Quotes for Hard Times

[Michio-kun]

This thread is for good quotes relevant to those times when life gets hard. Hopefully this will be of some help to you.

I have personally learned more from a good book before bed than all my years of schooling. An ounce words from a wise author read in the privacy of your own home is infinitely greater than any damned textbook in the confines of a school building. Here is a very small list of books that have helped me (also to get you started if you have no ideas):

The Conquest of Happiness - Bertrand Russell
The Consolations of Philosophy - Alain de Botton
Apology - Plato (See The Trial of Socrates inside the book)
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
The Prophet, The Eye of the Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning - Viktor Frankl
Walden - Henry Thoreau

Avoid self-help assholes at all costs. They get "successful" by blowing hot air up people's asses. They are also generally "happy" through the privilege of having been able to live a mostly comfortable life.

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* To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. - Soren Kierkegaard

* Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. - Soren Kierkegaard

* The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. - Friedrich Nietzsche

* On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. - Friedrich Nietzsche

* One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. - Friedrich Nietzsche

* Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one's heart prizes them. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

* He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy. - Socrates

* Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. - Lucius Seneca

* Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war. - Lucius Seneca

* Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. - Lucius Seneca

* When someone older than you tells you to be patient, don't listen to them. - ???

* Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. - Marcus Aurelius

* When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. - Marcus Aurelius

* To live without hope is to cease to live. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

* To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness. - Ivan Turgenev

* Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. - Leo Tolstoy

* If you want to be happy, be. - Leo Tolstoy

* Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life far the greatest is the possession of Friendship. - Epicurus

* The greater difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. - Epicurus

* I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. - Henry Thoreau

* Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. - Henry Thoreau

* The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. - Mark Twain

* The best revenge is to be unlike he who performed the injury. - Marcus Aurelius

* Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. - Mark Twain

* Toleration is the best religion. - Victor Hugo

* People do not lack strength; they lack will. - Victor Hugo

* Many great actions are committed in small struggles. - Victor Hugo

* Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. - Emily Dickinson

* Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

* He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

* Nothing external to you has any power over you. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

* The shallow believe in luck. The strong believe in cause and effect. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

* The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. - Robert Frost

* In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. - Robert Frost

* Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble. - Arabic Proverb

* The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity. - Albert Einstein

* I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. - Aristotle

* Well begun is half done. - Aristotle

* When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,
All that was theirs dies and is buried with them. - Euripides

* Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there. - Marcus Aurelius

* I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings. - Wolfgang Mozart

* I am my nearest neighbor. - Cornelius Tacitus

* Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. - Winston Churchill

* Wish not so much to live long as to live well. - Benjamin Franklin

* Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade? - Benjamin Franklin

* Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue... as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself. - Viktor Frankl

* Good habits result from resisting temptation. - Ancient Proverb

* Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things. - Denis Diderot

* In adversity remember to keep an even mind. - Horace

* Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity. - Albert Schweitzer

* You don't live in a world all alone. - Albert Schweitzer

[Hanny]

I loves you.

[SoulRiser]

Awesome list.

[cryptevah72]

i like those, thanx

[fragile-esteem]

these are cool!

[Insert user name here]

Those quotes are great!

[Hanny]

Can I add a few? These quotes were in a book called 6699, or more accurately ,,'' which I think it's meant to look like, by the late Magnus Magnusson. I recommend it.

"What men desire most is a virgin who is a whore." -Edward Dahlberg

"The orgasm has replaced the criss as the focus of longing and the image of fulfilment." - Malcolm Muggeridge

"That woman speaks eighteen languages and she can't say 'No' in any of them. " Dorothy Parker

"You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you're older. Little things like being spanked evey day by a middle aged woman - stuff you pay good money for in later life." Emo Phillips [I really like that one!]

"It's so long since I've had sex I've forgotten who ties up who." - Joan Rivers

"[The 11-plus] split me from a girl I carried a torch for, She passed, I failed. She went to grammar school. I sent her a love letter telling her I missed her - She sent it back with the spelling mistakes corrected." John Prescott [English politician]

"My problems all started with my early education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers." Woody Allen

"I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like 'What I'm going to be if I grow up'. " Lenny Bruce

"Try not to have a good time... this is supposed to be educational!" Charles M Schulz

"It were better to perish than to continue schoolmastering [teaching]" Thomas Carlyle

"The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass , for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an advocation." H L Mencken

"There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate." -Anon

"Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy that the phone is for you." Fran Lebowitz

"Don't laugh at youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own." Logan Pearsall Smith

[SoulRiser]

Those are really cool too... but in a more funny sort of way.

