Hard Lessons Quotes

My nature was not originally calm,' said I. 'I have learned to appear so by dint of hard lessons and many repeated efforts. ~ Anne Bronte

Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else's happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you're not sure what the right thing is ... and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong. ~ Donna Ball

Women are like trees, growing slowly over time. So many rings creating layers of maturity as their branches spread and reach out to the sky. Motherhood prunes those branches. Sometimes it prunes them back hard and painfully. But if you let go and trust in the good of what it means to be a mother, if you can trust in the knowledge learned from the hard lessons, then faith and belief will carry you through. And in the end, you will grow fuller and more beautiful from the, sometimes harsh, pruning of motherhood. ~ P.R. Newton

Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history-the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can't seem to keep in our collective memory. ~ Hilaire Belloc

Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks. ~ Lisa Unger

We all have scars, Kere. Inside and out. Wounds that go so deep, they leave a permanent mark on us. But that doesn't make them ugly or revolting. They were hard lessons learned and for better or worse,
they changed us. No matter how hard you try to hide them, they will always be there. And I think your scars are beautiful because they are what have made you the man I care about. - Zarya Starska ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Emma Gladstone had learned a few hard lessons by the age of two-and-twenty. Charming princes weren't always what they seemed. Shining armor went out of fashion with the Crusades. And if fairy godmothers existed, hers was running several years late. Most of the time, a girl needed to rescue herself. ~ Tessa Dare

So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I try to be even-handed and fair-minded about my view of history. I don't romanticize one side and demonize the other, though I do think that if you're suffering a lot, especially in the Bob Marley sense, suffering becomes a kind of university out of which you'll learn some hard lessons. ~ Fred D'Aguiar

So he was finished with Dorin. He was not the lad he'd been when he'd entered the city. Not that he'd been some green farmhand, but he'd been untested, unbloodied . . . unready.
Not so now. Dorin was done.
Hard lessons luckily survived had put an end to that lad and his dreams. A transition from which a good few do not emerge alive. But necessary, if hard. The city had cut away the untried Dorin and trampled his dreams into the mud and the mire.
He was Dancer now, and Dancer from now on. ~ Ian C. Esslemont

I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said.
I know you didn't.
I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of.
I know it. There's hard lessons in this world.
What's the hardest?
I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back.
Yessir. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I'd learned some hard lessons in my life, but perhaps the most important one was that you have to cherish the insignificant moments you have with your most significant people. To hold onto the times when you're happy. To smile often, and laugh loudly. To enjoy the ones you love, and hold them close to your heart while you still have them. ~ Julie Johnson

The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better. ~ Charlie Munger

Trust of others is in short supply for many adult survivors, as complex trauma generally involves major relational betrayal. It is, therefore, expectable (although paradoxical) that clients with these histories are predisposed to be mistrustful at the outset of therapy, precisely because of (and in proportion to) the actual trustworthiness of the therapist. When past experiences have thought hard lessons, namely, that one can least afford to trust the people who should be most trustworthy, it stands to reason that confusion about trust results. The therapist must understand and not take offense either personally or professionally and not react judgmentally or defensively. Practically speaking, this involves the therapist being prepared to patiently and empathically respond to active or passive tests or challenges to trustworthiness as legitimate and meaningful communication that deserves a respectful reply in action as well as in words. ~ Christine A. Courtois

Don't let hard lessons harden your heart. ~ Carlos A. Rodriguez

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery. ~ Ouida

I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything ... to know what's going on so I can feel like I'm in control. ~ Joyce Meyer

The two of them prayed to Jesus that they might learn their lessons sooner rather than later, and that they would be gentle lessons rather than hard lessons. ~ Jane Smiley

Despite our disapproval with what God allows us to endure, he still remains the same God that is not interested in our convenience, as much as our character. ~ Shannon L. Alder

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it - this is a hard lesson. ~ Bruce Catton

soldiers. You learn hard lessons in battle, and you should remember, not forget, them. ~ Gray Lanter

We always hate the school room where we learn hard lessons. But then we love it, because that's the school that taught us all we know, and gave us all the strength we have. ~ Gwen Bristow

