Toughen Quotes & Sayings

That is my sole mission: to not let my solitary confinement drive me to madness. I can let it harden me, I can let it toughen me, but I must not let it make me crazy. It's a strange challenge, staying sane. If you focus too hard on maintaining your sanity, the slipperiness of the task can only make you crazier. On the other hand, if you forget your mission, if you try to maintain your sanity by not thinking about the matter at all, you can find your mind wandering in such dizzying patterns that you wind up, again, at madness. The trick is to forge a middle ground between the two: a detachment, a state of neutrality. — Pittacus Lore

Televisison is like a factory line. You need discipline and focus. You have to hit your mark and know your lines. It's not that I don't know my lines when I do a film, but the pace of discovery is always a little bit more relaxed and nurturing and almost babying, in a way. Television toughens you up, and I like that, but I don't want it to toughen me up too much. — Shannyn Sossamon

It was almost funny, to be making this mistake. She was too old for this shit. Crying was for pussies. Making a mess of herself served no purpose at all. Now was the time to toughen up. — Kylie Scott

If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crises or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative into a positive purely by a mental process that will result in positive action as well. — Robert Greene

The Working Song
by Breton Braley

Oh, we're sick to death of the style of song
That's only a sort of a simpering song,
A kissy song and a sissy song
Or a weepy, creepy, whimpering song.
So give us a lift of a lusty song,
A boisterous, bubbling, boiling song,
Or a smashing song and a dashing song,
Oh, give us the tang of a toiling song,
The chanty loud of the working crowd,
The thunderous thrall of a toiling song!

Ay, sing us a joyous daring song,
Not a moaning, groaning, fretting song,
But a ringing song, and a swinging song,
A rigorous, vigorous, sweating song.
We have had enough of the gypsy song,
Which is only a lazy, shirking song,
So toughen your throat to a rougher note
And give us the tune of a working song,
A tune of strife and the joy of life,
The beat and throb of a working song! — Berton Braley

I thought she'd [her mother] offer me some sympathy. Instead, she said, 'Don't you ever call me crying again! You wanted to be in this business, so you better toughen up!' And I did. — Jennifer Lopez

He has hazel eyes " Nachari remarked in astonishment.
He looked over at Jocelyn with approval.
"Yeah well " Marquis grumbled "we can toughen him up make up for that one little...feminine mishap."
Nachari feigned insult. "My eyes are green as well Marquis."
Marquis shrugged. "Yeah...and you became a wizard. — Tessa Dawn

Hardship is not our choice; but if we face it bravely, it can toughen the fiber of our souls. — Billy Graham

That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in. — Lauryn Hill

A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart. — Vance Havner

...that secret hostility natural between brothers, the roots of which --little nursery rivalries--sometimes toughen and deepen as life goes on, and, all hidden, support a plant capable of producing in season the bitterest fruits. — John Galsworthy

I could do nothing without my problems; they toughen my mind. In fact, I tell my assistants not to bring me their successes for they weaken me, but rather to bring me their problems, for they strengthen me. — Charles Kettering

Cast off everything/everyone else has known for you./Move gratefully, from these old skins./And this time, if you toughen,/decide/for whom? — Em Claire

But don't forget who you really are. And I'm not talking about your so-called real name. All names are made up by someone else, even the one your parents gave you. You know who you really are. When you're alone at night, looking up at the stars, or maybe lying in your bed in total darkness, you know that nameless person inside you ... Your muscles will toughen. So will your heart and soul. That's necessary for survival. But don't lose touch with that person deep inside you, or else you won't really have survived at all. — Louis Sachar

To toughen up, is to calm down. — Doug Melvin

The hardship of the exercises is intended less to strengthen the back than to toughen the mind. The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has its legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone. — Steven Pressfield

Women don't want equal treatment, they couldn't handle it if they got it. It's a tough world out there. What a lot of women are actually looking for is special treatment. What women need to realise is that they have to toughen up. — Katie Hopkins

Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles. — Michel De Montaigne

I think it's great training for any comedian to start on cows. Because with cows, you expect them to be bored and just stare at you blankly. And that's exactly what you'll get at a comedy club. If you can toughen up with a cow audience, then you'll never be worried with a human audience. — Kristen Schaal

Tough guys toughen up when faced with adversity. So he flexes his gag reflex and steps inside. — Bradley Sands

The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit. — Morihei Ueshiba

Every tough situation, toughen the soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

No system of education is complete that does not harden the hands and toughen muscles, while it is also develops the intellect and enlarges the heart ... only through work do we attain the true symmetry, strength, and glory of godly manhood and womanhood. — Alexander Clark

If you are determined on the religious life, you have to toughen up your mind. You have to let it be a thouroughfare for all thoughts, and among them you must make choices. — Robertson Davies

Walter didn't know what to make of his two boys. If you looked at it a certain way, then the one who needed the beatings to toughen him up, namely Joey, never did a thing to earn a beating, because he hadn't the gumption, and the one who got the beatings learned nothing from them. Looking back on his own childhood, Walter saw a much more orderly system: His father or mother told them the rules. If they got out of line, even not intending to, they got a whipping to help them remember the next time, and they did remember the next time, and so they got fewer beatings, and so they became boys who could get the work done, and since there was plenty of it, it had to get done. That was life, as far as Walter was concerned - you surveyed the landscape and took note of what was needed, and then you did it, and the completed tasks piled up behind you like a kind of treasure, or at least evidence of virtue. What life was for Frankie he could not imagine. — Jane Smiley

Encourage your kids' artistic side. Toughen up everything else. — Michael Madsen

I was never no, never no, never enough, But I can try, I can try to toughen up. — Zooey Deschanel

Shhhh," Johnny soothed, sliding his hands up and down her back, nuzzling her hair. "Car thieves don't cry, baby. You gotta toughen up if you're gonna have a future with good old Clyde here."

