Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Sting

Adversity is a fact of life. It can't be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it.

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''

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

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

Horace

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

Barclay, H.K.

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

Aesop

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.

I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.

Frank, Anne

10.

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

Neal, John

11.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Seneca

12.

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?

Kennedy, Rose F.

13.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Dune, Frank Herbert

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

17.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

James, William

18.

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

Proverb, Maori

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

22.

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

Proverb, Chinese

23.

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

24.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness --a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.

Bryant, William C.

25.

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

Beecher, Henry Ward

26.

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

27.

We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

28.

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

Schweitzer, Albert

29.

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

30.

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

Bennet, Arnold

31.

Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for it.

Warren, Earl

32.

A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity until he has tasted adversity.

Saadi

33.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

Benson, Taylor

34.

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

Horace

35.

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

Lawrence, Thomas E.

36.

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

37.

I would never have amounted to anything were it not for adversity. I was forced to come up the hard way.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

38.

Every burden is a blessing.

Schuller, Robert H.

39.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

40.

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

41.

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist -- it reduces him to his fighting weight.

Billings, Josh

42.

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.

Ransom, Ralph

43.

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

Salk, Lee

44.

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

45.

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.

Johnson

46.

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

France, Anatole

47.

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.

Saying, Greek

48.

God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth. How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven.

Macdonald, George

49.

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

50.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel