A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement.
Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.
Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.
See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.
No power is strong enough to be lasting if it labors under the weight of fear.
It is a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but are remembering and recalling them.
There is no castle so strong that it cannot be overthrown by money.
Good looking people with strong, fluoridated teeth get things handed to them on platters.
Your brain forms roughly 10,000 new cells every day, but unless they hook up to preexisting cells with strong memories, they die. Serves them right.
Shame isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel. “You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know,” Haymitch says.
I press my ear against his chest, to the spot where I always rest my head, where I know I will hear the strong and steady beat of his heart. Instead, I find silence.
Sometimes when I’m alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena.
The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I’m the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying.
I knew it. In this way, Peeta’s not hard to predict. While I was wallowing around on the floor of that cellar, thinking only of myself, he was here, thinking of me. Shame isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel.
You’re strong – you’re so, so strong. It’s why I love you.
Propriety’s never been Adrian’s strong suit.
And I started to cry again, realizing that it must be changing him, too, this man who was kind enough to be a soul but strong as only a human could be.
With our rarely changing temperaments strong emotions can alter us in permanent ways. But he said I did not need to worry about that part – you had already altered me so completely.
That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.