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Hardship Quotes


"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."



"Bad and worse and worst makes a beggar's choice."


"The hardship of living in a refugee camp made me psychologically strong."


"Few great things are achieved effortlessly."



"There is nothing worse than being broke and having your woman leave you. Nothing to drink, no job,just the walls, sitting there staring at the walls and thinking. That's how women got back at you, but it hurt and weakened them too. Or so I like to believe."


"Not the comfort, but the confrontation and hardship, is the teacher of a great life."


"Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or-and the outward semblance is the same-crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more."


"By three in the afternoon, after one Bintang too many, I was absolutely smashed and feared that trying to stand may end badly."


"However, with a gut full of heroin, it's hard to be an optimist."


"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."


"About a month after she found out about that, I got pregnant for the first time. I knew I didn't want to have a baby at all, and wanted to get an abortion. But the day I found out, I wasn't sure what to do first. I felt alone and lost and needed someone to call who I could tell. I needed help. I wasn't sure if she would talk to me again so soon after what had happened. I decided to take a chance and try calling her. When I told her, she said, 'Well, an abortion is only like $500, so go turn a couple of tricks and get it taken care of,' before she hung up on me. I probably should have called someone else, but I didn't know who else to call."


"So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men."
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