the willingness to think for yourself, to observe and correct, and to surmount occasional setbacks. It demands honesty, sustained application, and above all love in your heart. — B.K.S. Iyengar

The man who boldly transgresses, amassing a great heap unjustly
by force, in time, he will strike his sail, when trouble seizes him as the yardarm is splintered. He calls on those who hear nothing and he struggles in the midst of the whirling waters. The god laughs at the hot-headed man, seeing him, who boasted that this would never happen, exhausted by distress without remedy and unable to surmount the cresting wave. He wrecks the happiness of his earlier life on the reef of Justice, and he perishes unwept, unseen. — Aeschylus

Theologians and other clerks,
You won't understand this book,
However bright your wits
If you do not meet it humbly,
And in this way, Love and Faith
Make you surmount Reason, for
They are the protectors of Reason's house. — Marguerite Porete

The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally, magic. It is impossible to imagine this world being really civilized so long as so much nonsense survives. In even its highest forms religion embraces concepts that run counter to all common sense. It can be defended only by making assumptions and adopting rules of logic that are never heard of in any other field of human thinking. — H.L. Mencken

In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis. — Sigmund Freud

All experiences of life seems to prove that the impediments thrown in the way of the human advancement may for the most part be overcome by steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance and above all, by a determined resolution to surmount. — Samuel Smiles

Does mankind truly hate itself? How can one surmount such irreverence? — Brom

Send me 300 francs; that sum will enable me to go to Paris. There, at least, one can cut a figure and surmount obstacles. Everything tells me I shall succeed. Will you prevent me from doing so for the want of 100 crowns? — Napoleon Bonaparte

A positive attitude is important, but it is only part of the story. Understanding how to surmount pain, doubt, and failure is a vital component in winning the game of life. — Chin-Ning Chu

But a generation that does not aspire to seriousness, to meaning, is unworthy to walk in the shadow of those who have gone before, I mean those who have struggled and surmounted, I mean those who have aspired, I mean Rembrandt, I mean Turner, I mean Michelangelo and Matisse ... I mean obviously Rothko. — John Logan

A free spirit must be able to surmount anxiety time after time. — Mason Cooley

Don't sign your name
between worlds,
surmount
the manifold of meanings,
trust the tearstain,
learn to live. — Paul Celan

I shall work with Congress, civil society groups and local government executives who are convinced that charter changes are needed to enable the country to surmount the unprecedented challenges of the 21st century. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

As you see the patterns and meaning emerge in your own personal experience of the world dream, you begin to realize that everything is happening on your behalf, even the obstacles and the challenges that you experiment with. The obstacles and challenges that you find are there to dare you to become vast and wise enough to surmount them. At this stage, it helps to ask yourself: What is the myth I'm living? And what must I do to live it well? — Carolyn Elliott

Steady, patient, persevering thinking will generally surmount every obstacle in search of truth. — Nathanael Emmons

My belief in the growth and permanence of democracy is undimmed. I know that the people will cast off the new dictatorship as they did the old. I believe as firmly as in my youth that humanity will surmount the era of poverty and war. Life will be happier and more beautiful for all. I believe in the GOLDEN AGE. — Sylvia Pankhurst

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. — Gaius Iulius Caesar

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria - sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness - performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression. — Lincoln Kirstein

Love, yes, love your calling, for this holy and generous love will impart strength to you so as to enable you to surmount all obstacles. — Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

Masters are doers of the Word of Thelema. That is, they do their own True Will. And they are willing to pay the price for it. They take the greatest chance of all, that of being their own God, their own Individual, their own Self, and their own Leader and Master in a world of senseless followers and slaves. They accept complete responsibility for their own life and they always strive for excellence, continuously moving in an upward and onward manner, with energy and enthusiasm, discipline and diligence, persistence and power. They are strong, able to turn everything to the advantage of their True Will, and able to endure and surmount all the necessary trials and errors that lead to the fulfillment of their Chosen Path. Nothing is against them; they are not victims, and they make no excuses. — David Cherubim

Against such odds, I will stand or fall! Whether or not I can rise to surmount the trials before me, I plan to step forward and fight. — Janny Wurts

We can surmount the anger we feel. To find oneself like a young tree inside a tomb is to discover the power to crack the tomb and grow up to any height. — Elizabeth Bowen

There is no allurement or enticement, actual or imaginary, which a well-disciplined mind may not surmount. The wish to resist more than half accomplishes the object. — Charlotte Dacre

Some men, instead of building their existence upon the indefinite unfolding of time, propose to assert it in its eternal aspect & to achieve it as an absolute. They hope, thereby, to surmount the ambiguity of their condition. Thus, many intellectuals seek their salvation in either in critical thought or creative activity. — Simone De Beauvoir

How vain, I say, it is to expect demonstration and certainty in things not capable of it; and refuse assent to very rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and clear truths, because they cannot be made out so evident as to surmount every the least (I will not say reason, but) pretence of doubting. — John Locke

I think it's always good to take on things that at first seem bigger than you. Then you just try and surmount them. — Cate Blanchett

Lincoln's appeal to 'the better angels of our nature' failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable — Felix Frankfurter

When spirituality is the basis of your life, it gives you the strength, wisdom and courage to surmount the many storms of life that could destroy a weaker person who doesn't have this foundation. — Radhanath Swami

The capacity to surmount failure without being discouraged is the chief asset of every person who attains outstanding success in any calling. — Napoleon Hill

Life at university, with its intellectual and inconclusive discussions at a postgraduate level is on the whole a bad training for the real world. Only men of very strong character surmount this handicap. — Paul Chambers

Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory. — Mao Zedong