Toughness Quotes

“Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.”
― Greta Garbo

“We've got a motto here-you're tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.”
― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

“We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me.”
― Paula McLain

“I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“There’ll be guys who were in wars hearing what we did and thinking, ‘Whoa.’ You and me, we can say, ‘You got yourself some medals solider? Yeah, well, I lived through the FAYZ.”
― Michael Grant

“I didn't sign it," Neil said, looking up from his hands. He lifted his fingers to his face. He couldn't feel his tatoo, but he'd seen Kevin's often enough that he knew exactly where it was. "He gave me a contract but I wouldn't sign it. He couldn't make me. This doesn't mean anything. I'm still a Fox.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Raven King

“(On Baron von Blixen:)

Six feet of amiable Swede and, to my knowledge, the toughest, most durable White Hunter ever to snicker at the fanfare of safari or to shoot a charging buffalo between the eyes while debating whether his sundown drink will be gin or whisky.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“A champion is someone who gets up when he can't.”
― Jack Dempsey

“In life, toughness and roughness go together.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“How long you been in the infantry, sir? Anything under ten miles counts as 'almost there'.”
― Henry V. O'Neil, Dire Steps

“Yes, it will be tough and that's the best part.”
― Hiral Nagda

“Tough men are tough not because they want to be tough, but because they have to be tough. Outgrow the adolescent fawning over being a tough guy, and you will become a tough man.”
― Criss Jami

“However little we may like it, toughness is the price of survival.”
― George Orwell, Selected Essays

“We need a guy--a good, brave guy, a guy with no nerves, and balls the size of Cadillac hubcaps, a tough, smart, shrewd guy, a James Bond guy, but Russian--to get into the basement and stop this Klimov.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

“There is a value to adversity. We learn more from tough times than from easy ones.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, The Unused Path: Skills for living an authentic life

“Tough as thunder, sweet as honey, that's the motto for a braveheart human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervish Advaitam: Gospel of Sacred Feminines and Holy Fathers

“I, too, have been tested by this world,” Naandini said firmly. “I am tough. Just as tough as you, whether you believe it or not. You seem to think that you are so different from us, but you’re wrong. Every one of us in this camp will do whatever it takes to win freedom, to survive.” Her round cheeks were flushed, her brows arched in defiance. “You don’t have to be kind to me. I have dealt with far worse than any insult you can fling at me or this army. But you do have to respect me. As a matter of fact, you have to respect all of us. We deserve that much.”
― Allyson S. Barkley, A Vision in Smoke

“I'm not naturally tough. I've learned to be tough through rubbing elbows with the police.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Crooked Candle

“It's time to channel Roz and Harry.”
― Annonymous

“It's too tempting to paint the picture that those who survived did so because they were tougher, but that's too simplistic of a narrative.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Someone isn't tough enough for cowardice.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“Even without Lotty's adjuration, I would have stuck to side streets: simply moving my head between the side mirrors started the throbbing in my eye again. Spenser never complained about pain, I reminded myself, nor Marlowe, let alone Kate Fansler. Suck it up Warshawski, don't let those WASPS show up the Pollacks.”
― Sara Paretsky, Brush Back

“The journey to success is very scary, sad, hard, tough, and rough. It's not easy, but you must start it to become successful in life.”
― Onipede Ayomide

“Like all fads which come and go, all are familiar with those types of people who want to seem tough, who for some form of acceptance want to impress others with their rigidity; but there is another kind of person that does the very same thing when espousing on 'love': while some pretend to be tougher than they really are, others pretend to be lovers when they really aren't.”
― Criss Jami

“Sometimes it is okay for the not-so-okay to act like they are okay.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia

“Those who suicided were not weak, neither were they stupid. They were solely driven by pain. They were tough people who could not bear to behold themselves get continually slapped around by life.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia

“Strength without mind is a weakness.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“What a frail but persistent weapon civilization is: how fragile the handful of concepts: yet tough as wire.”
― Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

“Ella, let me give you a piece of advice. You feel too much, and everything you feel is right there on that face of yours. It's in your voice. You've got to close that face of yours or people will keep hurting you. Put on a skin of toughness and hide yourself. You know, like a crab.”
― Nyani Nkrumah, Wade in the Water