Grappling Quotes

• Strength instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.

  James M. Barrie

  Strength, Children, Passion

  "The Little Minister". Book by James Matthew Barrie, p. 143, 1891.

  76 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm still grappling with all the things most people resolve by the time they're 35. Maybe that's why I make music that is relevant to young people. I'm emotionally stuck at the age of 13.

  Siobhan Fahey

  People, Age, Young

  68 Copy quote

• So we just hope that all of these governors who are grappling will be able to provide the basic services to our citizens and not have to cut things that really are painful.

  Jennifer Granholm

  Pain, Cutting, Citizens

  "American Morning" with Paula Zahn, www.cnn.com. January 17, 2003.

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are personalities in the making, limited, and grappling with things too high for us. Obviously we, at very best, will make many mistakes, but these mistakes need not be sins.

  E. Stanley Jones

  Mistake, Personality, Needs

  64 Copy quote

• Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.

  Stephen Greenblatt

  Catholic, Way, Ghost

  "An interview about Will in the World". "Bookworm" with Michael Silverblatt, stephengreenblatt.com. March 16, 2013.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
  Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
  Saw the heavens fill with commerce, Argosies of magic sails,
  Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
  Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew,
  From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.

  Alfred the Great

  Rain, Twilight, Eye

  "Locksley Hall" l. 123 (1842)

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• Grappling with fate is like meeting an expert wrestler: to escape, you have to accept the fall when you are thrown. The only thing that counts is whether you get back up.

  Ming-Dao Deng

  Fall, Wrestling, Fate

  54 Copy quote

• Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.

  Joseph Joubert

  Iron, Chains That Bind, Memorial

  117 Copy quote

• America is grappling with cultural diversity, and I just want to put a show on that represents the world in which I live.

  David Alan Grier

  America, Diversity, World

  52 Copy quote

• I always try to attack. While I'm on the offensive, my opponent can think of nothing but defending.

  Marcelo Garcia

  Inspirational, Sports, Thinking

  63 Copy quote

• Our greatness, our talent has never been the question. It's been a matter of grappling for control over what we do.

  Spike Lee

  Greatness, Matter, Talent

  9 Copy quote

• If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his human right.

  Murray Rothbard

  Real, Men, Self

  Murray Newton Rothbard (1978). “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”, p.52, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• I’ve been here before, dreaming myself backwards, among grappling hooks of light. True to the seasons, I’ve lived every word spoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Dream, Light, Hook

  Yusef Komunyakaa (1998). “Thieves of Paradise”, p.14, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• "Is it how she moves, or how she looks?" I say it's loneliness suspended to our own like grappling hooks, And as long as she's got noise, she's fine. But I could teach her how I learned to dance when the music's ended.

  Dar Williams

  Dance, Loneliness, Moving

  Song: As Cool As I Am, Album: Mortal City

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,
  To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
  On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

  Wilfred Owen

  Grief, Wind, Soul

  Wilfred Owen (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Wilfred Owen (Illustrated)”, p.47, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love.

  Toni Morrison

  Love, Country, Children

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I certainly have a very colorful nature, filled with great highs and great lows... in my early adulthood I probably was grappling with some serious depression issues.

  Sally Field

  Depression, Issues, Serious

  7 Copy quote

• A colleague once described political theorists as people who were obsessed with two dozen books; after half a century of grappling with Mill's essay On Liberty, or Hobbes's Leviathan, I have sometimes thought two dozen might be a little on the high side.

  Alan Ryan

  Book, Two, People

  8 Copy quote

• Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately, for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going.

  Lauren Oliver

  Roots, Stronger, Way

  Lauren Oliver (2015). “Delirium Trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, Requiem”, p.294, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was crying and laughing, snuffing tears and blood, bumping at him with my bound hands, trying awkwardly to thrust them at him so that he could cut the rope. He quit grappling, and clutched me so hard against him that I yelped in pain as my face was pressed against his plaid. He was saying something else, urgently, but I couldn’t manage to translate it. Energy pulsed through him, hot and violent, like the current in a live wire, and I vaguely realized that he was still almost berserk; he had no English.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Pain, Cutting, Blood

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlander Series 8-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood”, p.4706, Dell

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The search for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility: it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the true nature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economic difficulties and a lack of resolve in grappling with them.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Lying, Responsibility, Roots

  Aung San Suu Kyi, University of Oxford. Refugee Studies Programme (1993). “Towards a true refuge”

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!

  Homer

  Running, War, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• I've really been grappling with depression. It's all linked with my cocaine and ecstasy abuse.

  Robbie Williams

  Abuse, Mental Illness, Cocaine

  16 Copy quote

• There's something to play if there's conflict going on. Whatever that conflict is, that's where drama is; if the character is grappling with something you've got something to play, there's layers to it.

  Clive Owen

  Drama, Character, Play

  "He's a bit of an idiot but I did like him" by Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. January 26, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Humans have changed little over time. We think we've invented the modern world but they were making better speeches 2,000 years ago and grappling with issues of empire and terrorism.

  Robert Harris

  Thinking, Issues, Years

  4 Copy quote