Love Through Struggle Quotes

Uncertainty and failure might look like the end of the road to you. But uncertainty is a part of life. Facing uncertainty and failure doesn't always make people weaker and weaker until they give up. Sometimes it wakes them up, and it's like they can see the beauty around them for the first time. Sometimes losing everything makes you realize how little you actually need. Sometimes losing everything sends you out into the world to breathe in the air, to pick some flowery weeds, to take in a new day.

Because this life is full of promise, always. It's full of beads and dolls and chipped plates; it's full of twinklings and twinges. It is possible to admit that life is a struggle and also embrace the fact that small things - like sons who call you and beloved dogs in framed pictures and birds that tell you to drink your fucking tea - matter. They matter a lot.

Stop trying to make sense of things. You can't think your way through this. Open your heart and drink in this glorious day. You are young, and you will find little things that will make you grateful to be alive. Believe in what you love now, with all of your heart, and you will love more and more until everything around you is love. Love yourself now, exactly as sad and scared and flawed as you are, and you will grow up and live a rich life and show up for other people, and you'll know exactly how big that is.

Let's celebrate this moment together. There are twinklings and twinges, right here, ~ Heather Havrilesky

The cinema that I make is a cinema about people, emotion, humanity and passion. It's not just about what they struggle through, but what they live for. That's what I love. The music they love, the people they love, the clothing, the hair and the life that they love ~ David O. Russell

Real love is sometimes painful. It isn't just the highest of the high - it's also the lowest of the low. It's being on that bottom rung, holding on with half a finger as you struggle to breathe through the pain. ~ Ella Fox

Genes, I have learned, do not make a family. Families are the people that stick around through good and bad times. Sadness is a part of life. Choosing to be happy and see the glass half full is a struggle we all must make. ~ Jaycee Dugard

Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There's more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world. The refugee in Syria doesn't benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who's going through a divorce. Yes, perspective is critical. But I'm a firm believer that complaining is okay as long as we piss and moan with a little perspective. Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us. 8. ~ Brene Brown

[The humanities] invite - they compel - us to confront the truth about ourselves and help us to inhabit with greater understanding the disjointed condition of longing and defeat that defines the human condition. Achilles' reflections on honor and memory and the fleeting beauty of youth; Shakespeare's defense of love against the powers of "sluttish time" Kant's struggle to put our knowledge of certain things on an unchallengeable foundation so as to place the knowledge of others forever beyond reach; Caravaggio's painting of the sacrifice of Isaac, which depicts a confusion of loves that defeats all understanding; and so on endlessly through the armory of humanistic works: the subject is always the same. The subject is always man, whose nature it is to yearn to be more than he is. ~ Charles Murray

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities. Those they love are taken from them and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last - the only unpoisoned gift ever had for them - and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that they have existed – a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place and copies all they did and goes along the same profitless road and vanishes as they vanished - to make room for another and another and a million other myriads to follow the same arid path through the same desert and accomplish what the first myriad and all the myriads that came after it accomplished - nothing! ~ Mark Twain

She too had been a child born of storms, he thought, as had he, as had Will. All three had risen in love through their struggles to find happiness - and without the struggle would the happiness have been so great? ~ Cassandra Clare

All of us struggle to realize something Patrice spent years telling me, as I took on one position or another: "It's not about you, dear." She often needed to remind me that, whatever people were feeling-happy, sad, frightened, or confused-it was unlikely it had anything to do with me. They had received a gift, or lost a friend, or gotten a medical test result, or couldn't understand why their love wasn't calling them back. It was all about their lives, their troubles, their hopes and dreams. Not mine. The nature of human existence makes it hard for us-or at least for me-to come to that understanding naturally. After all, I can only experience the world through me. That tempts all of us to believe everything we think, everything we hear, everything we see, is all about us. I think we all do this.

