"Life is a Fight"

“Truly life is a fight, and one must defend oneself and resist and make plans and calculations with a cheerful and alert mind in order to make it through and get ahead. It becomes no easier the further one gets in life, and it has been rightly said:

Does the road go uphill then all the way?
‘Yes to the very end’
And will the journey take all day long?
‘From morn till night, my friend.’

But by fighting the difficulties in which one finds oneself, an inner strength develops from within our heart, which improves in life’s fight (one matures in the storm), if we always endeavour to keep that heart out of which are the issues of life, good and simple and rich toward God, to restore that and make it thus more and more, and to bear in mind the words that we must have a good conscience before God and before people”.

Vincent van Gogh. From the letter to Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam, 30 October 1877
http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let133/letter.html