Judith Viorst Quotes

I had a real good thing going for me, and I got sidetracked. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be drugs. It doesn't have to be alcohol. That part of my life is over.

I believe in discipline, so I'm not the right person to cry about weakness and things like this, but maybe I'm not human.

Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.

I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.

I've always wanted to do right in life. But the wanting and the doing aren't quite the same thing.

At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness.

It frustrates me about myself when I see I'm not taking the road that demands more of me.

I admire anyone who rids himself of an addiction.

The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.

If I quit all the things I loved cold turkey, I knew it would only be so long before I went back to my old ways.

Make yourself do unpleasant things so as to gain the upper hand of your soul.

I believe that if you regularly make the right choice - and it takes practice; it takes effort - the more you make the right choice, the easier it gets.

It took me a long time to get my life screwed up, and it's going to take a long time to get it back.

I struggle just like everybody else struggles. It's always a struggle in life to overcome temptation. I just try and get through it. No one is perfect.

But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?

Knowing how bad you could be is a great encouragement to being good.

I've missed before in college and high school. If you miss, you figure out what went wrong and kick the next one.

There is always room for improvement, and I have always grown up knowing however well I have done, there is always something I could have done better.

Rose, I'm an addict with no work ethic who is likely going to go insane. I'm not like you. I'm not a super-hero." "Not yet," I said.

Brother, stand the pain. Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose.

He pulled himself out of hard times, dealt with the scars from it, pushed himself to make a mark. A little bit of the wild side there, always. I told myself, oh no, I won't get tangled up with this one. And I said it again, even when I was tangled up.

Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

I have never yet figured out what to do about good advice that you get, and that you know right away would help you, but that you cannot follow.

No confict is so severe as his who labors to subdue himself.

What matter and opportunity [for thy activity] art thou avoiding? For what else are all these things, except exercises for the reason, when it has viewed carefully and by examination into their nature the things which happen in life? Persevere then until thou shalt have made these things thy own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.