If we study the lives of great men and women carefully and unemotionally we find that, invariably, greatness was developed, tested and revealed through the darker periods of their lives. One of the largest tributaries of the RIVER OF GREATNESS is always the STREAM OF ADVERSITY.

Robert, Cavett

18.

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

19.

A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.

Horace

20.

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

Sheehan, George

21.

He who knows the darkness shall learn to live in the light.

22.

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

Heraclitus

23.

When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God. Consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.

Chambers, Oswald

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

Hill, Napoleon

27.

Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.

Richter, Jean Paul

28.

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

Jung, Carl

29.

Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.

Proverb, Italian

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.

Just because Fate doesn?t deal you the right cards, it doesn?t mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential.

Brown, Les

32.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

33.

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

34.

Adversity is the first path to truth.

Byron, Lord

35.

The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.

Propertius, Sextus

36.

Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.

Scott, Sir Walter

37.

It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls.

Advisor, Heartland

38.

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them

39.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

Horace

40.

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.

41.

Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth

42.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

43.

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

Neal, John

44.

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

Scott, Sir Walter

45.

One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.

Shain, Merle

46.

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

47.

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

Seneca

48.

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

49.

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

50.

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

Russell, Rosalind