Struggle

“ The world was as much to be struggled with in one place as another; and, after all, was not the struggle mainly with one's own self, and could that be avoided? Then what in himself was wrong? what should be fought against? ”

“ Ah, only a little while, and that struggle will be upon us—and they will do their best to bend us to their will and cut us to their pattern, to exercise us, to lengthen us, to shorten us, to corrupt us.... ”

“ The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. ”

“ Is it, in truth, anything other than that contrast of every day, that struggle of every moment, between two opposing principles which are ever face to face in life, and which dispute possession of man from the cradle to the tomb? ”

“ On this side is the brute struggle for life; on that, the struggle for the life of others; on the one hand, the fight for the survival of the fittest, and on the other, the fight to make men fit to survive. ”

“ You do not see the conflict coming, the cloud on the horizon: [208] the struggle begun in the sphere of the mind is going to descend to the arena of blood. Listen to the voice of God; woe to those who resist it! History shall not be theirs! ”

“ To toil long hours for another’s advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the spectres of hunger and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease and death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel; each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of circumstance close upon you a little tighter. ”

“ Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field. ”

“ How long can a poor human frame bear the labors, the anxieties, the cares that I undergo,—the struggle against factions, the struggle against oneself, the crushing out of sympathies, the resistance of all kindly feelings, the endurance of ingratitude, falsehood, treachery, the malice and the envy of the many, the undeserved hatred of not a few? ”

“ The struggle, the wounds, the defeats we suffer at each other's hands may all be classed under the head of battles,—battles where the ultimate defeat or victory is in our own hands,—in the harm or good done to our souls. ”

“ Cognition and emotion are parted even in this last retreat,—who shall say that their antagonism may not just be one phase of the world-old struggle known as that between the spirit and the flesh?—a struggle in which it seems pretty certain that neither party will definitively drive the other off the field. ”

“ One sure reward ye have, then, as he had, though there may be none other—just the struggle: the marshalling to the front of rightful forces—will, effort, endurance, devotion; the putting resolutely back of forces wrongful; the hardening of all that is soft within, the softening of all that is hard: until out of the hardening and the softening results the better tempering of the soul's metal, and higher development of those two qualities which are best in man and best in his ideal of his Maker—strength and kindness, power and mercy. ”

“ Accustomed to the struggle, the crosses, and the monotony of practical life, they require rapid emotions, startling passages,—truths or errors brilliant enough to rouse them up, and to plunge them at once, as if by violence, into the midst of a subject. ”

“ Forgotten little units in our disdainful world, we pass them scornfully by. Other lives, and perhaps better, do you think? For them the struggle never came which holds us in a fist of brass, and thrashes us up and down the pavement of life. ”

“ Where could lie in wait for them the elements of clash and struggle, of fear and hope, of stifled griefs and aching disappointments,—all the sad travail and hard-won victories bestowed upon men and women through the long procession of the years? ”

“ It was the old struggle between life—primitive, untamed life, as the first man may have felt it—and its many masters: assertion and resistance, all the more fierce because so many influences laid their hands upon its forces. ”

“ And what a delicious sense, in the midst of the open or hidden hostilities of our struggle against the world, to feel one has some one near at hand with whom, crouched in any "corner of the hubbub," we may "make game of that" which makes as much of us! ”

“ Hence the antagonisms that arise at every point of human contact. The sum of these antagonisms is what we call the struggle of life, which is merely the struggle of each to survive at the expense of his fellows, and is therefore barbaric. ”

“ I want to hear about this world, this world I am going to leave, and how you think you are going on fighting in the hot and dusty struggle—to make the world cool and kind and reasonable, to train minds better, to broaden ideas ... ”

“ Whether the object be to have a fixed duty, or an alteration as to the ascending and descending scale, I see clearly and distinctly, that that object will not be carried without a most violent struggle—without causing much ill-blood, and a deep sense of grievance—without stirring society to its foundations, and leaving behind every sort of bitterness and animosity. ”

