Now, every time I witness a strong person, I want to know: What darkness did you conquer in your story? Mountains do not rise without earthquakes.
Katherine MacKenett (b. c. 1984) American writer, editor
(Attributed)
Quotations about:
overcoming
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In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer; US President (1901–09)
Speech (1899-04-10), “The Strenuous Life,” Hamilton Club, Chicago
(Source)
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. The life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer; US President (1901–09)
Speech (1899-04-10), “The Strenuous Life,” Hamilton Club, Chicago
(Source)
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.
Bertie Charles (B. C.) Forbes (1880–1954) American publisher
Forbes, Issue No. 1 (Sep 1917)
(Source)
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a steppingstone in the path of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish essayist and historian
(Misattributed)
This quotation is widely attributed to Carlyle (e.g. (1896)), but, though sounding like something he might have said, it does not appear in his works.
Instead, it is actually a quotation from from G. H. Lewes, Life of Goethe, ch. 3 (1855) [emphasis mine]:Instead, therefore, of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, whilst his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives for ever among ruins; the block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong.
George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) was an English philosopher and literary critic (and enamorata of Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot). Life of Goethe was one of his most popular works.
The cross-pollination to Carlyle is likely from Carlyle's deep friendship with Goethe and the numerous essays he wrote about the man and his works, as well as Carlyle being a pervasively-known writer of the period. A casual citation of the pith of this quote to a work called Life of Goethe could easily have become misattributed to the better-known Goethe enthusiast, Carlyle.