But a leader constantly has to train him- or herself to think otherwise. This is an important insight for a leader, in two respects. First, it allows you to relax a bit, secure in the knowledge that you aren't that important. Second, knowing people aren't focused on you should drive you to try to imagine what they are focused on. I see this as the heart of emotional intelligence, the ability to imagine the feelings and perspective of another "me". Some seem to be born with a larger initial deposit of emotional intelligence, but all of us can develop it with practice. ~ James Comey

And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play. ~ Emile Zola

The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough. Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There's more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world. The refugee in Syria doesn't benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who's going through a divorce. Yes, perspective is critical. But I'm a firm believer that complaining is okay as long as we piss and moan with a little perspective. Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us. ~ Brene Brown

You struggle because you're locating all of the magic in your life outside of yourself. When you are loved, then you are lovable. When you are left behind, you are unlovable. When you "arrive" at some point of success and fame as a writer, you will be worthy. Until then, you are worthless.

As long as you imagine that the outside world will one day deliver to you the external rewards you need to feel happy, you will always perceive your survival as exhausting and perceive your life as a long slog to nowhere. Instead, you have to savor the tiny struggles of the day: The cold glass of water after a long run. The hot bath after hours of digging through the dirt. The satisfaction of writing a good sentence, a good paragraph. You MUST feel these things, because these aren't small rewards on the path to some big reward; these tiny things are everything. Savoring these things requires tuning in to your feelings, and it requires loving yourself instead of shoving your nose into your own question marks hour after hour, day after day.

You are not lost. You are here. Stop abandoning yourself. Stop repeating this myth about love and success that will land in your lap or evade you forever. Build a humble, flawed life from the rubble, and cherish that. There is nothing more glorious on the face of the earth than someone who refuses to give up, who refuses to give in to their most self-hating, discouraged, disillusioned self, and instead learns, slowly and painfully, ho ~ Heather Havrilesky

Oh, maybe it started innocently,
with a joke, with coquetry, with amorous play, maybe, indeed, with an atom, but
this atom of lie penetrated their hearts, and they liked it. Then sensuality was
quickly born, sensuality generated jealousy, and jealousy - cruelty. . . Oh, I don't
know, I don't remember, but soon, very soon, the first blood was shed; they were
astonished and horrified, and began to part, to separate. Alliances appeared, but
against each other now. Rebukes, reproaches began. They knew shame, and shame
was made into a virtue. The notion of honor was born, and each alliance raised its
own banner. They began tormenting animals, and the animals withdrew from them
into the forests and became their enemies. There began the struggle for separation,
for isolation, for the personal, for mine and yours. They started speaking different
languages. They knew sorrow and came to love sorrow, they thirsted for suffering
and said that truth is attained only through suffering. Then science appeared
among them. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Love is tricky. It is never mundane or daily. You can never get used to it. You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you. You can never balk. It moves you like the tide. It takes you out to sea, then lays you on the beach again. Today's struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens. You can run from it but you can never say no. It includes everyone. ~ Amy Tan

Men,you say you want a strong, intelligent, truly independent woman who wants you rather than needs you, who inspires you, who pushes you towards being yourself, who can stick by you through the hardest times, and who can be your rock through life's obstacles.
But you need to know that a truly strong, independent woman does not walk through life with her heart wide open. She has had to put up walls to block toxicity to obtain her strength. She is skeptical and always on alert from a lifetime of defense against predators. She is going to be a bit jaded, a little cynical, and a little scary because those qualities come with the struggle of obtaining that strength that gravitates you. She is going to doubt and question your good intentions because it has become her adaptability instincts that have allowed her to thrive.
She is not a ball of sunshine. She has flaws. She has a past. She has her demons. She knows better than to just let down her barriers for you simply because you voice a desire to enter. You have to prove your right of entrance. She will assume the worst of you because the worst has happened. If you want her to see otherwise, prove her wrong. ~ Maggie Georgiana Young

I'm drawn to stories about ordinary people who get tangled up in an extraordinary event or idea or emotion. I'm not saying I don't love films about super-people or super-doctors, but my preference is for stories about how we get through this life, what it is to be human, because I'm always struggling with it myself. ~ Sophie Okonedo

You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear. ~ Henri Nouwen

Becoming aware of our inner man and woman means to discover the roots and creative potential of both the male and female aspect within ourselves. Becoming aware of the inner man and woman means to understand that they have different visions of life. It means to understand that they have different perspectives and views of life. The inner man and woman are our two wings of love and freedom. Through awareness, acceptance and understanding, we can allow our two wings to develop in a deep and natural harmony. In the world today, a one-sided development of the male side leads to destructivity. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, exhaustion and a separation from life. A one-sided development of the female side leads to passivity and dependence. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

