An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain – the equality of all men.
- Ignazio Silone
I don’t deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that either.
- Jack Benny
I have an inward treasure born within me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford.
- Charlotte Bronte
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
- James Baldwin
People don’t ever seem to realize that doing what’s right is no guarantee against misfortune.
- William McFee
The struggle to the top is in itself enough to fulfill the human heart. Sisyphus should be regarded as happy.
- Albert Camus
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life: by indifference, by philosophy and by religion.
- Charles Caleb Colton
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
- Bible
Night brings our troubles to the light rather than banishes them.
- Seneca
Too much happens … Man performs, engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.
- William Faulkner
A great man does not lose his self-possession when he is afflicted; the ocean is not made muddy by the falling in of its banks.
- Panchatantra
I’ve had an unhappy life, thank God.
- Russell Baker
Do not show your wounded finger, for everything will knock up against it.
- Baltasar Gracian
They sicken of the calm that know the storm.
- Dorothy Parker
Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes.
- Henry J. Kaiser
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
- Woodrow Wilson
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become.
- Brooke Foss Westcott
What does not destroy me, makes me strong.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is six to five against.
- Damon Runyon
(Adversity is) the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free from admirers then.
- Samuel Johnson
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist – it reduces him to his fighting weight.
- Josh Billings
From a fallen tree, all make kindling.
- Spanish proverb
The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the heroical virtue.
- Francis Bacon
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.
- Seneca
You can’t have more bugs than a blanketful.
- Spanish proverb
Even in the deepest sinking there is the hidden purpose of an ultimate rising. Thus it is for all men, from none is the source of light withheld unless he himself withdraws from it. Therefore the most important thing is not to despair.
- Hasidic saying
Trouble will rain on those who are already wet.
- Anonymous
They say a reasonable amount o’ fleas is good for a dog – it keeps him from broodin’ over bein’ a dog mebbe.
- Edward Noyes Westcott
There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.
- George Meredith
The burden is equal to the horse’s strength.
- The Talmud
Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure.
- Marcus Aurelius
I am escaped by the skin of my teeth.
- Bible
Prosperity tries the fortunate; adversity the great.
- Pliny the Younger
Be willing to have it so; acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
- William James
If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.
- Solon
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
- Alexander Pope
When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.
- Jonathan Swift
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
- Bible
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
- Fridiric Chopin
Fire tries gold, misfortune men.
- Anonymous
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour to the latest generation.
- Abraham Lincoln
Thou hast shown thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
- Bible
A wounded deer leaps the highest.
- Emily Dickinson
The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.
- Jose Ortega y Gasset
Whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.
- Septima Poinsette Clark
I have always been pushed by the negative…. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.
- Tennessee Williams
What we want is never simple.
- Linda Pastan
For me life is a challenge. And it will be a challenge if I live to be a hundred or if I get to be a trillionaire.
- Beah Richards
To be thrown upon one’s own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune, for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.
- Benjamin Franklin
Every failure made me more confident. Because I wanted even more to achieve things, as revenge. To show that I could.
- Roman Polanski
Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.
- Sir Walter Scott
Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.
- B. C. Forbes
There are times in everyone’s life when something constructive is born out of adversity … when things seem so bad that you’ve got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.
- Anonymous
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
- Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
- Washington Irving
Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Treasure the memories of past misfortunes; they constitute our bank of fortitude.
- Eric Hoffer
If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.
- John Heywood
Necessity is often the spur to genius.
- Honore de Balzac
Necessity is the mother of “taking chances.”
- Mark Twain
Necessity makes even the timid brave.
- Sallust
People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
- William Ellery Channing
Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.
- William A. Ward
I think there is this about the great troubles they teach us the art of cheerfulness; whereas the small ones cultivate the industry of discontent.
- Mary Adams
Opposition inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.
- J. C. F. von Schiller
The thought that we are enduring the unendurable is one of the things that keeps us going.
- Molly Haskell
If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.
- Anita Roddick
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man; it is what he wants and must have to be good for anything. Hardship and opposition are the native soil of manhood and self-reliance.
- John Neal
Difficulties, opposition, criticism these things are meant to be overcome, and there is a special joy in facing them and in coming out on top. It is only when there is nothing but praise that life loses its charm and I begin to wonder what I should do about it.
- Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
They sicken of calm, who know the storm.
- Dorothy Parker
Without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. The gift of grace increases as the struggles increase.
- Saint Rose of Lima
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
- Frank Leahy
The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, men to whom a crises, which intimidates and paralyzes the majority, comes as graceful and beloved as a bride!