It has been a hard lesson to learn, that greatness requires suffering. ~ Kristin Cashore

It was a hard lesson to learn, but eventually I had to come to grips with the fact that I cannot solve everyone's problems and lead them to a happy, fulfilled life. They have to figure that out on their own. ~ Theo Rossi

Everything shapes you to be the person you are today. Sometimes hard lessons pay off dividends. ~ Al Jourgensen

Maybe that's what being real friends are all about - putting up with the hard lessons - both taught and learned together. ~ Jo Knowles

Among the hard lessons which varying Fortune teaches to those whom she most neglects, there is none so useful as self-control. ~ Emmuska Orczy

I always managed to get in trouble, like every kid. But I had to learn a lot of hard lessons on my own, without parents who would nurture me and guard me through that part of life, at a very young age. ~ Ted Dekker

Ana never saw the rotten apples littering the ground as she continually reached for the rare golden apple on the tree. Ana had stepped in a lot of rotten apples in her lifetime. She should have learned by now. ~ Travis Luedke

At Equator Ranch a decade before, his debut lambing had turned out only six surviving animals of four thousand ewes. Undaunted, he had burned through more of his inheritance (eighty thousand pounds, some claimed), replaced his stock, learned his hard lessons, and was now the most successful large-scale rancher in all of Kenya. Not ~ Paula McLain

Getting rich is easy and staying rich is hard ~ Sivaprakash Sidhu

Quit allowing negativity to block the positive gifts which are meant for you along with the hard lessons and tribulations. ~ Bryant McGill

I'm Perfect at Feelings,

so I have no problem telling you

why you cried over the third lost

metal or the mousetrap. I knew

that orgasms weren't your fault

and that feeling of keeping solid

in yourself but wanting an ecstatic

black hole was just bad beauty.



Certain loves were perfect

in the daytime and had every

right to express carnally behind

the copy machine and there are

no hard feelings for the boozy

sodomy and sorry XX daisy chain,

whenever it felt right for you.



And when the moment of soft

levitation with erasing hands

made you feel dirty, like

the main person to think up love

in the first place, I knew that.

It's okay, you're an innocent

with the brilliance of an animal

stuffing yourself sick on a kill.

Don't, don't feel like the runt alien

on my ship: I get you. I know

the dimensions of your wishing

and losing and don't think you

a glutton with petty beefs. But

even I, who know your triggers,



your emblematic sacs of sad fury,

I understand why the farthest fat trees

sliver down with your disappointment

and why the big sense of the world,

wrong before you, shrugs but

somewhere grasps your spinning,

stunning, alone. But you have me. ~ Brenda Shaughnessy

One of the lessons of history is that the gods can be silent in many languages. ~ Will Durant

Churches are notorious for creating competing systems, wherein unclear direction and conflicting information threaten to cause a breakdown and paralyze the ministry. Instead of replacing old systems, we tend to just download and add whatever is new to what already exists. Soon our capacity becomes fragmented and we find ourselves confronted with the signs of ineffectiveness: some ministries seem routine and irrelevant; the teaching feels too academic; calendars are saturated with mediocre programs; staff members pull in opposite directions; volunteers lack motivation; departments viciously compete for resources; and it becomes harder and harder to figure out if we are really being successful. Too many churches desperately need an upgrade. They need to reformat their hard drives and install a clean system. They need to rewrite their code so everyone is clear about what is important and how they should function. ~ Andy Stanley

When you work as hard as you can and as much as you can to make your first album, and you don't make any money, then you change things. ~ Adam Ant

As a kid, I would do all of the plays at my school, and I was notorious for being in five numbers in one show. I'd go onstage, run backstage for a wardrobe change, and then go back out onstage. I'm always trying to do more than I should but when I got my lucky break (or whatever it's called), I was prepared because I studied and worked really hard for it. ~ Chrissie Fit

I can't promise you it'll always be sweet and tender because you and I fight hard. But I'm pretty sure it won't be a horror ride either because you and I love even harder. What I can promise is you'll always mean more to me than my next breath, and it'll always be you in my life. No one else. ~ Gail McHugh

