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

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don't let it get the best of you.

Rogers, Will

We need tough days to drive us to our knees.

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

Virgil

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in a storm.

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

There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.

Lawrence, Thomas E.

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

10.

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

Horace

11.

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

Wells, H.G.

12.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

Russell, Rosalind

13.

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Landers, Ann

14.

If your knees are knocking, kneel on them.

15.

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

16.

Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.

Proverb, Italian

17.

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

18.

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

Maltz, Maxwell

19.

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

Keats, John

20.

They sicken at the calm that know the storm.

Parker, Dorothy

21.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Nixon, Richard M.

22.

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

23.

When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

Ash, Mary Kay

24.

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

Weltman, Phil

25.

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

Shain, Merle

26.

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

Billings, Josh

27.

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

28.

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

Augustine, St.

29.

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.

30.

I didn't know I'd have to be torn down before I could be built up.

31.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

32.

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

33.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

34.

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

Holtz, Lou

35.

Adversity is the first path to truth.

Byron, Lord

36.

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

Kennedy, Rose F.

37.

What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.

Collins, Kitty O'neill

38.

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

39.

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

Sting

40.

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

41.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

42.

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

Neal, John

43.

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

Cocteau, Jean

44.

If the going is real easy, beware, you may be headed down hill and don't know it.

45.

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

Proverb, Maori

46.

What is to give light must endure the burning.

Frankl, Viktor E.

47.

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

Talmud, The

48.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

49.

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

50.

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