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Remember that the Devil doesn’t sleep, but seeks our ruin in a thousand different ways
- Angela Merici
Down you mongrel, Death! Back into your kennel!
- Edna Saint Vincent Millay
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skills. Our antagonist is our helper.
- Edmund Burke
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a steppingstone in the path of the strong.
- Thomas Carlyle
Strong people are made by opposition, like kites that go up against the wind.
- Frank Harris
Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle.
- Louis L’Amour
You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.
- Walt Schmidt
The English nation is never so great as in adversity.
- Benjamin Disraeli
Enemies can be an incentive to survive and become someone in spite of them. Enemies can keep you alert and aware.
- Louis L’Amour
Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems … create our courage and wisdom.
- M. Scott Peck
It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure.
- Grenville Kleiser
When things come to the worse, they generally mend.
- Susanna Moodie
Things have got to be wrong in order that they may be deplored.
- Whitney Griswold
Remorse begets reform.
- William Cowper
“The world is a wheel always turning,” philosophized Mrs. Pelz. “Those who were high go down low, and those who’ve been low go up higher.”
- Anzia Yezierska
Life begins on the other side of despair.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
It constantly happens that the Lord permits a soul to fall so that it may grow humbler.
- Teresa of Avila
In order to change, we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
- Anonymous
I have been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.
- Zora Neale Hurston
There is often in people to whom “the worst” has happened an almost transcendent freedom, for they have faced “the worst” and survived it.
- Carol Pearson
I didn’t know I’d have to be torn down before I could be built up.
- Anonymous
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.
- Anatole France
It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.
- Dorothy Dix
Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
- Kahlil Gibran
Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
- Dr. Alexis Carrel
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
- Edwin H. Chapin
The pain of love is the pain of being alive. It is a perpetual wound.
- Maureen Duffy
There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
- Carl Jung
Everybody’s heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.
- Jane Austen
Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable.
- John Patrick
Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.
- Natalie Clifford Barney
Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great; it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.
- Alexandra David-Neel
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
- Roberta Flack
If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.
- Elbert Hubbard
Suffering is also one of the ways of knowing you’re alive.
- Jessamyn West
Don’t look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.
- Tennessee Williams
How sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
He disposes Doom who hath suffered him.
- Emily Dickinson
They merit more praise who know how to suffer misery than those who temper themselves in contentment.
- Pietro Aretino
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
- Helen Keller
Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
- Edgar Allan Poe
It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word “travel” is derived from “travail,” denoting the pains of childbirth.
- Jessica Mitford
True knowledge comes only through suffering.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great; it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.
- Alexandra David-Neel
He disposes Doom who hath suffered him.
- Emily Dickinson
Suffering has always been with us, does it really matter in what form it comes? All that matters is how we bear it and how we fit it into our lives.
- Etty Hillesum
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
- Marcel Proust
Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
- Patti Smith
The saints rejoiced at injuries and persecutions, because in forgiving them they had something to present to God when they prayed to Him.
- Teresa of Avila
The difficulties and struggles of today are but the price we must pay for the accomplishments and victories of tomorrow.
- William J. H. Boetcker
Experience may be hard but we claim its gifts because they are real, even though our feet bleed on its stones.
- Mary Parker Follett
And I think that’s important, to know how the water’s gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.
- E. Annie Proulx
I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
- Isak Dinesen
Problems are the price of progress. Don’t bring me anything but trouble.
- Charles F. Kettering
Trouble is the thing that strong men grow by. Met in the right way, it is a sure-fire means of putting iron into the victim’s will and making him a tougher man to down forever after.
- H. Bertram Lewis
Every time you meet a situation, though you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the torture of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
I have always fought for ideas until I learned that it isn’t ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.
- Margaret Anderson
I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.
- Dorothy Dix
Discontent and disorder were signs of energy and hope, not of despair.
- C. V. Wedgwood
We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.
- Marguerite Yourcenar
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
- Willa Cather
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
- Oscar Wilde
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
- Florence Nightingale
Woman’s discontent increases in exact proportion to her development.
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Restlessness is discontent, and discontent is the first necessity of progress.
- Thomas A. Edison
Noble discontent is the path to heaven.
- Thomas W. Higginson
No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
- William Penn
Times of stress and difficulty are seasons of opportunity when the seeds of progress are sown.
- Thomas F. Woodlock
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius
As there is no worldly gain without some loss, so there is no worldly loss without some gain…. Set the allowance against the loss, and thou shalt find no loss great.
- Francis Quarles
Never complain about your troubles; they are responsible for more than half of your income.
- Robert R. Updegraff
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
- Duke Ellington
Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job.
