Motivational Quotes

Adversity

What is to give light must endure the burning.

- Frankl, Viktor E.

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains

Cady, Emilie

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

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

Jung, Carl

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

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

Gibran, Kahlil

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

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

10.

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

11.

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

Walton, Sam

12.

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

Pliny The Elder

13.

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

14.

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

Proverb, Chinese

15.

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

16.

Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?

Qur'an

17.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

Paine, Thomas

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Seneca

21.

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

Russell, Rosalind

22.

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

Schwab, Charles M.

23.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Seneca

24.

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

Grant, Hanmer Parsons

25.

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

Landers, Ann

26.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

27.

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

28.

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

Johnson, Samuel

29.

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

Propertius, Sextus

30.

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don't let it get the best of you.

Rogers, Will

31.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

32.

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

Billings, Josh

33.

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

34.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

35.

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

Proverb, Maori

36.

Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth

37.

We need tough days to drive us to our knees.

38.

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

39.

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''

40.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

42.

Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.

Peale, Norman Vincent

43.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

44.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

45.

There is in every woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.

Irving, Washington

46.

Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.

Brown, Les

47.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

Horace

48.

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

Seneca

49.

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