Beaten Down Quotes

“I'm going to need help, and I need someone who is fearless. Someone who isn't afraid to stand up to dragons and battle them day after day. Our results may not show promise for years. Our patients will die. There will be days when you feel so beaten down you'll want to crawl home and give up. But I'll need you to get up, dust yourself off, and be ready to wage battle the next day." He locked eyes with her. "I need someone who wants to win as badly as I do. That is why I want you for this job.”

— Elizabeth Camden

“Love.
Not the kind you see in the movies or hear about on the radio.
The real kind.
The kind that gets beaten down and bloody, yet perseveres.
The kind that hopes even when hope seems foolish.
The kind that can forgives. The kind that believes in healing.
The kind that can sit in silence and feel renewed.
The real kind of love.
It's rare and we have it..”

— Chelsea Fine

“Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there's a reason it gets beaten down. Usually we don't like it very much.”

— Jack McDevitt

“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.
I wear the black for those who never read”

— Johnny Cash

“With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim's self-esteem until he or she is incapable of judging a situation realistically. He or she may begin to believe that there is something wrong with them or even fear they are losing their mind. They have become so beaten down emotionally that they blame themselves for the abuse.”

— Beverly Engel

“Defeat is only defeat if we accept it as defeat. Victory often comes after defeat, because one was too stubborn to allow it to be their reality. In the trail of any great conflict you will see the scuff marks, where the one was beaten down, but they could not be taught to stay that way.”

— Tom Althouse

“Loss of self-esteem Beverly Engel, in The Emotionally Abused Woman (1990), describes the effect of emotional abuse on self-esteem: Emotional abuse cuts to the very core of a person, creating scars that may be longer-lasting than physical ones. With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim's self-esteem until she is incapable of judging the situation realistically. She has become so beaten down emotionally that she blames herself for the abuse. Emotional abuse victims can become so convinced that they are worthless that they believe that no one else could want them. They stay in abusive situations because they believe they have nowhere else to go. Their ultimate fear is being all alone.”

— Paul Mason

“Ye are a scoundrel, a black-hearted robber and a rogue,' Stubble said cheerily to the grumbling captain. It was his usual way of haggling, and he'd beaten down the riverman to a decent price for conveying himself and Anvar to Lankarn.”

— Ian Livingstone

“My wife says books aren't real."
"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV and parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes truth and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimension, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours.”

— Ray Bradbury

“There are people who feel deeply but are somehow beaten down. Their buffoonery is something like a spiteful irony against those to whom they dare not speak the truth directly because of a long-standing, humiliating timidity before them. Believe me, Krasotkin, such buffoonery is sometimes extremely tragic.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I met Jay Jonhson. I won him the way poor people occasionally win the lottery: Shameless perseverance and embarrassingly dumb luck, and every time I see one of those sly, toothless, beaten-down souls on TV holding a winning ticket, I think, Go, team.”

— Amy Bloom

“In 'A Scandalous Woman,' the eventually distraught narrator watches as her high-spirited friend is beaten down - literally and figuratively - by Ireland's pious customs.”

— Alan Cheuse

“I'm nihilistic, antagonistic, violent, horrible - but not obliterated, yet. I just refuse to be beaten down. I think it's stubborness that keeps me going.”

— Lydia Lunch

“She'd been in love with the way Todd made her feel about herself. Evan had been her best friend, but his treatment of her, in a way, had been a rejection. Every single day for two damn years, she'd felt rejected by him. It was no wonder her self-esteem had been so beaten down she'd fal en for the first sweet-talker to come along.”

— Cherrie Lynn

“It's funny how in that moment I see things clearly. Am I beaten down? Yes. Have I allowed myself to become a victim? Somewhat. Am I afraid? Always. Does some part of me still long to fly away from this place? Absolutely. But I can't leave. Sam and I have built a life for Joy. It isn't perfect, but it's a life. My family's happiness means more to me that starting over again.”

— Lisa See

“Corruption and brutality are modeled and expected and rewarded. It becomes normal. And anyone who stands up to it, who tells them it's wrong, is beaten down. Or worse.”

— Louise Penny

“From the time the Joshua tree was a tiny sapling, it had been so beaten down by the whipping wind that, rather than trying to grow skyward, it had grown in the direction that the wind pushed it. It existed now in a permanent state of windblowness, leaning over so far that it seemed ready to topple, although, in fact, its roots held it firmly in place.
pg. 35”

— Jeannette Walls

“Acceptable food rots while we are chased from bins behind restaurants, chased from sleeping on the street, chased from relieving ourselves unless we pay for food or gas, until finally we are so hungry, sleepless, smelly, constipated and beaten-down that we simply die of lack of will to live.”

— Jane Siberry

“She had been beaten down by too many boys and men, too much hurt and poverty and fear. This was what Mala was destined to become, someone who ran from her attackers because she couldn't afford to anger them. She wouldn't do it.”

— Cory Doctorow

“Because our souls were never created with love. We are the discarded, the neglected, the beaten down. We are the hated, the castoffs, the freaks. Despair is our fuel; pain is our power. The”

— Soman Chainani

“The dialectics of hunger, the dialectics of poverty. How people move from resignation and from callousness to cynicism and being beaten-down, and anger and self-destruction ... and finally to anger and violence which can become very creative in the process.”