- Victor Hugo
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon
It is often hard to distinguish between the hard knocks in life and those of opportunity.
- Frederick Phillips
Fire is the test of gold, adversity of strong men.
- Marcus Annaeus Seneca
I think my biggest achievement is that after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane. I’m proud of that.
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.
- Gail Sheehy
I think hearts are very much like glasses if they do not break with the first ring, they usually last a considerable time.
- L. E. Landon
Your first big trouble can be a bonanza if you live through it. Get through the first trouble, and you’ll probably make it through the next one.
- Ruth Gordon
Calamity is the test of integrity.
- Richardson
The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.
- Gail Sheehy
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.
- Abraham Lincoln
Our trials are tests; our sorrows pave the way for a fuller life when we have earned it.
- Jerome P. Fleishman
Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purist ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.
- Charles Caleb Colton
The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.
- Abigail Adams
A diamond is a chunk of coal that made good under pressure.
- Anonymous
A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
- Mildred W. Struven
It is the surmounting of difficulties that makes heroes.
- Kossuth
Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they possess and which they might use under appropriate circumstances.
- William James
It is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.
- Ouida
It is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
- Marcel Proust
Unless a man has been kicked around a little, you can’t really depend upon him to amount to anything.
- William Feather
Troubles cured you salty as a country ham, smoky to the taste, thick-skinned and tender inside.
- Marge Piercy
If you have to be careful because of oppression and censorship, this pressure produces diamonds.
- Tatyana Tolstaya
Adversity is another way to measure the greatness of individuals. I never had a crisis that didn’t make me stronger.
- Lou Holtz
It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. … Great necessities call out great virtues.
- Abigail Adams
Of all the advantages which come to any young man … poverty is the greatest.
- Josiah G. Holland
My luck was my father not striking oil… we’d have been rich. I’d never have set out for Hollywood with my camera, and I’d have had a lot less interesting life.
- King Vidor
[A difficult childhood gave me] a kind of cocky confidence. … I could never have so little that I hadn’t had less. It took away my fear.
- Jacqueline Cochran
If you have been sunned through and through like an apricot on a wall from your earliest days, you are oversensitive to any withdrawal of heat.
- Margot Asquith
I was lucky I wasn’t a better boxer, or that’s what I’d be now a punchy ex-pug.
- Bob Hope
At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.
- Ellen Key
Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.
- Edith Sitwell
When I was very young, I tried selling used cars. It didn’t last long. I guess that was my good luck too, that I didn’t show more promise at it, or I might have been an automobile dealer.
- King Vidor
Supporting myself at an early age was the best training for life I could have possibly received.
- Lea Thompson
In my youth, poverty enriched me, but now I can afford wealth.
- Marc Chagall
I’m very grateful that I was too poor to get to art school until I was 21. … I was old enough when I got there to know how to get something out of it.
- Henry Moore
The most valuable gift I ever received was … the gift of insecurity … my father left us. My mother’s love might not have prepared me for life the way my father’s departure did. He forced us out on the road, where we had to earn our bread.
- Lillian Gish
Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his sons the hardships that made him rich.
- Robert Frost
I would never have amounted to anything were it not for adversity. I was forced to come up the hard way.
- J. C. Penney
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
- Anonymous
I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.
- Helen Keller
When one’s own problems are unsolvable and all best efforts are frustrated, it is lifesaving to listen to other people’s problems.
- Suzanne Massie
This struggle of people against their conditions, this is where you find the meaning in life.
- Rose Chernin
Adversity has ever been considered as the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being free from flatterers.
- Samuel Johnson
In all things preserve integrity; and the consciousness of thine own uprightness will alleviate the toil of business, soften the hardness of ill-success and disappointments, and give thee an humble confidence before God, when the ingratitude of man, or the iniquity of the times may rob thee of other rewards.
- Barbara Paley
He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.
- Samuel Johnson
Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
- Samuel Johnson
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus
Who hath not known ill fortune, never knew himself, or his own virtue.
- David Mallett
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
- Henry Fielding
I think the years I have spent in prison have been the most formative and important in my life because of the discipline, the sensations, but chiefly the opportunity to think clearly, to try to understand things.
- Jawaharlal Nehru
We only really face up to ourselves when we are afraid.
- Thomas Bernhard
Difficulties are things that show what men are.
- Epictetus
Even if misfortune is only good for bringing a fool to his senses, it would still be just to deem it good for something.
- Jean de la Fontaine
Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affection or grief has humanized the soul.
- Frederick W. Robertson
Disappointment is the nurse of wisdom.
