What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? You only truly, deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.
There are no happy endings.
It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.
Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
Things are rough all over.
Life is unfair. And it’s not fair that life is unfair.
Sometimes in life, we need a few bad days in order to keep the good ones in perspective.
Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.
Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That’s when you shout, “Do your worst, for I will do mine!” and you will be remembered forever.
This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.
I like to use the hard times of the past to motivate me today.
No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you.
Heroes aren’t always the ones who win. They’re the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don’t give up. That’s what makes them heroes.
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
Overcoming difficulties leads to courage, self-respect, and knowing yourself.
Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy. “Easy” doesn’t enter into grown-up life.
Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.
There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.