#allen

To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up. ↗

— Dalai Lama XIV

#indifference #life #perseverance #life

God can deliver you so well that some people won’t believe your testimony. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#adversity #battles #come-full-circle-in-life #life-challenges #life-missions

However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that "whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger." In fact, I now sometimes wonder why I ever thought it profound... In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don't kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#life-challenges #philosophy #life

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves. ↗

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#flow #happiness #experience

The music had ceased. Alex walked over to the gramophone, wound it up again, and put on more blues, a woman singing this time, gay and sad at once, like a stranded angel who had traded holiness for humanity but remembered what it used to be like to know God. ↗

— Barbara Hambly

#fallen-angel #music #singer #singing #music

When a person boldly declares, 'You can't,' he might as well add on, 'can you?', knowing that this spoken roadblock only serves to fuel a challenge in naturally stubborn souls. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#dare #impossibility #richelle #richelle-goodrich #roadblock

Sir, no insult intended, but you said to me once that you don’t like kiss-asses and that you’d rather work with people challenging your perceptions. ↗

— Mario Stinger

#insults #nature

She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, the old scar tissue the only place on him unclaimed by Fener, but the paths the sprites took to those stumps touched not a single tattooed line. The flies dance a dance of avoidance - but for all that, they were eager to dance. ↗

— Steven Erikson

#book-of-the-fallen #deadhouse-gates #laws-of-nature #life #malazan

As it so happens, I like your mouth." "It doesn't -- " "Challenge me?" He set the bottle down and moved to the end of the bed. "An outspoken woman makes the world a livable place. You have fire in you, and I would never put that out. ↗

— Dannika Dark

#couple #fire #mouth #outspoken #paranormal

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it. ↗

— Margaret Thatcher

#achievement #challenge #challenge