Quotes about strength
page 6

“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Fanny Knight (1817-03-13) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

“This is not to say, there never comes a day I'll take my chances and start again. And when I look behind on all my younger times, I'll have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Source: John Mayer - Battle Studies

Love, Chance, Time

“It is easy to be religious when religion is in fashion; but it is an evidence of strong faith and resolution to swim against a stream to heaven, and to appear for God when no one else appears for Him.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Source: Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible

God, Faith, Religion, Fashion

“Compassionate love may be strong. It sobs, it burns, then it wipes away its tears – and it does nothing.”

Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) Russian author

Love, Tear

“Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.”

Dave Eggers Zeitoun

Source: Zeitoun

“Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise. For some people, it's love. Others, money or alcohol. Mine was even worse: calculus.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Love, Money, People, Alcohol

“It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Way

“making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Dreams, Decision

“she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Feeling

“Scars speak for you. They say you're strong, and you've survived something that might have killed others.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: A Mad Zombie Party

“A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man. (Inspector Miller)”

Agatha Christie book The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Source: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

“I knew it. In this way, Peeta's not hard to predict. While I was wallowing around on the floor of that cellar, thinking only of myself, he was here, thinking of me. Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“But I guessed that no matter how strong it was, love alone couldn't turn a speck of dust into a galaxy of stars.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Love, Star

“Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly
life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are
strong enough to lead it!”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Life, World, Time

“If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.”

Robert M. Sapolsky book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

“And it was good just to hold her and touch the softness of her skin. He wanted to hold her hard, not to hurt her but to keep her safe, to show her that he was strong enough to protect her. Her beauty was like fire and strange music, and he loved her.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Visions

Love, Beauty, Music, Hurt

“In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants and hold the world in arms grown strong with love
And there may be many things we forget in the days to come,

But this will not be one of them.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind

Love, World, Forgetting

“Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

“If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, then a family is more like a rope. We're lots of fragile little strands, and we survive by becoming hopelessly intertwined with each other.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga, Vol. 7

Family

“You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.”

George MacDonald book The Day Boy and the Night Girl

Source: The Day Boy and the Night Girl

Learning

“I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch 22

“Just like in bodybuilding, failure is also a necessary experience for growth in our own lives, for if we're never tested to our limits, how will we know how strong we really are? How will we ever grow?”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Failure

“The weak in courage is strong in cunning.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 49

Courage

“It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.”

Agatha Christie book The Clocks

Source: The Clocks

Books, Way

“Only the weak blame their past for the faults they find in their present; the strong acknowledge the effects of their past and then move on from it. We are all free to choose whether we will be weak or strong.”

Penny Jordan (1946–2011) British women's author

Source: The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress

Past

“Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings, small and flawed. It is only their spirits that are beautiful and strong.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Gift

Beauty, Way, Time, Drawing

“The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

World, Nature, Parting

“There are some times… when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.”

John Steinbeck book To a God Unknown

Source: To a God Unknown

Love, People, Time

“The Brotherhood was strong, a unit. a powerful force in their world for good. And so too were the females. Strong. A unit. A powerful force for good in their world.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

World

“When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Appearance

“My, g**, he was as strong as a team of oxen. That would be strong right?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Things are always given to us when we need them… You just have to decide if you're strong enough, brave enough, to seize it and make it
yours. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)

Women, Men, Hope, Art

“Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi stimul ac nummos contemplar in arca.
(The public hiss at me, but I cheer myself when in my own house I contemplate the coins in my strong-box.)”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Housing, Box

“Of course there is enough to stir our wonder anywhere; there's enough to love, anywhere, if one is strong enough, if one is diligent enough, if one is perceptive, patient, kind enough -- whatever it takes.”

William H. Gass (1924–2017) Fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor

Love

“I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.”

Augusten Burroughs book A Wolf at the Table

Source: A Wolf at the Table

God, Feeling, Thinking, Parting

“Strong women- precious jewels all- their humanness is evident in their accessibility. We are able to enter into the spirit of these women and rejoice in their warmth and courage.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Women, Courage

“For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.”

Robin Hobb book Ship of Magic

Source: Ship of Magic

“If you look up "charming" in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell. Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Love, Death, Soul, Hell

“Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Marriage

“If our faith is strong, we’ll go to heaven, and we’ll understand the whole thing when we get there. As if life were a joke, and heaven the place where the cosmic punchline is finally explained to us.”

Stephen King book Revival

Source: Revival

Life, Faith, Understanding

“She opened her eyes and met his. The impact was so strong he was amazed that his fingers continued playing without pause.”

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

“The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Faith, Thinking

“Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 96
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest
Source: First Meetings in Ender's Universe

Women, Men, Stupidity

“That’s when this warm feeling buzzes through you and you smile to yourself, knowing God’s watching you, knowing that He knows you’re trying to be strong to please Him.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

Source: Does My Head Look Big In This?

God, Smile, Feeling

“But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 71
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body

Hurt

“You're strong—you're so, so strong. It's why I love you.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Love

“Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.”

Maya Angelou book Mom & Me & Mom

Source: Mom & Me & Mom

Love, Star

“Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.”

Barry Hughart book Bridge of Birds

Source: Bridge of Birds

Truth

“It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Feeling

“I am invariably late for appointments - sometimes as much as two hours. I've tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Way, Change

“My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest. My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle's wings, and fly forth.”

