Mettle Quotes

Thankfully existing only in SMALL pockets within our discipline, is "intellectual" snobbery. It's a hushed but ugly truth that people are made to feel not worthy to be among a certain set – didn't attend the right school or don't have the requisite abbreviations to follow their name. I know what that feels like. Good thing I'm pigheaded, have a bigger vision and committed to my craft, or I would've succumbed to it long ago. That is why when I meet an emerging writer who's serious about developing their craft, I try to encourage them as much as I can. I say IGNORE the highbrow cliques and prove your mettle by growing, accepting balanced feedback and most of all, creating work that will stand the test of time. Period. ~ Sandra Sealy

Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be. ~ Nelson Mandela

Achievement is not last, disappointment is not deadly: It is the mettle to proceed with that matters. ~ Winston Churchill

I have not harmed her. I have not allowed harm to come to her. It's more than her lot has ever offered me, and English has seen what befalls them when they press the boot on our necks. She has survived the wages of justice through luck, mettle, and wit enough to open her eyes.
English finally sees.
If I'm to be ruled, may it be by those who see. ~ J. Anderson Coats

Many words made no sense to me; it was a particular kind of language, highly stylized, while at the same time much of the dialogue between officers seemed informal, even casual. What was at once evident was Captain Janeway's love of science, her unusual friendship with the Vulcan Tuvok, her need for adventure, and her mettle. In the pilot script, her name was Elizabeth Janeway, and although I knew I had my work cut out for me, I felt an instant and natural affinity with this woman. I liked her style. ~ Kate Mulgrew

Turn off your computer and go out of doors. Dig a large enough hole to transplant a mature apple tree. Nurture the tree, feed it, coddle it so that its fruit will be ample, bright and firm. Practice open-hand strikes against the rough bark of the trunk until it's time to harvest. Choose the champion of your apple crop, pluck it from the tree, and beat yourself about the face and tits with it until your mettle will suffice. ~ Nick Offerman

Strength is not merely proved by how much blood one has spilt, how many foes defeated, or how many battles won. Sometimes, living day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and minute-to-minute is a truer sign of one's mettle. The ticking of the clock and the passage of time wear away courage more surely than any mortal blade might do - ~ Greg James

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober. ~ Michel De Montaigne

As a blacksmith uses heat to temper steel, so should a trial by fire strengthen one's mettle. ~ Jeffrey Fry

By nature independent, gay, even exuberant, seductively responsive and given to those spontaneous sallies that sparkle in the conversation of certain daughters of Paris who seem to have inhaled since childhood the pungent breath of the boulevards laden with the nightly laughter of audiences leaving theaters, Madame de Burne's five years of bondage had nonetheless endowed her with a singular timidity which mingled oddly with her youthful mettle, a great fear of saying too much, of going to far, along with a fierce yearning for emancipation and a firm resolve never again to compromise her freedom. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Well, I guess I'm just not as special as you are. (Urian)
No one knows their true mettle until it's been tested. This is yours. Whether you pass or fail is entirely up to you. I can't tell you what to do, but I know where I'll be tonight. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crises or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative into a positive purely by a mental process that will result in positive action as well. ~ Robert Greene

I can't help but wonder why leaders are so often hesitant to lead. I guess it takes a lot of conviction and trusting your gut to get ahead of your peers, your staff and your employees while they are still squabbling about which path to take, and set an unhesitating, unequivocal course whose rightness or wrongness will not be known for years. Such a decision really tests the mettle of the leader. By contrast, it doesn't take much self-confidence to downsize a company - after all, how can you go wrong by shuttering factories and laying people off if the benefits of such actions are going to show up in tomorrow's bottom line and will be applauded by the financial community? ~ Andrew S. Grove

I suspect it was ... the old story of the implacable necessity of a man having honour within his own natural spirit. A man cannot live and temper his mettle without such honour. There is deep in him a sense of the heroic quest; and our modern way of life, with its emphasis on security, its distrust of the unknown and its elevation of abstract collective values has repressed the heroic impulse to a degree that may produce the most dangerous consequences. ~ Laurens Van Der Post

It is easy to be a virtuous man in good times. It is easy to be judged a success when luck runs with the fortunate son. But when adversity strikes, the true measure of a man percolates to the surface. That is why combat became the great sifter--it tested our mettle. Not once but again and again... ~ Sean Parnell

