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1 " I'll find you, don't worry. My body won't be with you all the time, but you'll always have my heart. I'm your worrier, remember?" " I'll never forget. I promise. I'm your High Priestess and you've pledged yourself to me. That means you have my heart, too." " Then both of us better stay safe. A heart's a hard thing to live without. I should know. I've tried it. "
2 " It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together. "
― Tim O'Brien , The Things They Carried
3 " Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward. "
― Jim Butcher , White Night (The Dresden Files, #9)
4 " Freedom isn't hard to lose - but it's a hard thing to win back once it's been lost. "
― Christina Engela , Black Sunrise
5 " It is strange, is it not, how an accident of a millimeter here, a millimeter there, makes one face so important. Think about it Elliot, She has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, just like everyone else. It,s all in tiny degrees of placement, such small area of magic to make such a big difference. For me, Elliot, I must tell you it is a hard thing to understand- why these things, these millimeters, are so crucial to you, you of all men. "
― Judith Krantz , Scruples
6 " Sibyl, what do you want?”“I want to live,” the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. “I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world and out. I want to keep being myself and mind the work that minds me. Work is not always a hard thing that looms over your years. Sometimes, work is the gift of the world to the wanting. "
― Catherynne M. Valente , The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2)
7 " Trust in this life is a hard thing to earn and keep. "
8 " Power has always corrupted, my dear. Even the promise of power. It is a hard thing to look at through the fence for hundreds of years without wondering what it would be like on the other side. "
― Ally Carter , All Fall Down (Embassy Row, #1)
9 " Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or mistake, but you're not supposed to question adults, or your coach or your teacher, because they make the rules. Maybe they know best, but maybe they don't. It all depends on who you are, where you come from. Didn't at least one of the six hundred guys think about giving up, and joining with the other side? I mean, valley of death that's pretty salty stuff. That's why courage it's tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes you might not even know why you're doing something. I mean any fool can have courage. But honor, that's the real reason for you either do something or you don't. It's who you are and maybe who you want to be. If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that's pretty good. I think that's what the writer was saying, that you should hope for courage and try for honor. And maybe even pray that the people telling you what to do have some, too. "
― Michael Lewis , The Blind Side
10 " Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real you’re mind believes it must be so. We watch them grow by our hands, not always knowing the paths they will choose with the obstacles we throw at them. They take on a life of their own and often surprise even us by their actions we couldn’t have imagined before it poured out of us onto the paper. We could change it if we really wanted to, but it would be forced and not be true to the characters. And when something tragic happens and one is lost, we feel that loss even though we know they were not a friend, a family member or even ourselves. It can be a hard thing to voice sometimes, to give tribute to the one’s left behind with the real sadness over something not so real. But we find the words and press on to the next challenge, because that's what good writers do. "
11 " The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272) "
― Victor Davis Hanson , Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
12 " …if a thing can be said to be, to exist, then such is the nature of these expansive times that this thing which is must suffer to be touched. Ours is a time of connection; the private, and we must accept this, and it’s a hard thing to accept, the private is gone. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted. And if you’re thinking how awful these sentiments are, you are perfectly correct, these are awful times, but you must remember as well that this has always been the chiefest characteristic of the Present, to everyone living through it; always, throughout history, and so far as I can see for all the days and years to come until the sun and the stars fall down and the clocks have all ground themselves to expiry and the future has long long shaded away into Time Immemorial: the Present is always an awful place to be. "
― Tony Kushner , Homebody/Kabul
13 " Trust is a hard thing to win back. "
14 " She became fascinated by the statue of Edith Cavell and would stand at the base of it in the freezing cold of a December morning, looking up: -Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone-. Sometimes those words made her cry. The tears would come uncontrollably and they would not stop. And in those moments Anna found forgiveness and it made her free. But they were only moments. Forgiveness is a hard thing to hang on to. "
15 " It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless—he may be of worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of broken basin, or dirty rag. "
― George MacDonald , At the Back of the North Wind
16 " Hatred must be a hard thing to learn. "
― Margarita Engle , The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom
17 " What do you think dignity's all about?'The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public. "
― Kazuo Ishiguro , The Remains of the Day
18 " Pride is a hard thing to let go but is it really worth your all "
19 " Waiting and hoping is a hard thing to do when you've already been waiting and hoping for almost as long as you can bear it. "
20 " It’s a hard thing to accept that someone wants you dead. It forces you to decide if you have anything worth living for. "