[Hanny]

they are more lighthearted.

[Steven]

my favorite quote "Don't worry, be happy!"

People are worring everyday about everything: worrried about how their kids will grow up, worried about tomorow (some religious people actually believe that if 'God' wants to end their life, he can do so that they won't live to the next day), worried about the enviroment etc. (the planet is fine... it isn't going anywhere... WE are... we're going away, and we wont leave much of a trace either, thank God for that )

I say enjoy the life while it lasts. Be free to do whatever you want, as long as your actions dont make other people's life harder. Always smile after you cry, because at the end of the tunnel there's a light. Try to look on the bright side of things

[Ahab]

"Stop quoting people and stop thinking you're going to do shit, faggot." - A comedian

[thewake]

Some of my favorite quotes:

"Vēnī, vīdī, vīcī."
-Julius Caesar

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts."
- William Shakespeare

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death!"
-Patrick Henry

And, yes, the obligatory Chuck Norris joke:
Chuck Norris' iPod came with a real charger instead of just a USB cord

[monkey]

You can get a lot more with a kind word and a gun. Then just a kind word. Al capone

one of my fav's

[sparkyroxs]

awesome quotes

[Rebelnerd]

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
-Benjamin Franklin

[HeartofShadows]

It doesn't matter if your pretty, ugly, fat, skinny, rich or poor.
Everyone dies.. And a corpse can't laugh..

-Eddie Dowboski

[i-am-the-liquor]

you have to be strong, you have to be able to block out all emotion, you have to have the willingness to do this, you have to do this no matter the cost , fuck the people around you, they do not matter, even if you tramp on them in the way, you have suceeded- moi

[Vatman]

therenagadeoffunk Wrote:you have to be strong, you have to be able to block out all emotion, you have to have the willingness to do this, you have to do this no matter the cost , fuck the people around you, they do not matter, even if you tramp on them in the way, you have suceeded- moi

That is a horrible horrible quote.

Letting your emotions run freely doesn't make someone weak, not being able to face those feelings does...

[i-am-the-liquor]

no, emotions interfere with modren life. you have to be cold to get through this.

[Vatman]

therenagadeoffunk Wrote:no, emotions interfere with modren life. you have to be cold to get through this.

*blinks*
Unless you have a career that is really depressing. Like for example mortician or surgeon....I don't see why you need to be cold to get through life. I pity you if that truly is your belief.

[rocker guy]

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.-Jimi Hendrix

[SurvivalWarrior]

Damn great quotes guys this will always be in my head whenever in a situation against the enemy.

He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy. - Socrates

just great, just so damn bloody great!

[rocker guy]

God is the only way to love- Ozzy

[Steven]

rocker guy Wrote:When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.-Jimi Hendrix

i first saw this in Zeitgeist Addendum... one of my fav. quotes

[.xstrike-anywherex.]

"All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land" - Jack Kerouac.

[rocker guy]

I pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday, I get on my knees and pray we dont get fooled again. -Roger Daltrey (the who)

[youvebeenthunderstruck]

i-am-the-liquor Wrote:you have to be strong, you have to be able to block out all emotion, you have to have the willingness to do this, you have to do this no matter the cost , fuck the people around you, they do not matter, even if you tramp on them in the way, you have suceeded- moi

quoting yourself = fucking fail.

[random_name]

rocker guy Wrote:When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.-Jimi Hendrix

i love this quote.

[i-am-the-liquor]

i-am-the-liquor Wrote:you have to be strong, you have to be able to block out all emotion, you have to have the willingness to do this, you have to do this no matter the cost , fuck the people around you, they do not matter, even if you tramp on them in the way, you have suceeded- moi

[rocker guy]

“I'm gonna be a superstar musician, kill myself and go out in a flame of glory, just like Jimi Hendrix”

“I'd rather be hated for hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”

“My generation's apathy. I'm disgusted with it. I'm disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whining about for years.”

All by Kurt Cobain. Amazing, amazing man.