Struggle quotes

“Invictus,” first published in Henley’s 1888 Book of Verses (written 1875) and represented through the public-domain poem text. This is the second stanza’s closing line, following “Under the bludgeonings of chance”; this collection keeps the poem’s defiant lyric voice rather than treating it as a guarantee that adversity can always be mastered.

Aequanimitas, 1889. The wording appears in Osler’s discussion of patience and equanimity; the source note keeps the medical-graduation context visible rather than treating it as universal therapeutic advice.

Opening of The American Crisis No. I; Paine addresses perseverance during a difficult stage of the American Revolution.

Character Building, “The Cultivation of Stable Habits,” Project Gutenberg #60484. After describing two Tuskegee graduates who finished what they undertook, Washington tells students to “fight it out” and stick to their course despite discouragement and material difficulty.

Speech in Canandaigua, New York, August 3, 1857.

Paradise Lost (1667), Book II, lines 432–433; Satan addresses the infernal council before undertaking the journey out of Hell. The line describes the epic’s literal route from Hell toward light and remains character speech, not a general promise of recovery.

Men of Invention and Industry, Chapter III, “John Harrison: Inventor of the Marine Chronometer”; Project Gutenberg #725. This is Smiles’s biographical narration, not Harrison speaking in first person.

The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture IV, Project Gutenberg #4701. Ruskin immediately contrasts many persevering people with the rarer patient person and later insists that genuine patience is not necessarily passive or idle.

The Art of War, Chapter III “Attack by Stratagem,” section 2, Lionel Giles translation (1910), printed page 17 / scan leaf 73 in the original Giles edition on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #17405. “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting” contrasts mere battlefield victory with achieving the strategic objective without direct combat. This remains ancient military-strategy argument in translation, not generic advice for business, relationships or ordinary personal conflict.

Talks To Teachers, chapter on Habit; Project Gutenberg #16287. James calls this his fifth practical maxim about habits. The physiological vocabulary is historical psychology, not modern clinical guidance.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; the sentence introduces a turning point in Douglass’s account of resistance.

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, saying XIV, in the passage comparing life’s difficulties with enduring the Olympic festival.

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), first-edition scholar passage, Wikisource scan leaf 28. “There mark what Ills the Scholar’s Life assail” is followed by “Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail.” The first-edition transcription uses a comma after “assail”; this collection’s semicolon is a retained punctuation normalization. The couplet remains satirical literary context rather than a forecast of every scholar’s life.

Speech “The Strenuous Life,” April 10, 1899.

Self-Help, Chapter XI, “Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties,” Project Gutenberg #935. The passage comes immediately after Hodson’s reflection on resolutely doing difficult duties and continues by presenting difficulty as a stimulus to people of resolution and valour.

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Project Gutenberg #71893, in Douglass’s retrospective account of resisting Edward Covey. The passage belongs to the history of slavery and self-emancipation; it should not be reduced to a generic motivational slogan detached from that violence.

On the Art of Writing, Lecture XII, “On Style,” Project Gutenberg #17470; excerpted from Quiller-Couch’s reminder that students must master craft for themselves.

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 13, section 3, Richard M. Gummere translation.

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XXXI, Project Gutenberg #1342. Elizabeth Bennet says this to Mr. Darcy at Rosings while he stands near the pianoforte as she plays. Darcy immediately teases her that she sometimes enjoys professing opinions that are not entirely her own, so the line also carries Austen’s character comedy.

News from Nowhere, Chapter XV, ‘On the Lack of Incentive to Labour in a Communist Society,’ Project Gutenberg #3261. Old Hammond says the society gained happiness through the absence of artificial coercion, ‘the freedom for every man to do what he can do best,’ and slowly learned knowledge of what labour was wanted. It is fictional utopian dialogue and historical-social argument, not Morris autobiography or settled economic science.