Sissy Mae Smith...stumbled into the room loaded down with even more bags. "You pack like a woman," she snarled when she finally dropped the luggage to the floor. "How can one man have so much conditioner?

"The best discoveries always happened to the people who weren't looking for it. Columbus and America. Pinzon, who stumbled on Brazil while looking for the West Indies. Stanley happening on Victoria Falls. And you. Amy Curry, when I was least expecting her.

life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.

He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

A stumble may prevent a fall.

We all have such fateful objects - it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another - carefully chosen by the Gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break.

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

"You deserve all that and more. It made me happy to see you suffer. I would do it all over again if I could." I realized I was shaking as the words tumbled out of me. "I would do it again and again. Every night I would torment you and laugh. Do you understand? You are never safe with me." I drew a shuddering breath, trying to will away the sting of tears.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Boy's natural play is rough and tumble play it's the universal play of little boys. And it's very different from aggression. And we are a society that's failing to understand the distinction.

For many people religion can be so easy they stumble right over it.

The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters relationships and themes it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find the accidents of what you stumble across.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer lose endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble there lies your treasure.

Our incomes are like our shoes if too small they gall and pinch us but if too large they cause us to stumble and to trip.

It helps I think to consider ourselves on a very long journey: the main thing is to keep to the faith to endure to help each other when we stumble or tire to weep and press on.

Within the U.S. the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here I fear the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo.