Quotes by American Authors - Page 212

Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his sons the hardships that made him rich.
Robert Frost
The most valuable gift I ever received was ... the gift of insecurity ... my father left us. My mother's love might not have prepared me for life the way my father's departure did. He forced us out on the road where we had to earn our bread.
Lillian Gish
Supporting myself at an early age was the best training for life I could have possibly received.
Lea Thompson
When I was very young I tried selling used cars. It didn't last long. I guess that was my good luck too that I didn't show more promise at it or I might have been an automobile dealer.
King Vidor
I was lucky I wasn't a better boxer or that's what I'd be now - a punchy ex-pug.
Bob Hope
[A difficult childhood gave me] a kind of cocky confidence. ... I could never have so little that I hadn't had less. It took away my fear.
Jacqueline Cochran
My luck was my father not striking oil... we'd have been rich. I'd never have set out for Hollywood with my camera and I'd have had a lot less interesting life.
King Vidor
Of all the advantages which come to any young man ... poverty is the greatest.
Josiah G. Holland
It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed. ... Great necessities call out great virtues.
Abigail Adams
Adversity is another way to measure the greatness of individuals. I never had a crisis that didn't make me stronger.
Lou Holtz
Troubles cured you salty as a country ham smoky to the taste thick-skinned and tender inside.
Marge Piercy
Unless a man has been kicked around a little you can't really depend upon him to amount to anything.
William Feather
Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they possess and which they might use under appropriate circumstances.
William James
A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
Mildred W. Struven
The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.
Abigail Adams
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.
Abraham Lincoln
The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.
Gail Sheehy
Your first big trouble can be a bonanza if you live through it. Get through the first trouble and you'll probably make it through the next one.
Ruth Gordon
I think hearts are very much like glasses - if they do not break with the first ring they usually last a considerable time.
L. E. Landon
To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.
Gail Sheehy
I think my biggest achievement is that after going through a rather difficult time I consider myself comparatively sane. I'm proud of that.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Duke Ellington
Never complain about your troubles they are responsible for more than half of your income.
Robert R. Updegraff
Times of stress and difficulty are seasons of opportunity when the seeds of progress are sown.
Thomas F. Woodlock
Noble discontent is the path to heaven.
Thomas W. Higginson
Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress.
Thomas A. Edison
Woman's discontent increases in exact proportion to her development.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
There are some things you learn best in calm and some in storm.
Willa Cather
We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.
Marguerite Yourcenar
I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.
Dorothy Dix
I have always fought for ideas - until I learned that it isn't ideas but grief struggle and flashes of vision which enlighten.
Margaret Anderson
Every time you meet a situation though you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the torture of the damned once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but trouble.
Charles F. Kettering
And I think that's important to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.
E. Annie Proulx
Experience may be hard but we claim its gifts because they are real even though our feet bleed on its stones.
Mary Parker Follett
The difficulties and struggles of today are but the price we must pay for the accomplishments and victories of tomorrow.
William J. H. Boetcker
Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
Patti Smith
It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word "travel" is derived from "travail " denoting the pains of childbirth.
Jessica Mitford
Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
He disposes Doom who hath suffered him.
Emily Dickinson
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened vision cleared ambition inspired and success achieved.
Helen Keller
How sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Don't look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes you'll know you're dead.
Tennessee Williams
Suffering is also one of the ways of knowing you're alive.
Jessamyn West
If you suffer thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.
Elbert Hubbard
To live is to suffer to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Roberta Flack
Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.
Natalie Clifford Barney
Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable.
John Patrick
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Edwin H. Chapin
Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Kahlil Gibran
It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.
Dorothy Dix
There is often in people to whom "the worst" has happened an almost transcendent freedom for they have faced "the worst" and survived it.
Carol Pearson
I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows with a harp and sword in my hands.
Zora Neale Hurston
The world is a wheel always turning philosophized Mrs. Pelz. "Those who were high go down low and those who've been low go up higher."
Anzia Yezierska
Things have got to be wrong in order that they may be deplored.
Whitney Griswold
Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems ... create our courage and wisdom.
M. Scott Peck
Enemies can be an incentive to survive and become someone in spite of them. Enemies can keep you alert and aware.
Louis L'Amour
Men strive for peace but it is their enemies that give them strength and I think if man no longer had enemies he would have to invent them for his strength only grows from struggle.
Louis L'Amour
Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind.
Frank Harris
Down you mongrel Death! Back into your kennel!
Edna Saint Vincent Millay