111 Quotes About Overcoming Struggles

Life is an intricate journey filled with moments of joy, growth, and, inevitably, struggle. These struggles, be they personal, professional, or emotional, challenge us and test our resolve. Yet, they also shape our strength, resilience, and capacity for compassion. In the face of adversity, quotes can offer powerful insights and inspiration, acting as beacons of hope and reminders of our inner strength. In this collection, we bring you 111 carefully selected quotes that capture the essence of overcoming struggles, each word offering encouragement and wisdom as you navigate through life's challenges. Let these quotes inspire you, uplift you, and remind you that you are not alone in your journey toward resilience and triumph.

1. “Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.” - Matthew Arnold

2. “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” - Thomas Mann

3. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.[These words are also inscribed upon his grave]” - Karl Marx

4. “Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.” - Henry James

5. “All struggle, all resistance is -- must be -- concrete. And all struggle has a global resonance. If not here, then there. If not now, then soon. Elsewhere as well as here.” - Susan Sontag

6. “Struggle is the food from which change is made, and the best time to make the most of a struggle is when it's right in front of your face. Now, I know that might sound a bit simplistic. But, too often we're led to believe that struggling is a bad thing, or that we struggle because we're doing something wrong. I disagree. I look at struggle as an opportunity to grow. True struggle happens when you can sense what is not working for you and you're willing to take the appropriate action to correct the situation. Those who accomplish change are willing to engage the struggle.” - Danny Dreyer

7. “It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.” - Joseph Conrad

8. “Where is my oasis? Too far fromhere for me to crawl with thesedead legs, refusing to co-operateHands and fingers clawing uselesslythrough the grains of sand...” - Kiera Woodhull

9. “Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose.” - Sarah Dessen

10. “Faith is always supposed to make it harder, not easier, to ignore the plight of our sisters and brothers. (p. 165)” - Robin R. Meyers

11. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” - Rosa Luxemburg

12. “Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or any of it, really but I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that knowing what I've lost...” - Joss Whedon

13. “Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.” - Theodore Roosevelt

14. “As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.” - Roberto Bolaño

15. “O snailClimb Mount FujiBut slowly, slowly!” - Kobayashi Issa

16. “He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.” - Joseph Conrad

17. “No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.” - David Foster Wallace

18. “She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

19. “Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.” - Michel Foucault

20. “As beauty lies in eyes of beholder, struggling lies in reaching further. ” - Santosh Kalwar

21. “One day can change your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is is three or four big days that change everything.” - Beverly Donofrio

22. “How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.” - Yvon Chouinard

23. “All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down.” - Jodi Picoult

24. “Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political nature - and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine - fights less for the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely,it is hard to determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the defence makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support,the herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.” - Adolf Hitler

25. “Procrastination can wait for Tomorrrow.” - Michelle Marie

26. “There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.” - Roberto Bolaño

27. “They key of persistence opens all door closed by resistence ” - John Di Lemme

28. “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.” - Thomas Paine

29. “There is no life without struggle.” - Santosh Kalwar

30. “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” - Audre Lorde

31. “You stay safe, You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You Push.” - Carrie Ryan

32. “A person could stop a specific thing, but they couldn’t stop change in general. Rivers can’t run backward. Yet, he felt there must be an alternative, neither willfulness nor resignation. He couldn’t put words to it. All he knew was, neither of them had changed their minds and neither of them could find anything more to say.” - David Wroblewski

33. “[P]olitics is always a Kampfplatz.” - Perry Anderson

34. “But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest.” - Emily Brontë

35. “You've got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn't define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don't have to struggle to be good enough for.” - Deb Caletti

36. “When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.” - Deepak Chopra

37. “It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it is the grain of sand in your shoe.” - Anonymous

38. “We all struggle with something, and need help. Whatever it is that you can't conquer on your own, I encourage you to give it to the Lord; He can fix anything! Your struggle is no more because VICTORY has taken it's place!! Have a VICTORIOUS day!” - Anita R. Sneed-Carter

39. “Most of us try to do too much because we are secretly afraid we will not be able to do anything at all.” - Rick Aster