"I like it when you do that."

"What?"

"Call me baby," Maggie whispered.

"You liked it when I called you Bonnie too," he replied with a smile in his voice. "Why?"

"You used to call me baby all the time. It makes me believe you can love me again."

Johnny wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and lifted her to him, kissing her tear-streaked cheeks before he touched his lips to hers.

"I'm already there Maggie. I fell in love when you begged me to help you escape the cops. I fell in love when we danced to Nat King Cole singing 'Stardust' on a moonlit beach. Hell, I fell in love when you told me how blondes spell farm."

"E-I-E-I-O," Maggie quipped wetly.

Johnny laughed and held her tightly. — Amy Harmon

That moment when she'd crouched behind the tree ... it did something to her, something that made her grow up and toughen up. But one question throbbed in her brain for a long, long time. Why? Why would Liam say something so hateful? How could he - who had tamed a stray and starving cat - be so cruel to a girl who had only ever wanted to be his friend? — Kristan Higgins

Adam was told to toughen up. Get over it. We hear this a lot. History is in the past, bad things happened but it is time to move on. But history is not past for us. Adam — Stan Grant

Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man stands the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans. — Henry David Thoreau

Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles; they toughen and make strong. — Norman Vincent Peale

Lestat: Toughen up baby. I'm looking for the eternal scum. — Anne Rice

I think too many Democrats are too wimpy. But I think they're beginning to toughen up. — Paul Begala

Stormy Llewellyn, a woman of unconventional views, believes instead that our passage through this world is intended to toughen us for the next life. She says that our honesty, integrity, courage, and determined resistance to evil are evaluated at the end of our days here, and that if we come up to muster, we will be conscripted into an army of souls engaged in some great mission in the next world. Those who fail the test simply cease to exist. — Dean Koontz

Poor Harper Seven Beckham, having to live with that name all her life. It's the Boy Named Sue syndrome; at the very least it will toughen her up. — Simon Hoggart

This life is just a bootcamp, to test and toughen us, to prepare us for the next life of service in some great adventure. Our third and eternal life comes after that. — Dean Koontz

I have that hypocrisy of a parent in that I'm like,'Come on, you've got to toughen up at the same time let me take care of that for you. — Craig Ferguson

Therefore, encourage and toughen your mind against the mishaps that afflict even the most powerful and the most successful,
For accident and illness can in a moment take away all that was built over many years.
So I declare to you: he is lord of your life that scorns his own. Be the lord of your own life therefore, by not fearing to lose it.
Since the day we were born we are being led towards the day we die: in the interim let us be courageous, and do good things. — A.C. Grayling

This world is intended to toughen us for the next life. She says that our honesty, integrity, courage, and determined resistance to evil are evaluated at the end of our days here, and that if we come up to muster, we will be conscripted into an army of souls engaged in some great mission in the next world. Those who fail the test simply cease to exist. In short, Stormy sees this life as boot camp. She calls the next life service. — Dean Koontz

To every guy who tries to say that we have already achieved equality for the sexes, if this were true, you wouldn't be told to "man up", "be a man", "stop being a p*#%y", "harden the fuck up", "toughen up", "boys don't cry", "don't be such a girl", "stop being a wimp". As long as this type of language still exists in our society, then gender equality, my friends, has in fact not been achieved after all. — Miya Yamanouchi

It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless. — L.R. Knost

We have shed many tears to toughen the soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done. — Robert Greene

London, London, London town,
You can toughen up or get thrown around. — Kano

In the end, I believe I'll enjoy war,' he says. 'Gotta toughen my spine a bit. Callous my hands. Bastards tell us it's all roses and glory.' He looks up. 'Don't you smell the roses, Reaper? — Pierce Brown

You see, dervish, it wasn't always like this. Violence wasn't my element, but it is now. When God forgets about us down here, it falls upon us common people to toughen up and restore justice. So next time you talk to him, you tell him that let him know that when he abandons his lambs, they won't meekly wait to be slaughtered. They will turn into wolves. — Elif Shafak

People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy. — William Faulkner

There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up. — Tony Benn

Constantly reemphasize to yourself the great fact that God built potential strength into your nature. By affirming it and practicing it, this basic strength will toughen up as muscles do. — Norman Vincent Peale

It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. — Seneca.

Fathers, on the other hand, were there to toughen children up, to say Walk it off when mothers would hold them if they fell. Mothers were the carrot. Fathers were the stick. — Noah Hawley

Don't be maudlin. You're a librarian, for God's sake. Toughen up. — Victoria Dahl

Discomforts are only discomforting when they're an unexpected inconvenience, an unusual annoyance, an unplanned-for irritant. Discomforts are only discomforting when we aren't used to them. But when we deal with the same discomforts every day, they become expected and part of the routine, and we are no longer afflicted with them the way we were. We forget to think about them like the daily disturbances of going to the bathroom, or brushing our teeth, or listening to noisy street traffic. Give your body the chance to harden, your blood to thicken, and your skin to toughen, and you'll find that the human body carries with it a weightless wardrobe. When we're hardy in mind and body, we can select from an array of outfits to comfortably bear most any climate. — Ken Ilgunas