— Anonymous.

“When people hate, its power engulfs them and they are totally consumed by it ... Keep struggling against hatred and resentment. At times you will have the upper hand, at times you will feel beaten down. Although it is extremely difficult, never let hatred completely overtake you ... Never stop trying to live the commandment of love and forgiveness. Do not dilute the strength of Jesus's message; do not shun it; do not dismiss it as unreal and impractical. Do not cut it to your size, trying to make it more applicable to real life in the world. Do not change it so that it will suit you. Keep it as it is, aspire to it, desire it, and work for its achievement”

— Anonymous.

“The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on sad, rich widows”

— Barbara Kingsolver

“But whatever any of them thought one thing was always certain: even though they suffered and had to struggle at times to bring meaning and even the most basic dignity into their existence and even though in their search for justice and truthfulness they were beaten down and met with disappointment again and again-their lives were not available for use as an illustration. Theirs were not stories that could be read as an affirmation of another system.”

— Nadeem Aslam

“Prayerless people cut themselves off from God's prevailing power, and the frequent result is the familiar feeling of being overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around, defeated. Surprising numbers of people are willing to settle for lives like that. Don't be one of them. Nobody has to live like that. Prayer is the key to unlocking God's prevailing power in your life.”

— David Jeremiah

“No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods-come and gone with the sun.”

— Zadie Smith

“I was never weighed down by beauty in my lifetime. However, I was beaten down by the sad fears of my gender- women who didn't allow you to feel pretty or rejoice in who you are, unless it fell beneath how they thought about themselves.”

— Shannon L. Alder

“I absolutely don't relate to being beaten down my whole life - I had amazing opportunities at a young age - but there is still in many, many people's minds the notion that I'll never be able to escape Harry Potter.”

— Daniel Radcliffe

“With distaste, Harriet reflected upon how life had beaten down the adults she knew, every single grown-up. Something strangled them as they grew older, made them doubt their own powers-laziness? Habit? Their grip slackened; they stopped fighting and resigned themselves to what happened. "That's Life." That's what they all said. "That's Life, Harriet, that's just how it is, you'll see.”

— Donna Tartt

“The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home.”

— Elliott Abrams

“I realize that idealism is out of sync with the cynicism of our age. Skepticism has come to be synonymous with sophistication, and glibness is mistaken for intelligence. In such an atmosphere, why bother aiming high? Far too many people don't. I just want to reassure people to have the courage to persevere, to keep following their hearts even when others scoff. Don't be beaten down by naysayers. Don't let the odds scare you from even trying.”

— Howard Schultz

“I hoped to get instruction in Yoga, expected wonderful teachings, but what the teacher did was mainly to force me to face the darkness within myself and it almost killed me ... I was beaten down in every sense until I had to come to terms with that in me which I kept rejecting all my life.”

— Irina Tweedie

“She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods
come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn't value.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

“She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

“He didn't scream hysterically or stand up and kick the headstone or any of that. He put his face on his knees and listened as the wind from the mountains mercilessly leveled everything in its path. He remembered the person who had helped him fly with the wind instead of being beaten down by it, and he cried quietly into his knees, finally knowing how the big of the sky could make a person feel as alone as a heartbeat in space.”

— Amy Lane

“My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.”

— Suzanne Collins

“Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“As soon as you opened your mouth and said the word woman, you were beaten down with the argument that you were betraying the class struggle. There are many poignant writings in which feminists first write pages about their class standpoint before getting to their actual issue. What was then known as class warfare is today called anti-racism. The threat of being accused of racism gave birth to false tolerance.”

— Alice Schwarzer

“Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful.”

— Amy Goodman

“You [Robespierre] will follow us soon. Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood.”

— Georges Danton

“The human soul, beaten down, overwhelmed, faced by complete failure and ruin, can still rise up against unbearable odds and triumph.”

— Harold Russell

“I think any time you get beaten down and rise back up again, you become stronger.”

— Chris Weidman

“The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever. The people- beaten down today, yet rising tomorrow; losing the road one minute but finding it the next; their eyes always fixed on a star of true brotherhood, equality and dignity- the people are the real guardians of our hopes and dreams.”

— Paul Robeson

“Your Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence,that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.”

— Pierre Corneille

“I want to have freedom of thought and expression - not get beaten down into some corporate existence, where there's so much risk of embracing the truth that you feel like you can't do it.”

— D.A. Wallach

“For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words
their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?”

— Markus Zusak

“We have been fortunate enough to live at a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Feminism has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually - women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority.”

— Bell Hooks

“I talked to the team a lot about staying power. You never find out if you have that until you've been beaten down a few times.”

— Bill Parcells

“I've had a real lucky time working in Hollywood. I've talked to other screenwriters, and they're all kind of beaten down and their spirits are crushed, because they work on these screenplays and these projects, and then directors either take them and change everything, rewrite them and make them worse, or they film them and they're nothing like how they imagined it to be.”

— Daniel Clowes