William James Quotes

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

The scar will remain, but it is better for a man to lose both arms than his soul; and these hard years, instead of being lost, may be made the most precious of your lives, if they teach you to rule yourselves.

So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

The battle for self-discipline may leave you a bit bruised and battered but always a better person.

People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.

...most men and women will yield to the strong currents sucking them into the seas of ruin. Only the strongest in mind and spirit will swim against that current.

I won't back down. I get a satisfaction from being tested and defeating the test.

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

I really believe in the old expression that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It's through adversity that you find the strength you never knew you had.

There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men!

Knowing that you have something you have to deal with, rising to the occasion, builds character.

I didn't realize it until I was grown how necessary it is for good people to be tough.

You've got to be able to hang in there in some uncomfortable pockets and uncomfortable situations, where you're going to take a hit and deliver the football.

I enjoy the pain my body goes through. If you're in a hard moment in a fight, there's a lot of things go through your mind. But the most important thing to me is family.

I don't think one ever stops struggling.

I have been through little situations. That makes me strong.

What don't break you will make you.

I know the position I'm in. Guys are going to try and take me out, but I got to be able to overcome it all and not let those type of things affect me.

My parents taught me not to complain, to always go forward. They taught me to always finish what I had on my plate. It seems ridiculous but these are little things that in the end make you stronger.

Football is not always easy; you need to navigate through some adversity.

Discipline is something we despise for the moment.... We all look for a place to run, an excuse with which to stall. No one enjoys it. Yet those of us who have endured it know that the fruit it produces and the pain from which it ultimately spares us makes it worth the agony.

My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle better for having gone through it. I would live up to the expectation I had for myself. I would be the kind of man I wanted to be.