“ The struggle, not indeed for existence, but for comfort, superior position, distinction, is sufficient to maintain the vigor of the society, though it does not require the suppression of sympathy and generosity. ”

“ It is not life that's complicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life. ”

“ With this dreadfully adverse condition of things is it possible to go into a struggle with a body of men, strong in their own cause, determined to fight, and who have every possible advantage on their side? ”

“ That long contest, waged for independence on one side and for dominion on the other, developed in the course of years and the vicissitudes of changing fortune the fierceness and inhumanity of a struggle for life. ”

“ The struggle, which, when some great principle of politics or morals is the subject of the strife, ennobles in our eyes the unflinching combatants, only degrades when the violence and the rancour result from the soreness of wounded vanity, or the malice of blighted anticipation. ”

“ A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. ”

“ To define them as an ever-recurring struggle for Freedom against every form of Might. A struggle resultant from an innate yearning for self-expression, and the recognition of one's own possibilities and their attitude toward other human beings. ”

“ At first sight, our assertion may appear paradoxical, for the difference between these two appears to be so enormous: One stresses the "drab every-day struggle" and the other calls for the most self-sacrificing struggle of individuals. ”

“ The struggle appears to the mind at first merely as a struggle of intentions and passions, which unfolds and comes to an end by the aid of means which are permitted by the political form of the state and by the use or abuse or the public powers. ”

“ Nothing else does; for if (having survived the struggle) man only lives miserably—scrapes through as it were—the question in the face of so poverty-stricken a result, may still be—"Was the struggle worth it?" ”

“ Instead of the unhallowed and anxious struggle which worldly men manifest to raise themselves to power over their fellows, their efforts were to be directed to the opposite end—to raise the ignorant and the needy to the enjoyment of the blessings and privileges which they possessed. ”

“ You can put your foot again upon the firm ground and recover everything. Of course there must be a struggle. One person has to struggle with circumstances, another with his foes, and a third with his own feelings. ”

“ And so the critical problem is initially simplified, in two ways: there is no story of struggle for recognition, and the effects of that struggle on the workman; there is no story of evolution of inner forces. ”

“ Have the past struggles succeeded? What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature? Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. ”

“ “The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause which we believe to be just. ”

“ Into this hitherto relatively inert mass the ferment of new conceptions of civilization and of life, of the things which are worth the having and which may be had, if men will struggle and fight for them, is now being everywhere introduced. ”

“ The social phenomena of each successive stage of the long struggle, and those that have succeeded it, too familiar to call for much notice at the time, will become blurred, and half forgotten even by those who were part of them ”

“ Perhaps it is only those that are themselves engaged in the thick of the struggle and conflict that rightly can cheer on, or fitly can admonish, their fellows, or to any good purpose assume the high moral tone. ”

“ And I add that those of you who have such principles and sympathies are in the logic of your own being bound, first, to inform yourselves concerning so great a matter as the revolt of millions of people—what they are struggling for, what they are struggling against, and how the struggle stands—from day to day, if possible ”

“ Such stories may be found in the search of politicians for office, in the struggles of business men for control of trade or for squeezing out competitors, in contests between capital and labor, in religious factions, in collegiate rivalry, and in many of the seemingly commonplace struggles of everyday life. The individual, elementary appeal that comes from struggle is always thrilling. ”

“ The most obstinate and desperate struggles of all—struggles for the preservation of one’s most sacred identity, of one’s inmost liberty of action and feeling—take place, and have their advances and retreats, their treacheries and their betrayals, under the hypocritical calm of the domestic roof. ”

“ It was pointed out that during the struggle for existence among societies, originally very intense and even now by no means ended, the con- ditions have been such as to make imperative the readiness to inflict pain, and have correspondingly repressed fellow-feeling. It may here be added that, beyond this checking of the sympathies which the antagonisms of societies have necessitated and still necessitate, there has been a checking of them consequent on the struggle for existence within each society. ”