Ordeals Quotes - Page 4

• High school wasn't a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.

  Scott Westerfeld

  School, Fire, Track

  Scott Westerfeld (2009). “Midnighters #3: Blue Noon”, p.15, Harper Collins

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• I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.

  John Berryman

  Artist, Ideas, Achievement

  "EM Forster's work tailed off once he finally had sex. Better that than a life of despair" by Sam Leith, www.theguardian.com. June 13, 2010.

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• I'm a man that has a vision as to how this world can be, and I've gathered myself through all the ordeals that I had to make me a well-rounded person and still fight for justice.

  John Carlos

  Fighting, Men, Justice

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There are all kinds of ways to challenge ourselves. Some people do it by climbing a mountain or scuba diving. The most profound and challenging ordeals is to drink Ayahuasca. It is in a way the ultimate adventure.

  Graham Hancock

  Adventure, Climbing, Ayahuasca

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• The mantram becomes one's staff of life and carries one through every ordeal. Each repetition has a new meaning, carrying you nearer and nearer to God.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Life, God, Staff

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• They do not know what they say. If it came to a conflict of arms, the war will last at least four years. Northern politicians will not appreciate the determination and pluck of the South, and Southern politicians do not appreciate the numbers, resources, and patient perseverance of the North. Both sides forget that we are all Americans. I foresee that our country will pass through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation, perhaps, for our national sins.

  Robert E. Lee

  Country, Perseverance, Determination

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• Among the worst examples is that of the Alberni Indian Residential School (British Columbia) where, during the 1920s, children caught talking Indian suffered the hideous ordeal of having sewing needles pushed through their tongues.

  Ward Churchill

  Children, School, Talking

  "The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools". Book by Ward Churchill, November 2004.

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• Liberty without discipline cannot survive. Without order and authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty during which men forgot the elementary truths of human existence. They forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice.

  Walter Lippmann

  Life, Clever, Sacrifice

  "The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy".

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• The protagonist of folktale is always, and intensely, a young person moving through ordeals into adult life. . . . and this is why there are no wicked stepchildren in the tales.

  Jill Paton Walsh

  Moving, Wicked, Adults

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• A good play puts the audience through a certain ordeal.

  Howard Barker

  Play, Certain, Audience

  "Howard Barker: 'I don't care if you listen or not'". Interview With Maddy Costa, www.theguardian.com. October 1, 2012.

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• All miracles are promised to faith, and what is faith except the audacity of will which does not hesitate in the darkness, but advances towards the light in spite of all ordeals, and surmounting all obstacles?

  Eliphas Levi

  Light, Miracle, Darkness

  Eliphas Levi (2013). “The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic”, p.17, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Racing should never be an ordeal, rather an enjoyable and life-enhancing experience.

  Bruce Fordyce

  Racing, Should, Enjoyable

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• For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  People, Expectations, Realization

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

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• All comedians are people who really deeply consider the human experience not only a dirty trick perpetrated by a totally meaningless procedure of accidents, but an unbearable ordeal every day, which can be made tolerable only by mockery in one form or another.

  William Saroyan

  Dirty, People, Comedian

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• What particular experiences will nourish your soul? No one can prescribe that for you; it is something only you can know and experience. What is satisfying for one person may be just the opposite for someone else. Being out in nature, by the seashore, or on a mountaintop works for me. Communing with nature brings me into soul time. But for others, being out in nature is something to be tolerated, or even an ordeal, or just what you do if you're a member of a family that goes camping.

  Jean Shinoda Bolen

  Nature, Opposites, Soul

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• Obviously, the anti-ERA people are tickled about my ordeal because it proves that the ERA breaks up families. When they point out that feminism is a dangerous thing, I just say marriage is pretty precarious too.

  Sonia Johnson

  People, Feminism, Eras

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• Physically my brain is in great shape. My motor functions are fine, but I think going through the whole ordeal... coming pretty close to death, may have affected my priorities.

  Bill Berry

  Thinking, Priorities, Brain

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• Bearing ourselves humbly before God... we await undismayed the impending assault.... be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parlay; we may show mercy - we shall ask for none.

  Winston Churchill

  Long, May, Mercy

  "War of the Unknown Warriors", BBC Broadcast, London, winstonchurchill.org. July 14, 1940.

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• A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist.

  Tahir Shah

  Pain, Secret, Passionate

  Tahir Shah (2013). “Sorcerer's Apprentice paperback”, p.92, Lulu.com

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• Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

  James Martineau

  Character, Temptation, Battle

  James Martineau (1879). “Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons”

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• My divorce has changed my life. I don’t cry anymore. My bad dreams are starting to go away. I feel stronger, as if all these ordeals have toughened me. When I go out in the street, sometimes women in the neighborhood call to me, congratulating me and shouting ‘Mabrouk!’ – a word once tainted by evil memories, but which I know like to hear again. And shouted by women I don’t even know! I blush, but deep down I’m so proud.

  Nujood Ali

  Dream, Memories, Divorce

  Nujood Ali, Delphine Minoui (2010). “I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced”, p.129, Broadway Books

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• Who is open without levity; generous without waste; secret without craft; humble without meanness; bold without insolence; cautious without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical - is made to pass the ordeal of honour, friendship, virtue.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Humble, Anxiety, Secret

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Even Avataras, saints, and sages have to undergo the ordeal of suffering, for they take upon themselves the burden of sins of omission and commission of ordinary human beings and thereby sacrifice themselves for the good of humanity.

  Sarada Devi

  Sacrifice, Omission, Humanity

  "Thus Spake the Holy Mother" by Sarada Devi, (pp. 72-73), 1985.

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• Anxiety prepares the organism badly for an ordeal which even under more favorable circumstances would not be an easy thing to bear.

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Anxiety, Bears, Easy

  Henryk Sienkiewicz (1897). “Without Dogma: A Novel of Modern Poland”

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• Going out is such a hassle. The singles club scene where you sit down, talk, get to know each other, hang out-it's such a big ordeal.

  Brian Austin Green

  Going Out, Clubs, Scene

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