Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

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

Proverb, Maori

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Seneca

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.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

Colton, Charles Caleb

As iron put into the fire loseth its rust and becometh clearly red-hot, so he that wholly turneth himself unto God puts off all slothfulness, and is transformed into a new man.

Kempis, Thomas

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Dune, Frank Herbert

If we study the lives of great men and women carefully and unemotionally we find that, invariably, greatness was developed, tested and revealed through the darker periods of their lives. One of the largest tributaries of the RIVER OF GREATNESS is always the STREAM OF ADVERSITY.

Robert, Cavett

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.

10.

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

Kempis, Thomas

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Dust is a protective coating for fine furniture.

Burata, Mario

14.

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

Keats, John

15.

You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

Schmidt, Walt

16.

Adversity is a fact of life. It can't be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it.

17.

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

Woolf, Virginia

18.

A reasonable amount o fleas is good for a dog -- keeps him from brooding over being a dog, maybe.

Westcott, Edward Noyes

19.

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

20.

Every burden is a blessing.

Schuller, Robert H.

21.

They sicken at the calm that know the storm.

Parker, Dorothy

22.

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

23.

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

Hazlitt, William

24.

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

Shain, Merle

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Seneca

28.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

29.

Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth

30.

The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

32.

The proof of gold is fire...

Franklin, Benjamin

33.

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

Johnson, Samuel

34.

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

Neal, John

35.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Nixon, Richard M.

36.

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.

37.

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

Alcott, Louisa May

38.

Search for the seed of good in every adversity. Master that principle and you will own a precious shield that will guard you well through all the darkest valleys you must traverse. Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the mountaintop. So will you learn things in adversity that you would never have discovered without trouble. There is always a seed of good. Find it and prosper.

Mandino, Og

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.

Scott, Sir Walter

43.

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)

44.

Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.

Gesser

45.

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

Brown, Les

46.

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.

47.

Just because Fate doesn?t deal you the right cards, it doesn?t mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential.

Brown, Les

48.

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

Barclay, H.K.

49.

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

Propertius, Sextus

50.

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