Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

- Proverb, Maori

Best Quotes about Adversity

Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions.

Wells, H.G.

Frogs have it easy, they can eat what bugs them

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

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

Coppola, Francis Ford

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

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

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

Every hardship; every joy; every temptation is a challenge of the spirit; that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance; and nothing happens which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human soul.

Ford, Elias A.

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

Homer

10.

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

Grant, Hanmer Parsons

11.

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

Pliny The Elder

12.

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

13.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

Hill, Napoleon

14.

Only entropy comes easy.

Mumford, Lewis

15.

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

Shain, Merle

16.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

James, William

17.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Nixon, Richard M.

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.

Frank, Anne

22.

You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.

Maltz, Maxwell

23.

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

Neal, John

24.

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

25.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

26.

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

27.

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

Westcott, Edward Noyes

28.

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

Bacon, Francis

29.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.

Aesop

36.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

37.

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.

38.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

Epictetus

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.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

Roethke, Theodore

41.

Some people bear three kinds of trouble -- the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

Hale, Edward Everett

42.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

Horace

43.

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

Sheehan, George

44.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

45.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

46.

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

Peale, Norman Vincent

47.

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

Alcott, Louisa May

48.

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)

49.

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

Talmud, The

50.

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.