Thirrin's fighting spirit still roared within her though, and as the creature lowered its jaws towards her throat she punched it hard on the nose. The werewolf shook its head and sneezed, taken completely aback. ~ Stuart Hill

I don't like to make mistakes. Which is why I haven't been with a man before now."
He as thrown off balance so quickly and completely, he coud hear his own brain stumble. "Well,that's...that's wise."
He took one definite step back, like a chessman going from square to square.
"It's interesting that makes you nervous," she said, countering his move.
"I'm not nervous,I'm...finished up here, it seems." He tried another tactic, stepped to the side.
"Interesting," she continued, mirroring his move, "that it would make you nervous,or uneasy if you prefer, when you've been...I think it's safe to use the term 'hitting on me' since we met."
"I don't think that's the proper term at all." Since he seemed to be boxed into a corner,he decided he was really only standing his ground. "I acted in a natural way regarding a physical attraction. But-"
"And now that I've reacted in a natural way, you've felt the reins slip out of your hands and you're panicked."
"I'm certainly not panicked." He ignored the terror gripping claws into his belly and concentrated on annoyance. "Back off, Keeley."
"No." With her eyes locked on his, she stepped in.Checkmate.
His back was hard up against a stall door and he'd been maneuvered there by a woman half his weight.It was mortifying. "This isn't doing either of us any credit." It took a lot of effort when the blood was rapidly draining out of his head, but he made his voice cool and firm. "The fact is I've ret ~ Nora Roberts

They really just taught me at an early age the values of hard work. Both my parents are two of the hardest working people that I know, so that was a big foundation for me and something I really cherish and it really helped me to grow up in that kind of household. ~ Blake Griffin

This skipping is another important point. It should be done whenever a proof seems too hard or whenever a theorem or a whole paragraph does not appeal to the reader. In most cases he will be able to go on and later he may return to the parts which he skipped. ~ Emil Artin

All of my films have been very hard to understand at the script stage because they're very different. At the time I did them they were not conventional. The executives could only think in terms of what they'd already seen. It's hard for them to think in terms of what has never been done before. ~ George Lucas

I worked extra hard at my job in an effort to feel good about myself and keep depression from overtaking me. I attended the temple often. Those were things I could actually do, rather than just sit back in my misery and hope God would take it away. My ~ B. Russell McConkie

It was after midnight by a mile when I slid off the bar stool at O'Malley's and began to walk home. O'Malley's is an old Irish pub and though I wasn't Irish, nor did I drink like a lot of other newspaper reporters I knew, I stopped by for a Coke nearly every evening. I liked listening to other reporters - and cops, who also frequented O'Malley's - shoot the breeze and relate old stories that hadn't been completely true the first time they'd been told.

O'Malley's was just somewhere to go which made every guy sipping a beer or doing shots feel a little less alone in a city like Los Angeles. Some of them still had wives, but you could tell they were lonely. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been hanging around a bar at that hour; they'd have been finding solace in soft flesh and perfume. Maybe their wives would have been finding some solace too, and more of them would have stayed married. Most of those guys, cops and reporters alike, were working on their second or third marriage. I didn't think they were working hard enough, but maybe that was because I didn't have anyone to go home to. ~ Bobby Underwood

Sometimes life ask you a question, but you couldn't find answer in any book. You have to create answer yourself. ~ Salman Mansuri

He had no idea there even was a before until he crashed hard into the after. ~ Carolyn Mackler

I'm a ballplayer. I know how hard the game is ... and anybody that makes it in the Hall of Fame, I support. They become a member of our special fraternity. ~ George Brett

How would she fill the days? She had no idea. The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at ... something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. Eat sensibly. Stuff like that. ~ David Nicholls

Parents sometimes object to the amount of humor introduced into stories that are designed to teach moral or spiritual lessons. They seem to think that simple grim lecturing of children is the best way to achieve such goals. ~ Mike Berenstain

Deep within our souls we know that God exists and that He has given His law to us. We seek to suppress this knowledge in order to escape God's commands. But no matter how hard we try, we cannot silence this inner voice. It can be muffled but not destroyed. ~ R.C. Sproul

