A religious life is a struggle, and not a hymn. [ Mme. de Stael ]
The virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize. [ R. M. Milnes ]
Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare. [ Dryden ]
Struggle against it as thou wilt, yet heaven's ways are heaven's ways. [ Lessing ]
All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil. [ Beaconsfield ]
Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature. [ De Finod ]
For life in general, there is but one decree: youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret. [ Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) ]
In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the church, counted its martyrs by thousands. [ James A. Garfield ]
No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifices; no one ever escapes without a stain from the struggle of life. [ Renan ]
Persevere in the fight, struggle on, do not let go, think magnanimously of man and life, for man is good and life is affluent and fruitful. [ Vauvenargues ]
I struggle against an opposing current; the torrent which sweeps away others does not overpower me, and I make head against the on-rushing stream. [ Ovid ]
Everything comes and goes. Today in joy, tomorrow in sorrow. We advance, we retreat, we struggle; then, the eternal and profound silence of death! [ Victor Hugo ]
A tendency to slang, to colloquial inelegancies, and even vulgarities, is the besetting sin against which we, as Americans, have especially to guard and to struggle. [ W. D. Whitney ]
The last word
is the most dangerous of infernal machines; and husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bombshell. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
If ever this free people, if this government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office - that is a way to live without work. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
Religion is again here, for whoever will piously struggle upward, and sacredly, sorrowfully refuse to speak lies, which indeed will mostly mean refuse to speak at all on that topic. [ Carlyle ]
Providence has clearly ordained that the only path fit and salutary for man on earth is the path of persevering fortitude - the unremitting struggle of deliberate self-preparation and humble but active reliance on divine aid. [ B. L. Magoon ]
In reality, there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as you please, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself. [ Franklin ]
I pick up favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence. Of these there is a very favourite one from Thomson: Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds
And offices of life; to life itself,
With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose. [ Burns ]
Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms. It is here that art, when it knows well its power and resources, engages in a struggle with nature in which it may have the advantage. [ Victor Cousin ]
The world is divided into two armies. Men make offensive war, women defensive. Love exalts and excites the two parties. They meet hand to hand. Love throws himself into their midst, agitating his torch. But the struggle differs from other battles: instead of destroying, it multiplies the combatants. [ S. Marechal ]
Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon. [ Hillard ]
Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation. [ Washington Irving ]
Gentlemen, do you know what is the finest speech that I ever in my life heard or read? It is the address of Garibaldi to his Roman soldiers, when he told them: Soldiers, what I have to offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle and death; the chill of the cold night in the free air, and heat under the burning sun; no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, dangerous watchposts and the continual struggle with the bayonet against batteries; - those who love freedom and their country may follow me.
That is the most glorious speech I ever heard in my life. [ Kossuth ]