And policemen. They were obliged to sneak past two en route to Kampa. Thomas was a contentedly law-abiding child, with fond feelings toward policemen. He was also afraid of them. His notion of prisons and jails had been keenly influenced by reading Dumas, and he had not the slightest doubt that little boys would, without compunction, be interred in them. He began to be sorry to have come along. He wished he had never come up with the idea of having Josef prove his mettle to the members of the Hofzinser Club. It was not that he doubted his brother's ability. This never would have occurred to him. He was just afraid: of the night, the shadows, and the darkness, of policemen, his father's temper, spiders, robbers, drunks, ladies in overcoats, and especially, this morning, of the river, darker than anything else in Prague. ~ Michael Chabon

O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me! ~ Walt Whitman

Her heart, she had discovered in the last half year, was of durable stuff. You could test its mettle with a hammer. ~ Paul Russell

I love the game. I think it's a great game because you find out a lot about yourself. You test your mettle every week. There's no grey area, there's instant gratification and there are no quarterly reports. We're not just doing a little bit better. You know every Sunday what happened. ~ Bill Parcells

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom. mettle: spirited bottom: capacity to endure strain ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This camp is a forge for the army; it's testing our mettle. Instead of heat and hammer, our trials are cold and hunger. Question is, what are we made of? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

My Nana Westbrook, true as a saint's prayer, always used to say the Devil was a woman thought up by the Good Lord Himself to test a man's mettle and drag him down to Hell if he came up short and, Lordy, I sure as hell kept my granny's wise words to heart, God rest her soul, never once dipping my stick in a place where it might get snapped. ~ Ojo Blacke

You who live your lives in cities or among peaceful ways cannot always tell whether your friends are the kind who would go through fire for you. But on the Plains one's friends have an opportunity to prove their mettle. ~ Buffalo Bill

The true test of a soldier's mettle is to see whether or not they will cling to what they believe in, even in the face of impending death. ~ Matthew S. Williams

What else is love but mettle and blood? ~ Tessa Gratton

Marathon running, for me, was the most controlled test of mettle that I could ever think of. It's you against Darwin. ~ Ryan Reynolds

To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity. ~ Jose Marti

So what if she wasn't a pushover? So what if she had some mettle and didn't wear her heart on her sleeve? She had done everything she had done for the best. For king and country. ~ Sara Sheridan

There comes an inevitable time in every life when we must cross a threshold and encounter that invisible divider between who we are and who we must become. Sometimes, the passage is evident - a sudden catastrophe that tests our mettle, a tragic loss that opens our eyes to the bane of our mortality, or a personal triumph that instills in us the confidence we need to cast aside our fears. Other times, our passage is obscured by the minutiae of an overcrowded life until we catch it in a glimpse of forbidden desire; in an inexplicable sense of melancholic emptiness or a craving for more, always more, than what we already possess.

Sometimes we embrace the chance to embark on our passage, welcoming it as a chance to finally shed the adolescent skin and prove our worth against the incessant vagaries of fate. Other times, we rail against its unexpected cruelty, against the sharp thrust into a world we're not ready to explore, one we do not know or trust. For us, the past is a haven that we are loathe to depart, lest the future corrupt our soul.

Better not to change at all, rather than become someone we will not recognize. ~ C.W. Gortner

I would take a free and hopeful breath. It was settled. Fear would no longer be the weakness that undid me. I was seventeen and unsophisticated, and thought I could dig about in my soul for the mettle I needed, and that it would be enough. ~ Chantel Acevedo

I have been so struck by the mettle of the men who founded this country and wrote the Constitution. What unbelievable persistence and integrity. I wonder if any of us would have the attention span required to forge a whole new world. I wish we did. ~ Rosanne Cash

There is oftentimes a great deal of knowledge where there is but little wisdom to improve that knowledge. It is not the most knowing Christian but the most wise Christian that sees, avoids, and escapes Satan's snares. Knowledge without wisdom is like mettle in a blind horse, which is often an occasion of the rider's fall. ~ Thomas Brooks

A certain amount of friction is necessary in our lives to provide enough heat to mold our minds and cast our mettle to shape the legend we become. ~ Will Craig, Living The Hero's Journey

Our Party's Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People's Army. ~ Kim Jong Il

Britain won its wars on the playing fields of Eton. America developed its mettle at the muddy gaps of the Cumberlands, in the swift rapids of its rivers, on the limitless reaches of its western plains, in the silent vastness of primeval forests, and in the blizzard-ridden passes of the Rockies and Coast ranges. ~ Harvey Broome

A life without a storm would lack drama. Pounding waves of a tempestuous sea test a person's mettle. A fearless sailor climbs the rigging and shouts out at the top of their lungs into the wind and rain whipping across their face that they will not go quietly into the good night without a fight. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A man who doesn't test the mettle of his soul isn't much of a man ... ~ Joey W. Hill

