Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

When hope is gone, time is punishment.

The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.

I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.

The only thing I pray for is the strength to go out without complaining.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over.

A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight!

It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to wake up one more time. It is harder to stay where you are than to get out.

I think about giving up. I almost do.

How can one not succumb and allow one's courage to fail when everything is shut tight, when all meaningful things are walled up, and when you constantly knock against bricks, as against the walls of a prison?

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.

Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain... Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore... Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.

No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.

To possess your soul in patience, with all the skin and some of the flesh burnt off your face and hands, is a job for a boy compared with the pains of a man who has lived pretty long in the exhilarating world that drugs or strong waters seem to create and is trying to live now in the first bald desolation created by knocking them off.

The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

I'm interested in that thing that happens where there's a breaking point for some people and not for others. You go through such hardship, things that are almost impossibly difficult, and there's no sign that it's going to get any better, and that's the point when people quit. But some don't.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure

Patience is the strongest of strong drinks; for it kills the giant despair.

I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.

Bear patiently, my heart, for you have suffered heavier things.

Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start back in the hills with 6 miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing. Guts begin when you still have forty minutes of torture left and you're already hurting more than you ever remember.

We must suffer to the end, to the moment when we stop believing in suffering.

No matter how hard it rains, withstand the pain.

There are seldom, if ever, any hopeless situations, but there are many people who lose hope in the face of some situations.

This iron world bungs down the stoutest hearts to lowest state; for misery doth bravest minds abate.