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"Hardship makes the world obscure."
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"Bad and worse and worst makes a beggar's choice."
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Personal Development
"The food we were given was no more than eatable, but the patron was not mean about drink; he allowed us two litres of wine a day each, knowing that if a plongeur is not given two litres he will steal three."
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Personal Development
"The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Where there is less pain, there is also less pay."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE ' IS ' HARD."
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Personal Development
"However, with a gut full of heroin, it's hard to be an optimist."
Author Name
Personal Development
"He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation."
Author Name
Personal Development
"There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Few great things are achieved effortlessly."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Poverty is a force that pulls down the head of the people."
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Personal Development
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"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?"
Life
"Why shouldn't his death bring you into some total scandal of garment-rending grief? Why should you accommodate his death? Or surrender to it in thin-lipped tasteful bereavement? Why give him up if you can walk along the hall and find a way to place him within reach?Sink lower, she thought. Let it bring you down. Go where it takes you."
Grief
"Ordinary moments make the life. This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together. No leaps or falls. I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am. What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever. I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat. Define coat, I tell myself. Define time, define space."
Life
"Why are free spirits always so fucking dumb?"
Freedom
"American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous."
Literature
"One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language."
Truth
"People will always make comparisons."
People
"There were no laptops or handheld devices in class. Ilgauskas didn't exclude them; we did, sort of, unspokenly. Some of us could barely complete a thought without touch pads or scroll buttons, but we understood that high-speed data systems did not belong here. They were an assault on the environment, which was defined by length, width, and depth, with time drawn out, computed in heartbeats."
Education
"When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying."
Mortality
"Steffie took my hand and we walked past the fruit bins, an area that extended about forty-five yards along one wall. The bins were arranged diagonally and backed my mirrors that people accidentally punched when reaching for fruit in upper rows."
Observation
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