It is hard for an athlete to standout through an email, especially when his email gets mixed in with the emails coming from recruits that think they can play somewhere they really can't. That makes filtering through recruit emails an almost impossible task. ~ Billy Kennedy

Stopping a war; that is, stopping actual military combat, is not stopping a war in all its factors. During continuous hard strain a human mind can hold up; and it is truly amazing how much it can stand. Day by day, with that war-strain of worry pulling it down, it staunchly holds aloof, as a mighty oak in facing a storm. But it has a limit!! With too much too long strain, it will snap; just as that mighty oak will fall, in a long fight. ~ Ernest Vincent Wright

Which all goes to show that it is hard to hide how you feel, when mirrors are out there everywhere, just waiting to pounce. ~ Anne Nesbet

A wound not fully felt consumes from the inside. We must run very hard if we want to stay one step ahead of this pain. Exhausted, we try to bury it with drugs, alcohol, overwork, television, physical activity. We are a very creative species - we can use just about anything to anesthetize ourselves. But in doing so, we also remove ourselves from feeling the joy. ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Morgan: How fuckin' retarded do you have to be to get shit-canned from that job? How hard is it to push a fuckin' broom?
Chuckie: You got fired from pushing a broom, you little bitch.
Morgan: Yah, that was different. Management was restructurin'.
Billy: Yah, restructurin' the amount of retards they had workin' for them. ~ Matt Damon

Buy your freedom. Work really hard when you're young, save every penny, make a lot of money, and retire at 40, or 30 if you get lucky. ~ Andrew Skurka

People generally forget the things they are ashamed of, but no one ever forgets an insult. ~ Lina J. Potter

If you do something long enough, you uncover life lessons along the way, ~ Paul Baloche

I wanted to say to Governor Dean, don't be hard on yourself about hooting and hollering. If I had spent the money you did and got 18 percent, I'd still be in Iowa hooting and hollering. ~ Al Sharpton

Yoshihiro Togashi here. I'm back doing a weekly serial, and here I am publishing my first volume already. Thanks to all my readers for their support. I am entirely indebted to you. I took this picture (it is a photo of Togashi wearing a rabbit mask) at a certain party by the way, not a shady membership club. I'll work hard to crank out dozens of volumes. I promise not to complain. I won't run away. I won't lose it. I think. Maybe. ~ Yoshihiro Togashi

My Snowman sadly bowed
his head
in March, one sunny day,
and this is what he softly said
before he went away:

'In the middle of December
I was handsome, round,
and tall,
now I hardly can remember
those December days at all.
Oh my stomach's started
shrinking,
I am losing all my form,
and I'm thinking as I'm
shrinking
that I wish it weren't warm.

I can feel my shoulders
stooping
as my body's getting thin,
my nose has started
drooping
and my mouth has lost
its grin,
I am surely getting
shorter,
there is little left
of me,
my head is but a quarter
of the size it used to be.

I am getting hard of hearing
and my vision's little use,
for my ears are disappearing
and my eyes are coming loose.
Through the icy weeks
of winter
I stood prouder than a king,
now I'm thinner than
a splinter,
winter's melting into spring!' ~ Jack Prelutsky

Your true passions will rise you up before the sun, to pick you up where you left off long after the moon went to bed. When we respond to the beckon of these kinds of intrinsic dreams they will make exciting the most tedious of work, they will lighten the heaviest of burdens, and will enable us to focus with laser precision on whatever array of tasks may be at hand for their progress. ~ Connie Kerbs

The other danger is that apologists put so much effort into what they do that they may end up not so much defending the faith because they believe it is true as believing the faith is true because they have worked so hard and long to defend it. ~ Frederick Buechner

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. ~ Neil Gershenfeld

Live long, fight hard, love harder... ~ Julia Mills

The past is rich in lessons from which we would greatly profit except that the present is always so full of Special Circumstances. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Peace comes at a price, often only at the end of a hard-fought battle. ~ Toni Sorenson