There's a Chinese word that means "soul sister," and that is the word I would use to address you in my heart. Listen to me, soul sister: Fate or luck or destiny already put you through hell once. Please don't make it worse by condemning yourself. There is no choice that would have left you feeling no guilt. Every time I watch Adam struggle to speak, every time I see another child laugh and point at him, every time I watch his face fall as he realizes he is not going to be treated like the other kids, I feel wrenched by guilt just as you did when you heard my story. Life is hard. We make the best choices we can. Condemnation, whether it comes from around you or inside you, only robs the world of another dram of compassion. God knows, we need all the compassion we can get. If you promise to try to forgive yourself, I'll try to forgive myself as well. I think, in my heart of hearts, that there is nothing for either one of us to forgive. ~ Martha Beck

Sometimes it takes a knock in life to make us sit up and grab life. And I had just undergone the mother of all knocks.
But out of that despair, fear, and struggle came a silver lining--and I didn't even know it yet.
What I did know was that I needed something to give me back my hope. My sparkle. My life. I found that something in my Christian faith, in my family, and also in my dreams of adventure.
My Christian faith says that I have nothing ever to fear or worry about. All is well.
At that time, in and out of hospital, it reminded me that, despite the pain and despair, I was held and loved and blessed--my life was secure through Jesus Christ.
That gift of grace has been so powerful to me ever since.
My family said something very similar: "Bear, you are an idiot, but we love you anyway, forever and always."
That meant the world to me and gave me back some of the confidence that I was struggling to find again.
Finally, I had my not insubstantial dreams of adventure. And those dreams were beginning to burn bright once more.
You see, I figure that life is a gift. I was learning that more than anyone.
My mum always taught me to be grateful for gifts. And as I slowly began to recover my strength and confidence, I realized that what mattered was doing something bold with that present.
A gift buried under a tree is wasted.
Alone one night in bed, I made a verbal, out-loud, conscious decision, that if I recovered well enough ~ Bear Grylls

She loved Bram in a clear-eyed way she'd never loved her ex-husband, no rose-colored glasses or mindless giddiness, no Cinderella fantasies or false certainty that he'd put her life in order. What she felt for Bram was messy, honest, and soul-deep. He felt like ... part of her, the best and the worst. Like someone she wanted to struggle through life with; share triumphs and catastrophes; share holidays, birthdays, every days ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The longer I am in this work, the more I realize that intellectual struggles are merely the hazardous waste of life, blocking the heart from truth. The task of apologetics is to carefully remove that hazardous material and keep it from igniting into a destructive fire. Once that is done, the way to the heart is always through the way of the Cross, God's love for each and every one of us. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Nihilism is a disease of the soul. It can never be completely cured, and there is always the possibility of relapse. There is always a chance for conversion
a chance for people to believe that there is hope for the future and a meaning to struggle ... Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul. This turning is done through one's own affirmation of one's worth
an affirmation fueled by the concern of others. A love ethic must be at the center of a politics of conversion.
A love ethic has nothing to do with sentimental feelings or tribal connections. Rather it is a last attempt at generating a sense of agency among a downtrodden people. ~ Cornel West

In the lassitude after love Odysseus asks Circe, "What is the way to the land of the dead?"

Circe answers, "You are muffled in folds of heavy fabric. You close your eyes against the rough cloth and though you struggle to free yourself you can barely move. With much thrashing and writhing, you manage to throw off another layer, but find that not only is there another one beyond it, but that the weight bearing you down has scarcely decreased. With dauntless spirit you continue to struggle. By infinitesimal degrees, the load becomes lighter and your confinement less. At last, you push away a piece of coarse, heavy cloth and, relieved, feel that it was the last one. As it falls away, you realize you have been fighting through years. You open your eyes. ~ Zachary Mason

Rite To Ancestors:

Hail to those who have passed through the veil
From Life to Death, to Earth from Breath.
Hail to those who suffered to gift me with blood,
Hail to those who survived to gift me with body,
Hail to those whose songs gift me with inspiration.
Hail to those whom I knew and loved in life,
Whose memory I carry with me like a word of comfort,
Hail to those who left this land long ago,
Whose names I honor like a word of hope,
Or if I know not their names, whose lives I honor still.
I live and love because you lived and loved,
I speak and struggle because you spoke and struggled,
You live in me, as I will live in those who come after me.
Grant me the patience, O my beloved Dead,
To see the long view, and remember that what I do
Affects a million million souls I will never know. ~ Galina Krasskova

