Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

- Proverb, Chinese

Best Quotes about Adversity

Things were bad but now they are OK.

Seymour, Harold J.

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

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

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

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

Neal, John

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

Zwanzig, Carl

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

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

Shain, Merle

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

Kempis, Thomas

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

10.

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

Beecher, Henry Ward

11.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

Roethke, Theodore

12.

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

Jung, Carl

13.

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

Bacon, Francis

14.

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

Hazlitt, William

15.

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

Grant, Hanmer Parsons

16.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

17.

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

Proverb, Maori

18.

Only entropy comes easy.

Mumford, Lewis

19.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

Horace

20.

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

Gallagher, Robert C.

21.

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

Seneca

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Casey, M Kathleen

25.

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

26.

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

Sheehan, George

27.

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

Saadi

28.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

30.

They that sow in tears shall reap joy. [Psalms 126:5]

Bible

31.

Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.

Ziglar, Zig

32.

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

Pliny The Elder

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Movie, Apollo 13

36.

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

Proverb, Chinese

37.

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

Propertius, Sextus

38.

If you're on thin ice, you might as well dance.

39.

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

40.

They sicken at the calm that know the storm.

Parker, Dorothy

41.

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

Seneca

42.

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

Schweitzer, Albert

43.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

44.

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

45.

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

Scott, Sir Walter

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Qur'an

49.

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

Woolf, Virginia

50.

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