Stubborn Quotes
More Stubborn Quotes
The law of Moses is harsh and severe, as for an enslaved and stubborn people, but it punishes theft with a fine, not death. Let us not think that in his new law of mercy, where he treats us with the tenderness of a father,God has given us greater license to be cruel to one another.
— 1516 Utopia (English translation1556), bk.1.
The stubborn spearmen still made good Their dark impenetrable wood, Each stepping where his comrade stood The instant that he fell.
— 1808 Marmion, canto 6, stanza 34.
Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die. And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.
jim butcher— Character: Harry Dresden, Chapter 22
The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift, That no philosophy can lift.
william wordsworth— Presentiments.
It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.
Eric Hoffer— Entry (1956)
The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled.
howard zinn— You Can't Be Neutral on A Moving Train (1994) Ch. 4: "My Name is Freedom": Albany, Georgia
One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict , but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying .
— Morris West, in Christopher K. Germer, Ronald D. Siegel Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy: Deepening Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, Guilford Press, 2012, p.214
After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation--a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man's razor had cut them.
chinua achebe— Chapter 9 (p. 75)
I still haven’t learned to deal with situations like that very well — but I don’t think you should, because then you’re accepting defeat. It’s good to be stubborn, to be hard on yourself.
— On leading all the way through a race and being beaten at the finish.
It was pretty sad, because for the first time I found how stupid people could be. It sort of made me feel alone in the world. The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it.
frances farmer— On reaction to her high school essay "God Dies", Collier's magazine, (8 May 1937)
Charles Péguy, stubborn rancours and mishaps and all, is one of the great souls, one of the great prophetic intelligences of the 20th century.I offer my poem as my homage to the triumph of his 'defeat'.
geoffrey hill— Notes on The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy, in Collected Poems Penguin Books 1985
Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost.
theodore kaczynski— Interview with Ted Kaczynski
There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.
mark twain— Ch. 13. (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876))
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay, I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
leonard cohen— "Democracy"
It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.
Simone de Beauvoir— p. 81 (All Men are Mortal (1946))
Men! Too blind to see what a stone could see, and too stubborn to be trusted to think for themselves.
robert jordan— Min Farshaw (The Dragon Reborn (15 October 1991))
Somewhere in the child, somewhere in the adult, there is a hard, irreducible, stubborn core of biological urgency, and biological necessity , and biological reason that culture cannot reach and that reserves the right, which sooner or later it will exercise, to judge the culture and resist and revise it.
Lionel Trilling— "Freud: Within and Beyond Culture," Beyond Culture (1965)
People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose.
harry turtledove— p. 184 (The United State of Atlantis (2008))
I try not to confuse roles and traits in my own life. Being the Perl god is a role. Being a stubborn cuss is a trait.
larry wall— Usenet article <20031215021442.GA4012@wall.org> (2003)
The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.
Alfred North Whitehead— Ch. 1: The Origins of Modern Science
Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail, Our lion now will foreign foes assail.
john dryden— John Dryden, Astræa Redux, line 117.
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart, with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 3, line 70.
From compromise and things half done, Keep me with stern and stubborn pnde; And when at last the fight is won, God, keep me still unsatisfied.
Louis Untermeyer— Louis Untermeyer, Prayer.
A stubborn sheep is a profit for a wolf.
— As quoted in Will Graves, Wolves in Russia: Anxiety throughout the Ages, (2007)
O Madhus?dana, the mind is an unsteady thing. Hence it is unrealistic to expect evenness out of it as your system of yoga demands. O, Ke?ava, it is easier to control the wind than to try and control the fickle, unsettling, dominant, and stubborn mind.
— Arjuna; Chapter 6, verses 33–34; The Times of India translation
Or arm th' obdured breast With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
john milton— John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 568.
For fools are stubborn in their way, As coins are harden'd by th' allay; And obstinacy's ne'er so stiff As when 'tis in a wrong belief.
— Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto II, line 481.
America's daily political vitriol is an undeniable fact. Against that depressing background, it is good to be able to celebrate an American invention which, for all its faults, tries to spread around the world a combination of unpaid idealism, knowledge and stubborn civility.
— Timothy Garton Ash, "We've seen America's vitriol. Now let's salute Wikipedia, a US pioneer of global civility," The Guardian, 12 January 2011; and "Look it up: Wikipedia is turning 10," The Los Angeles Times, 14 January 2011
