Agony Quotes - Page 21

• Writing is a delicious agony.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Writing, Delicious

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• The Prophets accept all agony and trust it For the water has never feared the fire.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Fire, Water

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• The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

  Henry Grady Weaver

  Mean, Views, Liberty

  Henry Grady Weaver (2016). “The Mainspring of Human Progress [Revised Edition]”, p.38, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.

  Billy Sunday

  God, Heart, Men

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• At the supreme moment of his dying Jesus so identified himself with men and the depths of their predicament and agony that no man can now sink so low that God has not gone lower.

  Os Guinness

  Jesus, Men, Dying

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• I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters 'a very good God damn'; that 'an artist, a man, a failure' is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a givingly eternal complexity-neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor any understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automaton, but a naturally and miraculously whole human being-a feelingly illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.

  e. e. cummings

  Believe, Artist, Animal

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  Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole

  Karl Marx

  Ignorance, Opposites, Toil

  Karl Marx (2007). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production”, p.709, Cosimo, Inc.

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• One whose spirit and mental strength have been strengthened by sparring with a never-say-die attitude should find no challenge too great to handle. One who has undergone long years of physical pain and mental agony to learn one punch, one kick, should be able to face any task, no matter how difficult, and carry it through to the end. A person like this can truly be said to have learned karate.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Pain, Attitude, Years

  Gichin Funakoshi (1994). “Karate-dō Nyūmon: The Master Introductory Text”, p.47, Kodansha International

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• To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this.

  Yukio Mishima

  Beautiful, Spring, Humble

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.95, Tuttle Publishing

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• Much-Afraid, don't ever allow yourself to begin trying to picture what it will be like. Believe me, when you get to the place which you dread you will find that they are as different as possible from what you have imagined, just as was the case when you were actually ascending the precipice. I must warn you that I see your enemies lurking among the trees ahead, and if you ever let Craven Fear begin painting a picture on the screen of your imagination, you will walk with fear and trembling and agony, where no fear is.

  Hannah Hurnard

  Believe, Imagination, Tree

  Hannah Hurnard, Darien Cooper (2015). “Hinds' Feet on High Places: The Original and Complete Allegory with a Devotional and Journal for Women by Darien Cooper”, p.192, Destiny Image Publishers

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• Character is revealed in the power to discern the suffering of other people when we ourselves are suffering; in the ability to detect the hunger of others when we are hungry; and in the power to reach out and extend compassion for the spiritual agony of others when we are in the midst of our own spiritual distress.

  David A. Bednar

  Spiritual, Character, Compassion

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• To describe the agony of a marathon to someone who's never run it is like trying to explain color to someone who was born blind.

  Jerome Drayton

  Inspirational, Motivational, Running

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• I am profoundly uncertain how to write. I know what I love and what I like, because it's a direct passionate response. But when I write, I'm very uncertain whether it's good enough. That is, of course, the writer's agony.

  Susan Sontag

  Writing, Passionate, Good Enough

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• It is in the hard, hard rockpile labor of seeking to win, hold, or deserve a reader's interest that the pleasant agony of writing again comes in.

  John Mason Brown

  Writing, Winning, Interest

  "Still seeing things".

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• I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Mother, Running, Children

  Speech at Chautauqua, NY, 14 Aug. 1936, in Public Papers (1936) vol. 5, p. 289

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• ...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Long, Soul, Despair

  Edgar Allan Poe (2015). “The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.408, Lulu.com

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• Spiritual character is only made by standing loyal to God's character, no matter what distress the trial of faith brings. The distress and agony the prophets experienced was the agony of believing God when everything that was happening contradicted what they proclaimed Him to be; there was nothing to prove that God was just and true, but everything to prove the opposite.

  Oswald Chambers

  Spiritual, Believe, Character

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “Faith: A Holy Walk”, p.74, Discovery House

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• Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.

  Tillie Olsen

  Lying, Struggle, Writing

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• The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Betrayal, Night, Silence

  "A Time to Break Silence". Speech at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City, www.deanza.edu. April 04, 1967.

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• Souls reconstructed with faith transform agony into peace.

  Aberjhani

  Inspirational, Faith, Spiritual

  Aberjhani (2014). “Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry”, p.20, Lulu.com

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• To experience the agony of defeat makes you stronger. It's like taking one step back and two steps forward. To experience the agony of defeat makes you appreciate the experience of winning. That's what makes a champion.

  Leon Spinks

  Winning, Two, Appreciate

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• It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Pain, Animal, Creating

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.29, Publishdrive

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• In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it will make you less miserable now. I have had enough experience to make this statement.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Happiness, Depression, Believe

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• The problem with the Internet startup craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are.

  Steve Jobs

  Business, Difficult Situations, Fire

  Steve Jobs (0101). “Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs”, p.69, Prabhat Prakashan

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• A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed, cut holes in it, and called it a human being. Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony of parting, never mentioning the skill that gave it life as a flute

  Rumi

  Cutting, Skills, Flutes

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