It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth. There is ground for hope in the fact that among millions of decent, hard-working people there are only a few plague-ridden individuals, who do untold harm by appealing to the dark, dangerous drives of the armored average man and mobilizing him for political murder. There is but one antidote to the average man's predisposition to plague: his own feelings for true life. The life force does not seek power but demands only to play its full and acknowledged part in human affairs. It manifests itself through love, work and knowledge. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Taking care of those you love should never feel like a burden to you. It should never be a burden to you. If it is, you don't have the right heart about it, and you're taking all those beautiful things around you for granted. Sure, everything won't always be roses, but a family is one of the most precious things you can have.

You might have to work your fingers to the bone. You might struggle. You might have to get up and smile, even when you don't feel like smiling. You may have to tell your family that things will be okay, even if you feel like you are falling apart. However, you're not the only one who sees what you're going through. You are never alone, and happiness is something you can choose even when things are going in the opposite direction of where you thing you need to be headed. Choose to see the blessings around you, instead of the bad things. It's a privilege, and something you may not always have, so treasure it. Cherish every moment like the gift it is, and work with a generous and privileged heart.

(Note: Inspired by the quote in the movie 'Me Again' that says, "It's not a burden, but a privilege.") ~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

Having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for. ~ Charles Bukowski

It is the responsibility, yet the individual choice, of each of us to use the light we have to dispel the work of darkness, because if we do not, the power of falsehood rises. Through our inaction it becomes stronger, and a more potent force. It can even lead to the dimming of the light of all humanity born on this planet. That is why we struggle. That is why we fight to contribute to the confirmation of what is good, to seal our compact with love within our own lives and within our world. ~ John Lewis

If you haven't been journaling through this, now is a good time to start. One day, you and people who love and loved you and people who will never know you may want to look back to understand how you survived. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

We must love because we are loved by God. We must be conscious of death if we are to have a proper understanding of life. We must struggle in order to grow, but without falling into the trap of the power we gain through that struggle, because we know that power is worthless. Finally, we must accept that our eternal soul is, at this moment, caught in the web of time with all its opportunities and its limitations. ~ Paulo Coelho

The community knows that the fundamental questions of life can only be looked at in a spirit of peace and inner freedom. Nobody can force anyone else to love and to walk to freedom. Militants for a cause will tend to be organized for a struggle which they hope to win; they will seek to impose their way aggressively. Frequently they seek outward change more than inward change.

. . . As long as there are fears and prejudices in the human heart, there will be war and bitter injustice. It is only when hearts are healed, and become loving and open, that the great political problems will be solved. . . . As fears and prejudices diminish, and trust in God and others grows, the community can radiate and witness to a style and quality of life which will bring a solution to the troubles of our world.

The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace in community, through acceptance of others as they are, and through constant forgiveness, is to work for peace in the world and for true political solutions; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. ~ Jean Vanier

There is no need to drag yourself through life, let go of the struggle & give yourself the time & love to find balance. ~ Leon Brown

What is happiness? What is a good life? Is it a life without suffering? Something like that doesn't exist ... Life is filled with suffering and sorrow. So it's no wonder that to those who fear suffering, the world seems like a living hell! And still ... those who bravely keep going and try to push through this hell ... They'll find that it's only a small stretch of the road to happiness. The truly great are those who never lose hope, even when thrown into hell ... And as long as we have faith in ourselves, even hell itself can be a paradise! ~ Naoyuki Ochiai

We're all going through shit.
Each one of us, in our own way.

Let's remember that, when we see each other on the street,
in stores, at work, and at home. Everywhere.

Being human comes with lots of complications and probably too many hardships. We all struggle.

