Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Seneca

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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

Neal, John

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

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

When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

Stumbling is not falling.

Proverb, Portuguese

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

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

10.

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

Sting

11.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Dune, Frank Herbert

12.

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.

13.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

Coppola, Francis Ford

14.

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.

15.

The proof of gold is fire...

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

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

17.

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

Shain, Merle

18.

He who knows the darkness shall learn to live in the light.

19.

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

Walton, Sam

20.

If your cup seems too bitter, if your burden seems to heavy, be sure that it is the wounded hand that is holding the cup, and that it is me who carried the cross that is carrying the burden.

21.

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.

22.

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

Sheehan, George

23.

I got in trouble with the police, and that was a rude awakening. That was it. I'd seen the bottom of the pit, and it was time to scrape myself out of it.

Adams, Bryan

24.

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

Talmud, The

25.

In times of storm, the shallowness of the root structure is revealed.

26.

Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.

Ward, William A.

27.

The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.

28.

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

29.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

30.

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)

31.

Adversity is the first path to truth.

Byron, Lord

32.

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

Schwab, Charles M.

33.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

34.

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

Hazlitt, William

35.

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

36.

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

Woolf, Virginia

37.

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

Landers, Ann

38.

They sicken at the calm that know the storm.

Parker, Dorothy

39.

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, Shake well before using. That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

Havner, Vance

40.

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

41.

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

Pliny The Elder

42.

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

Lawrence, Thomas E.

43.

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

44.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Casey, M Kathleen

45.

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

46.

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

Proverb, Chinese

47.

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

Kempis, Thomas

48.

Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.

Proverb, Italian

49.

The stars are constantly shining, but often we do not see them until the dark hours.