Remember, a friend does not need you to impress him. A friend loves you because you are true to yourself, not because you agree with him. Beware of grand gestures; the real mettle of friendship is forged in life's daily workings. ~ Ethan Hawke

Anger is like
A full hot horse, who being allowed his way,
Self-mettle tires him. ~ William Shakespeare

Life brings sorrows and joys alike. It is what a man does with them - not what they do to him - that is the true test of his mettle. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I don't know about living on an automatic pilot, but I've had times where I've decided to just test myself and my mettle, and for no good reason other than it's what life is. Even before I was acting, I had, like, one day in high school I decided to just show them my pajamas, just for no good reason. ~ Will Ferrell

One's mental fortitude, one's mettle, aligned with one's will, is the most formidable human attribute. No man, machine, nor divine intervention can supersede. The will to persevere, no matter the offs, ignites the soul like a beacon, illuminating the obstacles on their path and turning them to dust in its wake. ~ A.C. Heller

This is when family and friends must stand tall and strong - when mettle is tested, refined and purified. We'll survive. We must. And we'll watch the enemy burn in the fire. ~ Jason Price

I freely admit that the best of my fun, I owe it to Horse and Hound - Whyte Melville (1821-1878)


"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of ~ Whyte Melville

Then an event happened that caused him to wonder at the great folly that seemed to govern his life, namely, his attempts to plan and control his future. Most of the events that changed his life had taken place without his consent and at the time had seemed of little consequence. Our destiny didn't lie in the stars, he told himself, or even in our mettle. It lay in our ability to recognize a gift when it was placed in your hands. ~ James Lee Burke

I find life itself provides ample and sufficient tests of my valor and mettle: illness; betrayal; fruitless searches for love; working for the abusive, the insane, and the despotic. All challenges easily as thrilling to me as scrambling over icy rock in a pair of barely adequate boots. ~ David Rakoff

What courage, man! What though care killed a cat? Thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care. ~ William Shakespeare

If you walk through life in a fighting pose with your fists balled up and ready to strike, someone, someday, somewhere, is going to want to test your mettle. ~ Neal Boortz

He says he was physically not right, that's fine but the mentality, even if you're not right, you're still in a fight and you still show what you have deep down inside, and I don't think he showed the mettle that he needed to show in that fight in order to beat a guy like Miranda. ~ Andre Ward

Cowards shrink from toil and peril, Vulgar souls attempt and fail; Men of mettle, nothing daunted, Persevere till they prevail. ~ Dean Koontz

I'll listen to you, but you need to treat me with a little respect. Because it doesn't sound like I'm a pawn. Sounds like I'm more of a queen." A vein in his temple began to throb, and she grew bolder, the sense of power emanating from the mark on her chest filing her with the mettle she'd lost after the break-in two years ago. Lowering her voice to a tense whisper, she nipped his earlobe. "Checkmate. ~ Larissa Ione

Jay was intimidating to the point where I was totally intimidated before I even got to the booth. But I was like, this is going to be a test of my mettle. In the South, I'm regarded as the guy who, quote unquote, out-rapped Jay-Z. ~ Bun B.

What good is a dream that doesn't test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn't carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge. ~ Michael Meade

We each make our solo voyages to deep, expansive waters. Alone in our contest with the wider world, we test our mettle and seek our trophies, promotions, compliments, and accolades. We strive to be needed and to thereby know that there is a reason for us. We seek to be told we are good because we're too unsure of ourselves to know. Yet often we remain so focused on our neediness that we forget the creatures - human and otherwise - we're drawing into the vortex of our own passion play. All of us have compulsive loves we must forbear. We forget to see that we can engage the world without harming it. And although we fish for approval, the challenge is: to capture our prizes while bringing more to the world than we take. ~ Carl Safina

When love begins to sicken and decay
It useth an enforced ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith:
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show, and promise of their mettle. ~ William Shakespeare

Legacy proves ones mettle and one's karma. ~ Aporva Kala

[LSSU] was the kind of school where students had a lot of pride. Not the raucous strain of sports pride... And not academic pride... It was more of a geographical pride. Kids were proud to live in that tough wilderness setting, and the best way to prove your mettle was through achievements in the wild. ~ Steven Rinella

We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. ~ Oswald Chambers

There's nothing worse than being shackled by some miniscule sort of technology you have onstage, and I think your mettle is going to get tested in those moments. ~ El-P