Motivational Quotes

Adversity

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

- Bible

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

Ward, William A.

If you're on thin ice, you might as well dance.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

Seneca

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

Bacon, Francis

In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.

Collier, Robert

Enter through the narrow gate. The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it. But how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it. [Mathew 7:13-14]

Bible

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Seneca

One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

Woolf, Virginia

10.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

11.

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

Hazlitt, William

12.

When walking through the valley of shadows, remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.

Barclay, H.K.

13.

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

14.

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

Heraclitus

15.

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.

Gibran, Kahlil

16.

I got in trouble with the police, and that was a rude awakening. That was it. I'd seen the bottom of the pit, and it was time to scrape myself out of it.

Adams, Bryan

17.

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door -- or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Tagore, Rabindranath

18.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

19.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.

Gibran, Kahlil

20.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

21.

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

22.

Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood. Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

23.

In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

Leonard, George

24.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

25.

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

26.

Only entropy comes easy.

Mumford, Lewis

27.

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. [Isaiah 48:10]

Bible

28.

In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.

Hoffman, Dustin

29.

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

Schwab, Charles M.

30.

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

31.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Nixon, Richard M.

32.

You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.

Movie, Apollo 13

33.

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

34.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.

Neal, John

35.

There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.

Lawrence, Thomas E.

36.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

Lowell, James Russell

37.

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

Walton, Sam

38.

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

Keats, John

39.

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

40.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

Roethke, Theodore

41.

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

Salk, Lee

42.

A reasonable amount o fleas is good for a dog -- keeps him from brooding over being a dog, maybe.

Westcott, Edward Noyes

43.

When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

44.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

Coppola, Francis Ford

45.

Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

Buckham, James

46.

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

Winfrey, Oprah

47.

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains

Cady, Emilie

48.

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

49.

The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.

Weltman, Phil

50.

Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.

Sting