Motivational Quotes

Adversity

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

- Coppola, Francis Ford

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

They sicken at the calm that know the storm.

Parker, Dorothy

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Tagore, Rabindranath

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

The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.

Horace

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Horace

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

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

10.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

11.

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.

12.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

Epictetus

13.

Am I willing to give up what I have in order to be what I am not yet? Am I able to follow the spirit of love into the desert? It is a frightening and sacred moment. There is no return. One's life is charged forever. It is the fire that gives us our shape.

Richards, Mary Caroline

14.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Seneca

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Casey, M Kathleen

18.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

Colton, Charles Caleb

19.

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

20.

Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think of himself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches

Weil, Simone

21.

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

Proverb, Maori

22.

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

23.

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

Gibran, Kahlil

24.

Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.

Gesser

25.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.

Paige, Leroy ''Satchel''

26.

If the going is real easy, beware, you may be headed down hill and don't know it.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.

Aesop

30.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

31.

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.

Grant, Hanmer Parsons

32.

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

Weltman, Phil

33.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Seneca

34.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

Horace

35.

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

36.

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

Hazlitt, William

37.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

38.

As iron put into the fire loseth its rust and becometh clearly red-hot, so he that wholly turneth himself unto God puts off all slothfulness, and is transformed into a new man.

Kempis, Thomas

39.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

40.

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

Woolf, Virginia

41.

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.

42.

Search for the seed of good in every adversity. Master that principle and you will own a precious shield that will guard you well through all the darkest valleys you must traverse. Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the mountaintop. So will you learn things in adversity that you would never have discovered without trouble. There is always a seed of good. Find it and prosper.

Mandino, Og

43.

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.

Smiles, Samuel

44.

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

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.

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

Shain, Merle

47.

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

Rogers, James

48.

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

Zwanzig, Carl

49.

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