Quotes about Difficulty

People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.

Know that it is good to work. Work with love, and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

When life makes us face difficult situations—such as a personal loss—we have to understand that eternity is taking one more step.

No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to save them.

The right art is purposeless, aimless!  The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.

Life is hard?  True - but let's love it anyhow though it breaks every bone in our bodies.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

When you come up against a difficulty and there is confusion and misunderstanding, go into your innermost sanctuary

Just consider for a minute: look at the Many, the majoritarian cattle in every form of society who are governed by their own irrationalist beliefs and psychological needs and forces of social coordination with others (doxai). Taking control of the Many's always turbulent irrationalisms is child's play. They are the strata, the type most susceptible to enslavement not for accidental but for essential reasons. There is nothing whatsoever difficult in mastering or controlling them, and therefore it cannot be respected as any sort of value, especially not an aristic value. Values as ZARATHUSTRA argues are every people's ultimate concept of what is most difficult of all for them. What Nietzsche esteems, what in modern circumstances has come to seem "superhuman," is the aristic drive to accomplish what one judiciously recognizes as most difficult for oneself. "Power" is the natural reward or concomitant of those who struggle aristically to achieve the most contra-natural thing of all for human beings, self-mastery, the harnessing and knowing of the obscure forces that no one is in control of by birthright. There is no honor or valor in triumphing over defenseless and witless mentalities, regardless of the mass-numbers involved or the prodigious "power" (in the modern -- banausic -- sense) that results.

God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.

I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

Difficulties make you a jewel.

Even falling flat on your face is still moving forward.

“In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive. ”

If I feel depressed I will sing.
If I feel sad I will laugh.
If I feel ill I will double my labor.
If I feel fear I will plunge ahead.
If I feel inferior I will wear new garments.
If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice.
If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come.
If I feel incompetent I will think of past success.
If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals.
Today I will be the master of my emotions.

“In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive. ”

I will find a path...or make one!

My throat was parched and my entire body was leprous with cuts, yet my mind was exceedingly clear. I knew I was in deep s**t. I didn’t know how deep--just that I still hadn’t touched bottom.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

I was in rehearsals, waiting behind a door to come out while a couple onstage were having a row. They started throwing furniture and a chair lodged in front of the door.

My cue came and I could only get halfway in. I stopped and said, 'I can't get in. The chair's in the way.'

And the producer said, 'Use the difficulty.'

I said, 'What do you mean?'

And he said, 'Well, if it's a drama [you're acting in], pick up the chair and smash it. If it's a comedy, fall over it.'

This idea stuck in my mind, and I taught it to my children -- that any situation in life that's negative, there is something positive you can do with it.

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.  Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the  first time we see how beautiful they are." and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

What's difficult in life is to stay centered when somebody does or says something that tempts us to close our hearts because their heart was closed. That is hard. But that is also how we grow. We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated, not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by the constant daily application of the best you have within you.

Don't duck the most difficult problems. That just ensures that the hardest part will be left when you are most tired. Get the big one done-it's downhill from then on.

The easiest thing in the world is to be you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.