Motivational Quotes

Adversity

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

- Cocteau, Jean

Best Quotes about Adversity

I didn't know I'd have to be torn down before I could be built up.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.

Every hardship; every joy; every temptation is a challenge of the spirit; that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance; and nothing happens which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human soul.

Ford, Elias A.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Johnson, Samuel

Every burden is a blessing.

Schuller, Robert H.

Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.

Brown, Les

When I dig another out of trouble, the hole from which I lift him is the place where I bury my own.

He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

10.

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!

Swahili Warrior Song

11.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

Roethke, Theodore

12.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

13.

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

Mandino, Og

14.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Proverb, Chinese

15.

No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in a storm.

16.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

Russell, Rosalind

17.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

Hazlitt, William

18.

The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.

Schwab, Charles M.

19.

Many who seem to be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

20.

Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.

Ward, William A.

21.

It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song. But the man worth while is the one who can smile, when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is troubled, And it always comes with the years. And the smiles that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through tears.

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

22.

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.

Proverb, Maori

23.

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

Keats, John

24.

We say, sorrow, disaster, calamity. God says,chastening and it sounds sweet to him though it is a discord to our ears. Don't faint when you are rebuked, and don't despise the chastening of the Lord. In your patience possess your souls.

Chambers, Oswald

25.

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

Heraclitus

26.

Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

27.

He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported without the latter.

Fielding, Henry

28.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

29.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

Paine, Thomas

30.

No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.

31.

There will be no crown bearers in heaven who are not cross bearers on earth.

32.

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

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

33.

Adversities do not make a man frail. They show what sort of man he is.

Kempis, Thomas

34.

Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.

Peale, Norman Vincent

35.

Some people bear three kinds of trouble -- the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

Hale, Edward Everett

36.

The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

We all know that sponges grow in the ocean but I wander how much deeper the ocean would be if that wasn't the case.

38.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

Devito, Danny

39.

If you want to win anything -- a race, your self, your life -- you have to go a little berserk.

Sheehan, George

40.

What is to give light must endure the burning.

Frankl, Viktor E.

41.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

Walton, Sam

43.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

44.

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

45.

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

46.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

Jung, Carl

47.

Your dips an falls do not confound me, half as much as your heights astound me.

48.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

49.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

Bennet, Arnold