So let's be good to one another, and cut each other some slack. ~ Scott Stabile

All those beings who revealed truths to me and who were no longer there, seemed to me to have lived a life from which I alone profited and as though they had died for me. It was sad for me to think that in my book, my love which was once everything to me, would be so detached from a being that various readers would apply it textually to the love they experienced for other women. But why should I be horrified by this posthumous infidelity, that this man or that should offer unknown women as the object of my sentiment, when that infidelity, that division of love between several beings began with my life and long before I began writing? I had indeed suffered successively through Gilberte, through Mme de Guermantes, through Albertine. Successively also I had forgotten them and only my love, dedicated at different times to different beings, had lasted. I had anticipated the profanation of my memories by unknown readers. I was not far from being horrified with myself as, perhaps, some nationalist party might be in whose name hostilities had been provoked and who alone had benefited from a war in which many noble victims had suffered and died without even knowing the issue of the struggle which, for my grandmother, would have been such a complete reward. And the single consolation she never knew, that at last I had set to work, was, such being the fate of the dead, that though she could not rejoice in my progress she had at least been spared consciousness of my long inactivity, of t ~ Marcel Proust

I'm alive and capable of love, and love is a fucking river. It's never ending and it flows through us, all around us, keeps us alive and decadent, fierce from struggle and genuine in our vulnerability. I ~ Daniel Jose Older

For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and valor. Of the endless fluid passage of the humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who - one word- love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him, he felt a warning, a shaft of terror. ~ Carson McCullers

Never underestimate the power of kindness. It is very contagious. A person whose heart is saddened by the troubles of this world, the loss of a friend or family member, a hard days work, or the struggle of provision can experience joy through a simple act of kindness. Romans 12: 10-12, Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continually steadfastly in prayer. ~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across the millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Tristan?"
He turned his face to me, and it was streaked with tears. I wanted to wipe them away, tell him that everything would be all right, but my body was locked stiff with pain.
"Promise me you'll get better," he whispered. "Tell me you'll grow strong again. That you'll gallop on horseback through summer meadows. Dance in spring rains and let snowflakes melt on your tongue in winter. That you'll travel wherever the wind takes you. That you'll live." He stroked my hair. "Promise me."
Confusion crept over me. "You'll be with me, though. You'll do those things too?"
He kissed my lips, silencing my questions. "Promise me."
"No," I said, struggling against him.. "No, you said you were coming with me. You said. You promised." He had to be coming with me - he said he was and Tristan couldn't lie. Wouldn't lie.
He got to his feet and stepped into the water. I tried to struggle, but he was too strong. "Tristian, no, no, no!" I tried to scream, but I couldn't. I tried to hold on to him, but my fingers wouldn't work. The cold of the water bit into my skin and I sobbed, terrified. "You said you would never leave me!"
He stopped, the weight of his sorrow greater than any mountain. "And if I had the choice, I never would. I love you, Cécile. I will love you until the day I take my last breath and that is the truth. " He kissed me hard. "Forgive me. ~ Danielle L. Jensen

It's a struggle but you have to keep going. ~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love. ~ Laura Kasischke

Dialogue is a token of genuine Christian love, because it indicates our steadfast resolve to rid our minds of the prejudices and caricatures that we may entertain about other people, to struggle to listen through their ears and look through their eyes so as to grasp what prevents them from hearing the gospel and seeing Christ, to sympathize with them in all their doubts, fears and "hang-ups." For such sympathy will involve listening, and listening means dialogue. It is once more the challenge of the incarnation, to renounce evangelism by inflexible slogans, and instead to involve ourselves sensitively in the real dilemmas that people face. ~ John R.W. Stott

Through the substance of human flesh flows life. Life is more than matter. Religions that attempt to keep the body sacred while denying the Creator's hand are in the same boat as skeptics who try to protect life while saying it is nothing more than matter.

All the desacralizing that has engulfed our culture lies in this very struggle to understand the place and sacredness of the body. The right to every individual life, even the one still in the mother's womb; the pleasure and consummation of sexual delights, reserved for the sanctity of marriage; the injunction against suicide; the care and protection of one's health; the injunction against killing; and the command to love others more than we love ourselves and to work for their good-all of these flow from the fact that this body is a dwelling place for God. Our world would be a different place if we comprehended this sobering privilege.

Having lost this truth, what we are left with? Pornography and the cruel degradation of men, women, and children; death in the womb in the name of personal rights; the breakdown of the family for myriad reasons; the profanation of sex in our entertainment industry; violence in unprecedented proportions. One can only weep for the bleeding and loss. In losing the high value that God has placed on the body, we are in free fall, at the mercy of greed, cruelty, and lust. ~ Ravi Zacharias