Chester Himes Quotes

If you're strong enough on the inside, you can handle anything that comes at you on the outside.

The human spirit can be indomitable and it is this rare quality that is not at all to be expected that makes survivors of us all, the human race in the grand scheme of things.

At times to think of one's outer helplessness is good, but to think always of one's inner strength is infinitely better.

The only victory that really counts in prison is survival. But survival means more than simply being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail term; the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, at the end of his sentence, can't be said to have survived it. And it's for those small victories of the heart, and the spirit, and the will that we sometimes risk the body that cradles them.

This I know; the spirit of Man cannot be stopped.

Feminine force is that inner strength, that power, that will to face down any negative circumstances in life and defeat them.

I just want people to know I'm mentally strong.

I am resilient like my mother and have the ability to face any kind of storm.

I don't want people to feel sorry for me or pity me - I want people to know that what got me through was human spirit and everyone has that in them.

As women, we need to know that we can overpower anyone with our mental strength.

Through a forest of challenges, thought moves and squirms, resisting beguilements; if it endures, it emerges pure.

You have to stay strong when it gets tough.

She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.

A stout heart may be ruined in fortune but not in spirit.

The immortal mind, superior to his fate, amid the outrage of external things, firm as the solid base of this great world, rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds! Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on! Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky! Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene, the unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck; and ever stronger as the storms advance, firm through the closing ruin holds is way, when nature calls him to the destin'd goal.

We shall live even in this state of living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy all who would judge and destroy us.

Reflecting on his years in prison, Nelson Mandela wrote that there were dark moments that tested his faith in humanity, but he refused to give up.

I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces. Whatever life has done to them, it hasn’t destroyed them.

There were different kinds of strength. I knew that now. It didn't always come from a knife or a willingness to fight. Sometimes it came from endurance, where the well ran deep and quiet. Sometimes it came from compassion and forgiveness.

No matter how hard it rains, withstand the pain.

The human spirit is more powerful than any drug - and that is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. These are the things that matter.

I feel like strength comes from within. And like everything that I am and experience make you strong. And I've been through so many things in my life and those things have taught me. I'm one of those girls, every experience, I learned from my experience.

I think I was as mentally tough as I've ever been. I felt like I handled the situation both on and off the court extremely well. I felt like I needed to.

Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out

In the face of adversity, hope often comes in the form of a friend who reaches out to us.