Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Shain, Merle

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

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist -- it reduces him to his fighting weight.

Billings, Josh

Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.

Richter, Jean Paul

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

Kennedy, Rose F.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Dickinson, Emily

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

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

10.

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

Peale, Norman Vincent

11.

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.

12.

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

Bacon, Francis

13.

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

14.

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

Jung, Carl

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

18.

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

19.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

20.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

21.

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

Bible

22.

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

Propertius, Sextus

23.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

24.

Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for it.

Warren, Earl

25.

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.

26.

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

27.

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

Devito, Danny

28.

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

Salk, Lee

29.

You have endured worse things; God will grant an end even to these.

Virgil

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Seneca

34.

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

35.

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.

Ransom, Ralph

36.

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

Ward, William A.

37.

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

Movie, Apollo 13

38.

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

39.

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

40.

In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

Leonard, George

41.

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

Saadi

42.

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

Hazlitt, William

43.

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.

Gibran, Kahlil

44.

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

Gesser

45.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

Bennet, Arnold

46.

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

47.

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.

Saying, Greek

48.

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

Aesop

49.

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

Seneca

50.

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

Gallagher, Robert C.