Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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.

Best Quotes about Adversity

If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs, its just possible you haven't grasped the situation.

Kerr, Jean

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.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

Ford, Henry

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Landers, Ann

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

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

James, William

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

Proverb, Chinese

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

Grant, Hanmer Parsons

What is to give light must endure the burning.

Frankl, Viktor E.

10.

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

Woolf, Virginia

11.

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

Saadi

12.

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

13.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

14.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

15.

Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilization and mental culture.

Joshee, Anandabai

16.

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

Bennet, Arnold

17.

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

Johnson

18.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, This is a misfortune but To bear this worthily is good fortune.

Aurelius, Marcus

19.

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

20.

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

Barclay, H.K.

21.

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

Warren, Earl

22.

If your knees are knocking, kneel on them.

23.

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.

24.

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

Bible

25.

That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph: and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve: which could not happen unless we had commence with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.

Pike, Albert

26.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

Holtz, Lou

30.

Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.

Ziglar, Zig

31.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

32.

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

Proverb, Maori

33.

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

Russell, Rosalind

34.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

35.

Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.

Homer

36.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

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

38.

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

39.

You have endured worse things; God will grant an end even to these.

Virgil

40.

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

Keats, John

41.

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

Horace

42.

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

43.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

44.

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.

45.

Stumbling is not falling.

Proverb, Portuguese

46.

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

Neal, John

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

Heraclitus

50.

It's a matter of ABC: When we encounter ADVERSITY, we react by thinking about it. Our thoughts rapidly congeal into BELIEFS. These beliefs may become so habitual we don't even realize we have them unless we stop to focus on them. And they don't just sit there idly; they have CONSEQUENCES. The beliefs are the direct cause of what we feel and what we do next. They can spell the difference between dejection and giving up, on the one hand, and well-being and constructive action on the other. The first step is to see the connection between adversity, belief, and consequence. The second step is to see how the ABCs operate every day in your own life.

Seligman, Martin E. P.