Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

- Proverb, Maori

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Homer

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

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

Scott, Sir Walter

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

Talmud, The

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

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Nixon, Richard M.

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

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Bible

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

Schmidt, Walt

10.

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

Weltman, Phil

11.

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

12.

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

Hazlitt, William

13.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

14.

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

15.

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

16.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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

Holtz, Lou

18.

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?

Kennedy, Rose F.

19.

In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.

Collier, Robert

20.

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

Byron, Lord

21.

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

Ward, William A.

22.

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

Winfrey, Oprah

23.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

Colton, Charles Caleb

24.

Cushion the painful effects of hard blows by keeping the enthusiasm going strong, even if doing so requires struggle.

Peale, Norman Vincent

25.

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

26.

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. [Isaiah 48:10]

Bible

27.

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

28.

Dust is a protective coating for fine furniture.

Burata, Mario

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.

Hemingway, Ernest

33.

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

34.

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

Horace

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

37.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness --a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.

Bryant, William C.

38.

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

Kempis, Thomas

39.

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

Sting

40.

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

Sheehan, George

41.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

Roethke, Theodore

42.

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

43.

Two frogs fell into a bowl of cream. One didn't panic, he relaxed and drowned. The other kicked and struggled so much that the cream turned to butter and he walked out.

44.

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

45.

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

46.

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

Pliny The Elder

47.

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

Seneca

48.

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

49.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

Devito, Danny

50.

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

Seneca