40. “I will tell you one thing that will make you rich for life. There are two struggles: an Inner-world struggle and an Outer-world struggle...you must make an intentional contact between these two worlds; then you can crystallize data for the Third World, the World of the Soul.” - G.I. Gurdjieff

41. “History is the long struggle of man, by exercise of his reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand, and act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to speak, a new dimension to reason and a new dimension to history.” - Edward Hallett Carr

42. “For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.” - Hermann Hesse

43. “You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.” - Leymah Gbowee

44. “Life is a struggle, from the agonies of birth to the railing against death. Devour or be devoured. The law of the wild.” - David Gemmell

45. “He pulled something out of his pocket and tried to stick it in her arm. A needle. He'd offered her hope, but then he was trying to hurt her. Poison. She pushed him away. "That wasn't nice.” - Melissa Marr

46. “His face was pale, and he dropped to the floor so that he was half kneeling, half sitting before her. "Please. I can...help you.""No." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her mind felt clearer now. Everything made more sense when she wasn't so hungry. "I don't think I want the help you have."He cradled his bloody arm and tried to stand. "This isn't right. You aren't right. You aren't suppose to be here.""But I am.” - Melissa Marr

47. “Soon enough it will be me struggling (valiantly?) to walk - lugging my stuff around. How are we all so brave as to take step after step? Day after day? How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say O.K. Why do I feel so sorry for everyone and so proud?” - Maira Kalman

48. “If she[…] had known how much her first half-inch beginning to let go would take - and how long her noticing and renouncing owning and her turning her habits, and beginning the slimmest self-mastery whose end was nowhere in sight - would she have begun?” - Annie Dillard

49. “Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?” - Tom Stoppard

50. “From recovery to rags and rags to recovery symbolizes art - a perfect compilation of human imperfections.” - Criss Jami

51. “On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

52. “Everything is a contest. All dealings among men are a contest in which some will succeed and others fail. And some are failing quite spectacularly.” - Brandon Sanderson

53. “I believe in love. I believe in hard times and love winning. I believe marriage is hard. I believe people make mistakes. I believe people can want two things at once. I believe people are selfish and generous at the same time. I believe very few people want to hurt others. I believe that you can be surprised by life. I believe in happy endings.” - Isabel Gillies

54. “The time has come to lay that baggage down and leave behind all the struggling and striving. You can be set free as you journey forward into a balanced healthy and rewarding future.” - Sue Augustine

55. “Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown and it's impossible not to be affected by the trials and tribulations of the struggle. But, in many ways, it is the sense of triumph in the face of such adversity that makes the experience all the more poignant.” - Tahir Shah

56. “Marriage without struggle is like an unfired clay pot.It is easily made, but it will not stand the test of time.” - Allan Wolf

57. “And let's just be honest, there is no such place called 'justice,' if by that we envision a finish line, or a point at which the battle is won and the need to continue the struggle over with. After all, even when you succeed in obtaining a measure of justice, you're always forced to mobilize to defend that which you've won. There is no looming vacation. But there is redemption in struggle.” - Tim Wise

58. “But she had known, better than anyone else, what demons he had faced, had known how hard he had fought to free himself from them. That he had lost the fight in the end made the struggle no less honorable.” - Donna Woolfolk Cross

59. “Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.” - Santiago Ramón y Cajal

60. “You will never be entirely comfortable. This is the truth behind the champion - he is always fighting something. To do otherwise is to settle.” - Julien Smith

61. “The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.” - Yoko Ogawa

62. “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” - Edmund Burke

63. “I told her I loved the howling sound of her harmonica. That seemed to be the limit of my courage that night, and even those spoken words had to struggle their way out of my mouth. It's all very well for words to build bridges, but sometimes I think it's a matter of knowing when to do it. Knowing when the time's right.” - Markus Zusak

64. “I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.” - Emma Goldman

65. “Never believe for a second that your weak, within all of us we have a reserve of inner hidden strength,” - Victoria Addino

66. “Even after making up one's mind to the sacrifices Ihad decided upon, there is always left a trace of envyfor those who have triumphed in the melancholystruggle for literary supremacy” - Paul Bourget

