Calluses Quotes

• I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.

  Mario Cuomo

  Inspirational, Dad, Hard Work

  1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 16 July 1984, San Francisco, CA

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• Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

  Wallace Stegner

  Broken Heart, Encouragement, Inspirational Life

  Wallace Stegner (1990). “The Spectator Bird”, p.21, Penguin

  38 Copy quote

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• It hurts, but that’s all it does. The most difficult part of the training is training your mind. You build calluses on your feet to endure the road. You build calluses on your mind to endure the pain. There’s only one way to do that. You have to get out there and run.

  David Goggins

  Running, Hurt, Pain

  202 Copy quote

• You can tell a lot about a man from his hands. If they don't have any scars or calluses on them, you might as well assume they cry at romantic comedy films, too.

  Ellen Hollman

  Men, Hands, Might

  23 Copy quote

• Blisters are a painful experience, but if you get enough blisters in the same place, they will eventually produce a callus. That is what we call maturity.

  Harry Herbert Miller

  Pain, Maturity, Enough

  12 Copy quote

• Revolutions require work, revolutions require sacrifice, revolutions, and our own included, require a certain amount of rationing, a certain amount of calluses, a certain amount of sacrifice

  Lee Harvey Oswald

  Sacrifice, Revolution, Certain

  Diane Holloway, Lee Harvey Oswald (2000). “The Mind of Oswald”, p.171, Trafford on Demand Pub

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• Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up knitting instead.

  David Eddings

  Believe, Knitting, Soul

  15 Copy quote

• The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Successful, Giving

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

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• Work makes a callus against grief.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Work, Grief

  4 Copy quote

• The string slices into the skin of his fingers and no matter how tough the calluses, it tears. But this beat is fast and even though his joints are aching, his arm's out of control like it has a mind of its own and the sweat tat drenches his hair and face seems to smother him, but nothing's going to stop Tom. He;s aiming for oblivion.

  Melina Marchetta

  Hair, Sweat, Mind

  11 Copy quote

• The only legitimate use for a glove is to cover an injury... A desire to prevent callus formation (possibly so as to not snag one's pantyhose) does not constitute a legitimate use. And if you do insist on wearing gloves, make sure they match your purse.

  Mark Rippetoe

  Desire, Doe, Use

  73 Copy quote

• Have you ever been anyone's?" I ask, a feathery whisper in the quiet bedroom. He lifts his head to mine, and I want him so bad I feel consumed inside, like he's already possessed my soul, and now my soul aches for him to possess my body. A powerful emotion tightens his features as he reaches out to cradle my cheek in his big hand, and there's an unexpected fierceness in his eyes, in his touch, as he cups me. "No. And you?" The calluses in his palm rasp on my skin, and I find myself tucking my cheek deeper into them. "I've never wanted to." "Neither have I." The moment is intimate.

  Katy Evans

  Powerful, Eye, Hands

  9 Copy quote

• In order to even begin to learn how to play his instrument, it takes the guitarist weeks to build calluses on his fingertips; it takes the saxophonist months to strengthen his lip so that he might play his instrument for only a five-minute stretch; it can take the pianist years to develop dual hand and multiple finger coordination. Why do writers assume they can just “write” with no training whatsoever-and then expect, on their first attempt, to be published internationally? What makes them think they're so much inherently greater, need so much less training than any other artists?

  Noah Lukeman

  Writing, Artist, Thinking

  Noah Lukeman (2010). “The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile”, p.72, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history’s in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Eye, Wrinkles, Hair

  Chuck Palahniuk (2003). “Diary: A Novel”, Doubleday Books

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• When I came off the boat I was very proud of the thick calluses which had developed on my feet. But now, I am struggling to get into my favourite high heels which is a shame, as I have so many.

  Pamela Stephenson

  Struggle, High Heels, Feet

  8 Copy quote

• She wrote poetry constantly; that was her "work". She was a slow bleeder and she slaved over it for long, exhausting hours, and many a middle of a night I could hear her creaking around the dead house with a pen in one hand, a clipboard and a flashlight in the other, refining her poems, jotting down the lines of a conceit. Writing never came easy for her; it gave her calluses. She never courted the muses, she wrestled them, mauled them all over the house and came up, after weeks of peripatetic labor, with a slim Spencerian sonnet, fourteen lines of imagistic jabberwocky.

  Millard Kaufman

  Writing, Night, Hands

  45 Copy quote

• One good thing that comes from living the nomadic life demanded by an expedition is that one sheds the fake skin donned from living too closely among society. For those of us who live for the freedom of such a lifestyle, that skin is dry and itchy and ill fitting. From my observances, that skin is much like a callus caused by the pure irritation of being forced to spend so much time with one's fellow man. Thank God I am spared such nonsense.

  Karen Hawkins

  Men, Irritation, Fake

  Karen Hawkins (2012). “The Taming of a Scottish Princess”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• It was the kind of experience, Molly said, that would grow calluses on an angel's ass.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Angel, Kind, Ass

  Robert Charles Wilson (2010). “Spin”, p.204, Macmillan

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• But after Mr. Evers got shot a week ago, lot a colored folk is frustrated in this town. Especially the younger ones, who ain't built up a callus yet.

  Kathryn Stockett

  Frustrated, Towns, Week

  Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.221, Penguin

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• The beauty of my body is not measured by the size of the clothes it can fit into, but by the stories that it tells. I have a belly and hips that say, "We grew a child in here," and breasts that say, "We nourished life." My hands, with bitten nails and a writer's callus, say, "We create amazing things.

  Sarah

  Children, Hands, Clothes

  4 Copy quote

• We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Long, People

  4 Copy quote

• That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lying, Thinking, White

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walking: Top Essays”, p.2, 谷月社

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• I just had a pedicure. My feet are soft like a baby's behind. If his ass was covered in calluses.

  Bob Saget

  Baby, Feet, Pedicures

  Twitter post from May 30, 2013

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• When I was younger, my feet would hurt a lot, but you build up calluses and strength and you don't feel as much pain there.

  Misty Copeland

  Hurt, Pain, Feet

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

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• It means eating your words, this thing of refusing to be a fence-sitter, but I'd rather eat my words than get calluses from sitting.
  No one who has not experienced the condescension of a buyer toward an ordinary salesgirl can have any conception of its withering effect.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Mean, Ordinary, Sitting

  6 Copy quote