Don't give up, don't loose hope, don't settle for less and keep finding answers. Better days ahead. Get out of those mess! Get those things out of your head! ~ Adedayo Olabamiji

This way of behaving, this way of feeling, so hysterical, so sad, when someone has died, I don't like at all and would like to avoid. It's not as if the whole thing has not happened before, it's not as if people have not been dying all along and each person left behind is the first person ever left behind in the world. What to make of it? Why can't everybody just get used to it? People are born and they just can't go on and on, but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it's so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you could survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don't want to go with them, you only don't want them to go. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Because I love you. I don't want to, okay? I think there are some things that are so hard, you shouldn't have to do them, only no one can take them from you. There are feelings so sick, so obviously unhealthy, you shouldn't have to feel them. But there they are. I still love you, and I'm not ever going to see you again, not ever. You did that to us. Not your dad or your family. just you. So I could hit you. I could rage at you right now, and call you every ugly name I know, and I know a lot. I could tell you how much I'm hurting, or I could get out of the car, slam the door, hitchhike to the airport because fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, West, how could you do this to me? How? ~ Robin York

(Joan,1941) She wrote me a letter asking,"How can I read it?,Its so hard." I told her to start at the beginning and read as far as you can get until you're lost. Then start again at the beginning and keep working through until you can understand the whole book. And thats what she did ~ Richard Feynman

You cannot live sheltered forever without being exposed, and at the same time be a spiritual adventurer. Be audacious. Be crazy in your own way, with that madness in the eyes of man that is wisdom in the eyes of God. Take risks, search and search again, search everywhere, in every way, do not let a single opportunity or chance that life offers pass you by, and do not be petty and mean, trying to drive a hard bargain. ~ Arnaud Desjardins

Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you. When I was a young man I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman... I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and out of my mind... Peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak, an addled mind. But as I went on...it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn't different from the others, I was the same... Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty... Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt... I re-formulated. I don't know when, date, time, all that but the change occured. Something in me relaxed, smoothed out. I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn't have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. Or a dog walking along a sidewalk. Or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful. Then...it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there w ~ Charles Bukowski

The mere exposure effect explains many facets of our lives, such as why it's so hard to find someone who can prepare our childhood favorites like Mom did, and it also holds when we see the latest fashion trends prominently featured in stores, catalogs, and finally on people we know.
In addition, when a trend emerges, it sends the message that it's becoming increasingly accepted. When we see the supplies of multiple independent retailers simultaneously shift in one way, we assume the demand has shifted as well. Of course, the change may actually be driven by the prediction of a future shift in demand, which may or may not materialize, but it still affects people's choices. ~ Sheena Iyengar

The baselines belongs to the runner, and whenever I was running the bases, I always slid hard. I wanted infielders to have that instant's hesitation about coming across the bag at second or about standing in there awaiting a throw to make a tag. There are only twenty-seven outs in a ballgame, and it was my job to save one for my team every time I possibly could. ~ Frank Robinson

Character is the virtue of hard times. ~ Charles De Gaulle

My mom would give me a piece to play, but I wouldn't do any theory because when it came time to do it I would sneak back upstairs and watch TV. So, I had these kind of nonchalant lessons for years, then it just started soaking in. ~ Vanessa Carlton

Have you thought about the Coming Out Thing? It gets complicated when you bring religion into the equation. Technically, Jews and Episcopalians are supposed to be gay-friendly, but it's hard to really know how that applies to your own parents. Like, you read about these gay kids with really churchy Catholic parents, and the parents end up doing PFLAG and Pride Parades and everything. And then you hear about parents who are totally fine with homosexuality, but can't handle it when their own kid comes out. You just never know. ~ Becky Albertalli

The beasts would not think it hard if I told them to walk on their heads. It would become their delight to walk on their heads. I am His beast, and all His biddings are joys. ~ C.S. Lewis

I just did a five-day raw-food diet, but I'll never do that again. It's really hard! I'd wake up in the morning feeling great and go to bed feeling miserable, because dinner would be cucumbers, kale, and dressing. I mean, at the end of the day, if you can't have a Girl Scout cookie and a piece of cheese, what is life all about? ~ Amanda Seyfried