My mother is a very strong woman. We were seven kids; five of them passed away. My elder brother and I are alive. My mother lost five kids, her husband, her parents and siblings. But she is so strong, she is living for the people who are alive.
When I was 14, I came very close to becoming a gay teen suicide 'statistic,' but I then turned to music, my piano, my loved ones, and discovered that it does in fact get better.
I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
I think to be courageous, you have to be afraid. For me, it feels very courageous when I go skiing because I'm very, very afraid to ski. It's dangerous! I feel very scared. But when I'm acting, I don't feel very scared.
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.
We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
Action is the antidote to despair.
The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny.
The turning point in the life of those who succeed usually comes at the moment of some crisis.
If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
Forward, without ever turning back. ... All wars of independence have been obliged to suffer terrible tests.
Whenever God means to make a man great, he always breaks him in pieces first.
Failure is not fatal. Only failure to get back up is.
It's failure, really, that you grow by, although nobody likes to experience it.
We may go down, but we will take a world with us.
I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away - I rose right where I'd been knocked down. And then that's how you get to know yourself. You say, hmm, I can get up!
Our pain can be our greatest teacher. It leads us to places we'd never go on our own.
Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal.
Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.