67. “In every motions to put colors on my canvas, I feel like I am screaming, "I AM HERE"... To whom?.. To where?... Where am I going to...?” - Hiroko Sakai

68. “The more I drive myself into the depth of my inside, the more things come up to my vision, visibly or invisibly... I even do not know if I am seeing them with my eye or with my mind. I just need to copy them on my canvases. But this mental process is always overwhelming. I often have hard time to deal with my emotion on this state. You could call this depression on surface? But actually, so many 're-birth' and 'reform' are going on on my thoughts, inspiration, philosophy...etc in the underwater. I believe this struggle make my art real. My art always comes from my emotion.” - Hiroko Sakai

69. “After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do the best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.” - Michael J. Fox

70. “A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.” - Victor Hugo

71. “You too, you took an interest in the world. That was long ago. I want you to cast your mind back to then. The domain of the rules was no longer enough for you; you were unable to love any longer in the domain of the rules; so you had to enter into the domain of the struggle. I ask you to go back to that precise moment. It was long ago, no? Cast your mind back: the water was cold. You are far from the edge, now. Oh yes! How far from the edge you are! You long believed in the existence of another shore; such is no longer the case. You go on swimming, though, and every movement you make brings you closer to drowning. You are suffocating, your lungs are on fire. The water seems colder and colder to you, more and more galling. You aren't that young anymore. Now you are going to die. Don't worry. I am here. I won't let you sink. Go on with your reading.” - Michel Houellebecq

72. “The greatest war every fought, and are still fighting, where more people have been defeated and died, is the war within.” - Anthony Liccione

73. “The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

74. “Faith, is the road that goes straight past the gravel, and cloud-mesh dirt into a mirage, where still you believe to go straight, and when you finally catch up with it, it ends at a lake where you stretch your eyes across, but unable to glimpse the other side- so you jump in and swim, gliding each stroke with tiredness and swallow of water, you reach the end, put a hand out and pull yourself up on concrete, where the same road continues straight into another blue-white blur.” - Anthony Liccione

75. “Will doesn't have to be struggle!” - Tae Yun Kim

76. “Well, we all come to it in time - we are broken down to ground-level, and must construct ourselves anew. If we survive, we become stronger: with few exceptions we do not become better. For most of us, when all else has failed, turn to the demon. ("The Overseer")” - Albert E. Cowdrey

77. “Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle.... Goats are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.” - Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

78. “No person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.” - Adrienne Rich

79. “By looking to the Source, to the Creator of nature, we can remember how to navigate life organically, with less struggle, and less suffering.” - Jeffrey R. Anderson

80. “It’s very difficult to follow our dreams, but it’s even more difficult to forget them.” - Rahul Rampal

81. “I am the happiest person on this world, who has never seen ups and downs in life. I got whatever I wished for… And I woke up!” - Rahul Rampal

82. “Why is it, I wonder, that people suffer, when there is so little need, when an effort of will and some hard work would bring them from their misery into peace and contentment.” - Richard Llewellyn

83. “I used to think, that when my old inner demons started creeping back into my life, that it was a sign of failure or moral weakness. But the saints have shown me that part of the human condition is to struggle with the same sins and suffering over and over again. Once I accepted the fact that I’d probably always have to be on guard against spiritual attacks related to food and my weight, I began to really recover.” - Kate Wicker

84. “I'm a struggling writer, I'm struggling to convince people I'm a writer.” - Tom Conrad

85. “Everywhere I looked, hope existed - but only as some kind of green shoot in the midst of struggle. It was a theological concept, not a spiritual practice. Hope, I began to realize, was not a state of life. It was at best a gift of life.” - Joan Chittister

86. “The spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us.” - Joan Chittister

87. “Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane - only - only of late - I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.” - Charlotte Brontë

88. “I can pretty much guarantee that you will at some point find yourself doing something that at one point you swore you'd never do. You'll do it for the sake of getting high, either directly or indirectly. Trust me. It will happen. You might think you know yourself better than anyone, but you have yet to become acquainted with your addiction. It will introduce itself in ways that you never thought were possible.” - Ashly Lorenzana

89. “You can never be upset with the people who forced you into your dream or up higher.” - Tyler Perry

90. “For something to be great, there has to be some kind of trial or some type of struggle that actually makes it special or valuable to you. Otherwise, anything could be easily taken for granted.” - Hayley Williams

91. “I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.” - Cicely Tyson

92. “There are no saints either. We are immortal, but not so unlike the humans as you think. We have enemies, we have duties, we hate, we struggle, and we love.” - Jessica Fortunato

93. “Legionary life is beautiful, not because of riches, partying or the acquisition of luxury, but because of the noble comradeship which binds all Legionaries in a sacred brotherhood of struggle.” - Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

94. “It's so hard to find the place somewhere in the middle of the best and worst I've felt.” - Ashly Lorenzana

95. “No ordinary effort stops the wheel.In sleep it spins without resistance.Passively, falling deeper, lacking the will to activate any change.” - Stephen Demone

96. “...Everyone struggles to guard their heart from breaking, when they should desire to have a heart that breaks...” - John Geddes

97. “There is no pride when it comes to survival, only determination.” - Anthony Liccione

98. “I had to sever my emotional cord to escape the anger and shame that silently slithered through my head, disconnecting myself from the stares and whispers that followed me down the hall.” - Rebecca Donovan

99. “I must go on living. And, though itmay be childish of me, I can't go on insimple compliance. From now on I muststruggle with the world. I thought thatMother might well be the last of thosewho can end their lives beautifully andsadly, struggling with no one, neitherhating nor betraying anyone. In theworld to come there will be no room forsuch people. The dying are beautiful,but to live, to survive – those thingssomehow seem hideous andcontaminated with blood.” - Osamu Dazai

100. “Becoming aware of our inner man and woman means to discover the roots and creative potential of both the male and female aspect within ourselves. Becoming aware of the inner man and woman means to understand that they have different visions of life. It means to understand that they have different perspectives and views of life. The inner man and woman are our two wings of love and freedom. Through awareness, acceptance and understanding, we can allow our two wings to develop in a deep and natural harmony. In the world today, a one-sided development of the male side leads to destructivity. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, exhaustion and a separation from life. A one-sided development of the female side leads to passivity and dependence.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

101. “I almost wish I had cancer. Then I’d either beat it or die from it. But my disease, even if successfully treated, will never go away. And it might not kill me. But it will hang over me like the blade of a guillotine; more threatening inert than if the blade suddenly slips and mercifully turns out my lights. This is my war to end all wars.” - William Cope Moyers

102. “. I felt the sun graze my face as I sped further and further from it all. The only negative part about running was that at some point I knew I’d have to stop. I’d have to turn around and go back. And whatever troubles had haunted me when I left, would be waiting upon my return.” - Courtney Giardina

103. “It is better to struggle pursuing what matters than to excel at achieving the inconsequential.” - D.A. Blankinship

104. “Une lutte qui semble perdue, est la plus excitante.” - Jacques Tardi

105. “The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots.” - Rudolf Rocker

106. “They are my men and this ship my responsibility. I vowed no woman would ever alter my path. Yet I kept them from ending you, and it makes me sick to the gut, for I would still rather die myself than see one hair on your head damaged by another man.” - Saskia Walker

107. “What is it doing to me? Will the darkness consume me?” - Melissa Marr

108. “Question and AnswerDurban, Birmingham,Cape Town, Alabama,Johannesburg, Watts,The earth aroundStruggling, fighting,Dying--for what?A world to gain.Groping, hoping,Waiting--for what?A world to gain.Dreams kicked asunder,Why not go under?There's a world to gain.But suppose I don't want it,Why take it?To remake it.” - Langston Hughes

109. “All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.” - Amos Bronson Alcott

110. “Struggle strengthens the human bond and lightens the burden of the human condition.” - Lorii Myers

111. “Does a leaf, when it falls from the tree in winter, feel defeated by the cold?The tree says to the leaf:"That’s the cycle of life. You may think you’re going to die, but you live on in me. It’s thanks to you that I’m alive, because I can breathe. It’s also thanks to you that I have felt loved, because I was able to give shade to the weary traveller. Your sap is in my sap; we are one thing.” - Paulo Coelho