Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

- Holtz, Lou

Best Quotes about Adversity

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow.

Talmud, The

Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

Lowell, James Russell

Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

Plutarch

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.

Alcott, Louisa May

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

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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.

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

Salk, Lee

11.

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

Virgil

12.

Frogs have it easy, they can eat what bugs them

13.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

14.

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds; all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

Hale, Edward Everett

15.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Casey, M Kathleen

16.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

Coppola, Francis Ford

17.

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

Barclay, H.K.

18.

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

Rogers, James

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

Holtz, Lou

22.

Stumbling is not falling.

Proverb, Portuguese

23.

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

Hazlitt, William

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.

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

Billings, Josh

26.

Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth

27.

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

Horace

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song. But the man worth while is the one who can smile, when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is troubled, And it always comes with the years. And the smiles that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through tears.

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

32.

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.

33.

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

Horace

34.

Tough times never last, but tough people do.

Schuller, Robert H.

35.

Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.

Gallagher, Robert C.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Adversities do not make a man frail. They show what sort of man he is.

Kempis, Thomas

39.

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

Johnson

40.

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

Horace

41.

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

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

42.

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

Seneca

43.

Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.

Proverb, Italian

44.

The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.

Horton, Doug

45.

There are times in everyone's life when something constructive is born out of adversity... when things seem so bad that you've got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.

Collins, Kitty O'neill

50.

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

Weltman, Phil