Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Brown, Les

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

Kempis, Thomas

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

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us--and those around us -- more effectively. Look for the learning.

Allenbaugh, Eric

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

Post, Laurens Van du

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

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Nixon, Richard M.

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

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains

Cady, Emilie

10.

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

11.

You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.

Movie, Apollo 13

12.

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

Saadi

13.

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.

14.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

We need tough days to drive us to our knees.

20.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

21.

If you want to win anything -- a race, your self, your life -- you have to go a little berserk.

Sheehan, George

22.

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

Homer

23.

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

24.

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

Walton, Sam

25.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Seneca

26.

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

Shain, Merle

27.

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

Angelis, Barbara De

28.

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

29.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Casey, M Kathleen

30.

No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in a storm.

31.

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

Bennet, Arnold

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth

38.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

39.

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

Gibran, Kahlil

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Schwab, Charles M.

43.

Only entropy comes easy.

Mumford, Lewis

44.

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

45.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

Bacon, Francis

46.

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

47.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.

Gibran, Kahlil

48.

People are like stained -- glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within

Ross, Elizabeth Kubler

49.

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

50.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

Roethke, Theodore