Ray Charles Quotes

When you've fallen on the highway / and you're lying in the rain, / and they ask you how you're doing / of course you'll say you can't complain.

What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's.

I've been through hell. It's hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden - was it a lie? You're struggling because it wasn't real. But I survived. It was hard, but it didn't kill me.

No Victory Without Suffering

I have walked a stair of swords, I have worn a coat of scars. I have vowed with hollow words, I have lied my way to the stars -Songs of Sapphique

Badlands, you got to live it everyday, let the broken hearts stand as the price you've got to pay.

The heart must be beaten or bruised, and then the sweet scent will come out.

What's the point anyway - Of suffering, dying? It teaches us to live, boy. A man who does not struggle does not live, he survives.

Sometimes you just have to play in pain.

Did you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?

Life is very hard, isn't it? It does kill you, after all.

A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in. A minute to smile and an hour to weep in. A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double. And that is life. A crust and a corner that makes love precious, With a smile to warm and tears to refresh us, And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter. And that is life.

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

I had been in the hurrying waters too long not to appreciate an opportunity to lie on the bank and rest, watch others, and gain strength for the coming years.

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?

I have learned there is no joy without hardship. There is no pleasure without pain. Would we know the comfort of peace without the distress of war?

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain And Fear and Bloodshed,-miserable train!- Turns his necessity to glorious gain.

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

Out of my great sorrows, I make little songs.

You get kicked around long enough, you become a professor of pain.

There are times when you get hit upon, Try hard but you cannot give. Other times you'd gladly part, With what you need to live

Suffering brings experience.

Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself