Motivational Quotes

Adversity

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

- Scott, Sir Walter

Best Quotes about Adversity

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

Zwanzig, Carl

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

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

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

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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

Ward, William A.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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.

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

10.

There will be no crown bearers in heaven who are not cross bearers on earth.

11.

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains

Cady, Emilie

12.

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

13.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

14.

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

Billings, Josh

15.

Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilization and mental culture.

Joshee, Anandabai

16.

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

Post, Laurens Van du

17.

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

Qur'an

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth

27.

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

28.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

29.

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

Seneca

30.

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

31.

Things were bad but now they are OK.

Seymour, Harold J.

32.

Tough times never last, but tough people do.

Schuller, Robert H.

33.

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

Shain, Merle

34.

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

35.

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

36.

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.

37.

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

Weltman, Phil

38.

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

Woolf, Virginia

39.

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

Peale, Norman Vincent

40.

We need tough days to drive us to our knees.

41.

Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

Buckham, James

42.

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

43.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

44.

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

45.

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

Collins, Kitty O'neill

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

Walton, Sam

49.

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

Kempis, Thomas

50.

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

Keats, John