Unyielding Quotes

• In life when we feel we have reached a limit, that is when the true battle begins. Just when you despair and think it is impossible to go any further, will you become apathetic, or will you say it's not over and stand up with an unyielding spirit? The battle is decided by this single determination.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Determination, Thinking, Despair

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• A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind. Thus by nature's own decree, the soft and gentle are triumphant.

  Laozi

  Wind, Tree, Cracks

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• Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

  Virginia Woolf

  Death, Tombstone, Memorial

  The Waves (1931)

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• At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

  Alain de Botton

  Lying, Heart, Frustration

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, 2000.

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• The common, the quotidian, is so much more unyielding to me, really stubborn and hard to work with, and I like this because it makes me think and it makes me worry. I can't just plunge my hand into the meat of it. I need new approaches.

  Ben Marcus

  Thinking, Hands, Worry

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• [Man] ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspiration, Science, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.46, Booklassic

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• So it is a good idea to start simple, I think, and be very careful. There is a spiritual opening in the Kosmos. Let us be careful of how we fill it. The simplest is: Spirit or Emptiness is unqualifiable, but it is not inert and unyielding, for it gives rise to manifestation itself: new forms emerge, and that creativity is ultimate. Emptiness, creativity, holons.

  Ken Wilber

  Spiritual, Creativity, Simple

  Ken Wilber (2001). “A Brief History of Everything”, p.39, Shambhala Publications

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• I know you think that I have some kind of perfect, unyielding self-control, but that's not actually the case. - Edward Cullen

  Stephenie Meyer

  Thinking, Self, Perfect

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• In this world, there is nothing softer or thinner than water. But to compel the hard and unyielding, it has no equal. That the weak overcomes the strong, that the hard gives way to the gentle - this everyone knows. Yet no one asks accordingly.

  Laozi

  Strong, Kindness, Giving

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• Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Fire, Feelings

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.107, Simon and Schuster

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• Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger.

  George W. Bush

  Airplane, Sadness, Fire Burning

  9/11 Address to the Nation, delivered 11 September, Oval Office, Washington, D.C.

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• From the most sacred ancient text of Yoga: Oh Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, strong, and unyielding. I consider it as difficult to subdue as the wind.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Strong, Yoga, Wind

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.138, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Any philosophy worth taking seriously would have to be built upon a firm foundation of unyielding despair.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Despair, Foundation

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• I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Men, Outsiders, Stranger

  H. P. Lovecraft (2014). “The Outsider”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

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• Love is as strong as death; its jealousy as unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire; like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love, rivers cannot wash it away

  Solomon

  Valentines Day, Strong, Flower

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• The distinction between right and wrong ("la distinction du bien et du mal", Fr.), is nothing else than their unyielding (or implacable) opposition; thus the moral consciousness is an innate and intimate revelation of the absolute, which goes beyond (or goes pass, or exceed) every empirical data (or given information). It is only on these principles that we will be able to establish ("pourront être édifiées", Fr.) the real basis of morality.

  African Spir

  Real, Data, Principles

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 60), 1937.

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• Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Death, Fall

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

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• Courage has you say in a defiant spirit you can take everything from me, you could cut me deep, you could render me in shame but you will never ever stop me from loving those who mock me, from loving those that hate me, from loving those who don't forgive me, from loving the cynics, from loving the darkness so much that I myself through my small acts of consistent unyielding love may bring on the light.

  Cory Booker

  Beautiful, Hate, Cutting

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• And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

  Virginia Woolf

  Horse, Men, Hair

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.779, Wordsworth Editions

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• Find new treasures in yourself. Love doesn't die. Love is unyielding. It's going to come back. The more you love and appreciate yourself, the more prepared you are when the real thing shows up.

  Jill Scott

  Real, Love Is, Appreciate

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• Guns don't win wars; guns and bombs may kill a man but they cannot make him follow their lead, nor will they ever coerce an unyielding man to yield.

  Bobby Sands

  War, Gun, Winning

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• There is no moral middle ground. Indifference is not an option. ... For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs.

  Oliver North

  Children, Drug, Sake

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• Thus does the unyielding, inescapable future ineluctably devour the present.

  Robert Silverberg

  Doe

  Robert Silverberg (2014). “The Stochastic Man”, p.70, Open Road Media

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• The thing about war is that once it's triggered, it is unyielding in its appetite. And the more it consumes and gorges, the more it wants.

  Bill Moyers

  War, Gorges, Want

  "Bill Moyers on His Legendary Journalism Career: 'Democracy Should Be a Brake on Unbridled Greed and Power'". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, www.democracynow.org. June 8, 2011.

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• Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Strong, Mountain, Break Out

  Rainer Maria Rilke, John J. L. Mood (1994). “Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations”, p.43, W. W. Norton & Company

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