Juliet Marillier (1948) New Zealand fiction writer

Water, Heart, Flying

“A strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength.”

Jeffrey Archer (1940) English author and former politician

Life

“Those who forgive themselves and are able to accept their real nature, they are the strong ones.”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Source: Naruto: Die Schriften des Tô

Forgiveness, Nature

“Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Effort

“The woman who creates and sustains a home, and under whose hands children grow up to be strong and pure men and women, is a creator second only to God.”

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) Novelist, poet, writer, activist

Women, Men, God, Children

“Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women…. they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Women, People, Reality

“Men are the weak ones, luv. Didn't you know? Oh, you make a lot of noise, but its the women who are strong. Where it counts. In 'ere”

Jennifer Donnelly book The Tea Rose

Source: The Tea Rose

Women, Men

“That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

See also the Wikipedia article on the Lake Wobegon effect.
A Prairie Home Companion, News from Lake Wobegon

Women, Men, Children

“The wound you refuse to dress is one that will never heal. You gush lifeblood and never even know why. It will make you weak at a critical moment when you need to be strong.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

“I like my coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong… with a spoon in them.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Glorious (1997)
Variant: I like my coffee like I like my women... in a plastic cup.
Source: Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill

Women, Coffee

“The decent, strong person had to do decent, strong things like love unlovable people and keep peace even when it wasn't easy.”

Mary Connealy (1956) Author

Source: Doctor in Petticoats (Center Point Christian Romance

Love, People, Peace, Personality

“Someday you will know that the heart is not always as wise as it is strong. - Uncle Eddie”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Heart

“The strong look for more strength, the weak for excuses.”

Margaret George book The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Source: The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Even a strong man can succumb to the wiles of a pretty girl with pointy shoes.”

Joseph Delaney (1945) British writer

Source: Attack of the Fiend

Shoe, Girl

“Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it's those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trails, or fracture by a permanent, damning fault line.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Victory

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Books, World, Hope, Sea

“She might not be as strong as everyone she met, or as fast, or even as smart. But she could bullshit with the best of them. Combine that with a license to carry, and a girl could more than get by in this life.”

Laura Lippman (1959) Detective fiction writer

Source: By a Spider's Thread

Life, Girl

“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Failure, Motivational, Wise, Deep

“You are the untold story. You are the impassioned truth wanting to scream its existence, to be forever trapped by a strong hand clapped firmly over the mouth of my soul.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Truth, Soul

“It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Source: Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Men, Tree, Passion

“The emerging woman… will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied… strength and beauty must go together.”

Louisa May Alcott book An Old-Fashioned Girl

Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl

Beauty, Soul, Heart

“may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Beauty

“My Google-fu is strong.”

China Miéville book Kraken

Source: Kraken

“I know hate is a strong word and everything, but its okay: we're teenagers.”

Cecily von Ziegesar book You Know You Love Me

Source: You Know You Love Me

Hate

“The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.”

Nathaniel Branden (1930–2014) Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer

Source: Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

Sense

“Stripping the protection wards off the ship was bad enough—it's a strong, strong enchantment, demon-based—but when you fell, I had to put a fast spell on the truck so it wouldn't sink when I lost consciousness. And I will lose consciousness, Alec.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“You are human and mortal; we are the sum of our weak moments and our strong.”

Mercedes Lackey book The Black Gryphon

Source: The Black Gryphon

“She attracted people to her; she had presence, an uncommon. Documenting her effect on her habitat, a naturalist would likely have compared her to a lioness: strong, sleek, and invariably surrounded by her pride.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

People

“It is a good thing to be rich and strong, but it is a better thing to be loved.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Love

“But then I had long mistaken being spoiled for being strong, being defiant for being independent, being reckless for being brave.”

Tami Hoag (1959) American writer

Source: Dark Horse

“… no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.”

Pearl Cleage (1948) American novelist

Source: Just Wanna Testify

Love

“I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Life, Feeling, Sense

“When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.”

Ian McEwan book On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

Way, Kiss, Past

“One is never so strong as when one is broken.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: Thinking Like The Universe: The Sufi Path Of Awakening

“Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Stupidity, Fight

“We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.”

Charles Frazier (1950) American writer

Life, Pain, Happiness

“Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself:. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”

Margaret Atwood book Alias Grace

Source: Alias Grace

Flowers, Night, Dead

“Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head. -pg. 25”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

Life, People, Parting

“Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Discipline: The Glad Surrender

God, Error, Feeling, Forgetting

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

World, History

“I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Source: The Man in the Iron Mask

Love, Death

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Variant: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity trust upon them.
Source: Catch-22 (1961)
Context: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.

Men

“I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Life, Fear, Depressing

“It's the people who seem weak who are always suprisingly strong, and the ones who seem strong who are unexpectledly weak.”

Lisa Jewell (1968) British writer

Source: Ralph's Party

People

“I never could understand why some writers treat women as helpless. Every woman I know is strong in her own unique way.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

Women, Way, Understanding

“Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

People, Secret, Suffering, Loneliness

“Always do what you're afraid to do.
…
I will prove myself strong when they think I am sick.
I will prove myself brave when they think I am weak.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Variant: I will prove myself strong when they think I am sick. I will prove myself brave when they think I am weak -Cady Sinclair
Source: We Were Liars

Thinking

“Girls have to be strong to protect the men they love.”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Love, Men, Girl

Quotes about strength page 6

Quotes about strength
page 6