Burdens Quotes

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

“Duty is heavy as a mountain, death is light as a feather.”
― Robert Jordan

“...people with nothing to declare carry the most.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.”
― Christine de Pizan, Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc

“Constantly stopping to explain oneself may expand into a frustrating burden for the rare individual, so ceasing to do so is like finally dropping the weights and sprinting towards his goals. Those who insincerely misunderstand, who intentionally distort the motives of a pure-intentioned individual, then, no longer have the opportunity to block his path; instead, they are the ones left to stand on the sidelines shouting frustratedly in the wind of his trail.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The things I carry are my thoughts. That's it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light or burdened.”
― Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth

“Even a rock moves on.”
― Anthony Liccione

“Just as Christian came up to the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, fell from off his back, and began to tumble down the hill, and so it continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre. There it fell in, and I saw it no more!”
― John Bunyan

“You can't carry the world on yer shoulders, broad as they are.”
― Jana Oliver, Forbidden

“I know that people can be better than they are. We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Learning to let go is not giving up! It is simply passing the burden to a better fighter, so you can fight another day. (God)”
― Shannon L. Alder

“That's how you should be. Accept your burden and carry it, with joy.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist

“All my people sing of are memories. And so I will remember this death. It will burden me as it does not burden my fellow students -- I must not let that change. I must not become like them. I'll remember that every sin, every death, every sacrifice, is for freedom.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“Make sure you don't carry the burden of the whole world on your shoulders, just in case someone needed them to cry.”
― Nema Al-Araby

“It was them and not them, maybe the ones they’d never been. I could almost see those others standing in the garden where the pea plants were, feet planted between the rows. They stood without moving, their faces glowing with some shine a long time gone. A time before I lived. Their arms hung at their sides.

They’d always been there, I thought blearily, and they’d always wanted to be more than they were. They should always be thought of as invalids, I saw. Each person, fully grown, was sick or sad, with problems attached to them like broken limbs. Each one had special needs.

If you could remember that, it made you less angry.

They’d been carried along on their hopes, held up by the chance of a windfall. But instead of a windfall there was only time passing. And all they ever were was themselves.

Still they had wanted to be different. I would assume that from now on, I told myself, wandering back into the barn. What people wanted to be, but never could, traveled along beside them. Company.”
― Lydia Millet, A Children's Bible

“All I know is that the closer I get to God, the deeper I get into the Bible, and the heavier the burden seems on my shoulders.”
― Tim LaHaye, Tribulation Force

“Oskan, do you really believe that I don’t understand exactly what my soldiers are going through? Do you really think I’m a stranger to burdens?” She almost laughed at the bitter absurdity of it all, but she controlled herself, knowing that if she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

“They’re lucky, they only have to worry about a flogging if they break ranks and endanger their own lives again. But if I make a mistake, thousands could die, a country could be lost, and who knows what else could be inflicted on those unlucky enough to survive!” Her voice had slowly risen in strength as she spoke, and suddenly she let everything go in a glorious outpouring of emotion.

“Don’t talk to me about burdens, I drew up the plans for them! How many fourteen-year-olds do you know who rule a kingdom at war, who command an army, who keep together an alliance of more species than she can remember, who’s killed more people than she can count, who waits desperately day in, day out, every living blessed second, for the arrival of allies she’s terrified are going to let her down? Please tell me, Oskan, tell me her name. I’d like to have a cozy chat with her and compare notes! I’d like that, it might make me feel just a little less isolated, and just a little less afraid that at any minute the whole sorry, ludicrous, deadly, hellish mess is going to collapse around me, and everyone will finally find out that I don’t know what I’m doing and that I’m making it up as I go along!”
― Stuart Hill, The Cry of the Icemark

“Debts are a heavy burden. Throw them off, and you walk free.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Say No! Accept the burdens of revenge.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun

“How heavy it is to be the only one that carries all the boulders of burdens when once agreed to be a mutual share of suffering?”
― D C de Oliveira, Muted: Poetic Abstraction

“Wir lernen aus unserer eigenen Geschichte, wozu der Mensch fähig ist. Deshalb dürfen wir uns nicht einbilden, wir seien nun als Menschen anders und besser geworden. Es gibt keine endgültig errungene moralische Vollkommenheit - für niemanden und kein Land! Wir haben als Menschen gelernt, wir bleiben als Menschen gefährdet. Aber wir haben die Kraft, Gefährdungen immer von neuem zu überwinden."

[Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages]”
― Richard von Weizsäcker

“I do not like to see you suffer. I vowed to protect you, but I fear the one thing I can't protect you from are the sorrowful things that seemed to have gripped your heart. At the very least, maybe I can take on some of the burdens of these thoughts, but only if you talk to me.”
― L.S. Bethel - The King's Seer

“The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen, you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“No, he was angry because he wanted to help more, and he couldn't. Knowing that all you can give isn't enough is its own burden. That was all.”
― James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes

“Swimming was her original sin, the lifelong sandbag on her shoulders, numbing the joy she supposed others got from moving simply through life.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“With her left hand, Herself clumsily tucked the shells into her nightgown and straightened them, each cuntshell wrapped in its cradle of braided lavender or gray or black cotton thread now touching her skin. Herself had told Donkey that each shell was a woman's life saved at great cost, and she needed to keep the shells warm and safe while she lived, giving these souls their time in the world. Baba Rose had had over a hundred shells on her necklace when she'd finally been unable to get out of bed under the burden. Every time Herself told the story of how Baba Rose died, there was another cause, and Donkey had to assume that the ghost whose fire had warmed their cottage for so many years had died of all of it, of everything.”
― Bonnie Jo Campbell, The Waters

“Who is human being? He is the crazy person who constantly puts unnecessary burdens on himself, who is crushed like an insect under these burdens, and yet is not at all interested in getting rid of those stupid burdens and achieving the miraculous comfort and speed of lightness!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Peace of mind isn't about what you do have, it's about what you don't have.”
― Aegelis, Specks of Shadows, Flecks of Light

“If Abbie knew about this, she'd say that he'd let The Race down. She said colored people (sometimes she just said The Race) had to be cleaner, smarter, thriftier, more ambitious than white people, so that white people would like colored people. The way she explained it made him feel as though he were carrying The Race around with him all the time. It kept him confused, a little frightened, too. At that moment The Race sat astride his shoulders, a weight so great that his back bent under it.”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows