Tom Robbins Quotes

... there is a skeleton (or death) that flees terrified in the face of my will to live.

If you don't have any fight in you, you might as well be dead.

I have no fear of death. More important, I don't fear life.

The stalwart soul has the will to live and is eager for the race.

Unless you can't take care of yourself or stuff like that, I'm always standin' for you to hold onto life as much as you can.

To me, faith is being thankful when things in life are going well and also being thankful when they are not. Its often through our most difficult times when faith lifts us up and gives us the courage and the strength to work even harder to accomplish a new goal or do something we never thought we could.

Forget yourself! Think courage.

Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don't know.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

"No," he says, taking us both in. "No, no, no. You've come farther than most people on this planet will in their lifetimes. You've overcome obstacles and dangers and things that should've killed you. You've outrun an army and a madman and deadly illness and seen things most people will never see. How do you think you could have possibly come this far if you didn't have hope?"

You should be as alive as you can, until you're totally dead!

It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens, then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all.

Don't ever think compassion is weak. Compassion is about strength.

Your life is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to be enjoyed. You are doing better than you think.

I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.

No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived.

FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'

Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.

But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

Come back again, old heart! Ah me! Methinks in those thy coward fears There might, perchance, a courage be, That fails in these the manlier years; Courage to let the courage sink, Itself a coward base to think, Rather than not for heavenly light Wait on to show the truly right.

Here's the thing about faith: It gives us the strength to go on when we want to give in. It gives us the courage to get up when we want to lie down. It gives us the power to make a way out of no way when there ain't no way. Just as love can't make you strong until love has made you weak, well, faith can't lift you up until life has knocked you down. With faith or without it, we can't stop the waves. But with it, we don't need to. Because with it we can ride the surf.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure.

I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances – which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.

You have to have faith that there is a reason you go through certain things. I can't say I'm glad to go through pain, but in a way one must, in order to gain courage and really feel joy.

The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.