- Sir Boyle Roche
Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They’re what make the instrument stretch, what make you go beyond the norm.
- Cicely Tyson
A woman is like a tea bag: you never know her strength until you drop her in hot water.
- Nancy Reagan
Trouble brings experience, and experience brings wisdom.
- Anonymous
A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
- Horace
Adversity is a severe instructor. … He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
- Edmund Burke
Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.
- Minna Antrim
Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.
- Herbert Gasser
You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.
- Christy Mathewson
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
- English proverb
When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits … he has gained facts, learned his ignorance, is cured of the insanity of conceit, has got moderation and real skill.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
From their errors and mistakes, the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.
- Plutarch
By becoming more unhappy, we sometimes learn how to be less so.
- Madame Swetchine
Every experience, however bitter, has its lesson, and to focus one’s attention on the lesson helps one overcome the bitterness.
- Edward Howard Griggs
A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.
- Edgar Watson Howe
It is from the level of calamities … that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
- William Makepeace Thackeray
When I have listened to my mistakes, I have grown.
- Hugh Prather
We only think when we are confronted with a problem.
- John Dewey
Adversity comes with instruction in its hand.
- Anonymous
Mistakes are often the best teachers.
- James A. Froude
Pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
- William Hazlitt
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
- George Santayana
You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
- George Bernard Shaw
I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don’t work out. That’s when I’ve really learned.
- Carol Burnett
Those things that hurt, instruct.
- Benjamin Franklin
Pain is the root of knowledge.
- Simone Weil
Life can be real tough … you can either learn from your problems, or keep repeating them over and over.
- Marie Osmond
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
- Francis Bacon
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet
The good things that belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.
- Marcus Annaeus Seneca
One who was adored by all in prosperity is abhorred by all in adversity.
- Baltasar Gracian
Prosperity provideth, but adversity proveth friends.
- Queen Elizabeth I
The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.
- Alan Gregg
Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
- Horace
The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
- Francis Bacon
In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.
- Bible
In victory even the cowardly like to boast, while in adverse times even the brave are discredited.
- Sallust
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
- Thomas Carlyle
Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness.
- Marion Zimmer Bradley
There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle.
- Robert Alden
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.
- Anne Lamott
Truth, like the burgeoning of a bulb under the soil, however deeply sown, will make its way to the light.
- Ellis Peters
Flowers grow out of dark moments.
- Corita Kent
I have brightness in my soul, which strains toward Heaven. I am like a bird!
- Jenny Lind
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
- Charles A. Beard
All sorts of spiritual gifts come through privations, if they are accepted.
- Janet Erskine Stuart
There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.
- George Meredith
Often God has to shut a door in our face, so that He can subsequently open the door through which He wants us to go.
- Catharine Marshall
God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.
- Anonymous
He who serves God with what costs him nothing, will do very little service, you may depend on it.
- Susan Warner
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life: by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.
- Charles Caleb Colton
Sorrow has its reward. It never leaves us where it found us.
- Mary Baker Eddy
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way: an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
- William Hazlitt
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
- Anonymous
Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
- Walter Colton
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
- William Hazlitt
Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
- William Shakespeare
There is no education like adversity.
- Benjamin Disraeli
A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.
– Author Unknown
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
– Duke Ellington
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
– Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?
– Rose F. Kennedy
Convert difficulties into opportunities, for difficulties are divine surgeries to make you better.
– Author Unknown
Count the garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall. Count your life with smiles and not the tears that roll.
– Author Unknown
Determination, patience and courage are the only things needed to improve any situation.
– Author Unknown
Do not fear the winds of adversity. Remember: A kite rises against the wind rather than with it.
– Author Unknown
Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart.
– Myla Kabat-Zinn
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
– Napoleon Hill
Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
– Og Mandino
Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
– James Buckham
Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargained for.
– Stanislaus I, Maxims
I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.
– Jewish Proverb
I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.
– Boris Pasternak
I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.
– Jonas Salk
I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
– Agatha Christie
I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.
– André Gide
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don’t embrace trouble; that’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
If the truth be known, most successes are built on a multitude of failures.
– Author Unknown
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
– Henry David Thoreau
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
– Frank A. Clark
If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.
– Mary Engelbreit
I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.
– Louisa May Alcott
It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
– Voltaire
Like a plant that starts up in showers and sunshine and does not know which has best helped it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the hard things or the pleasant things did me the most good.
– Lucy Larcom
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
– Jean De La Bruyere
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
– John Quincy Adams
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.
– Robert Schuller
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
– African Proverb
There are times in everyone’s life when something constructive is born out of adversity… when things seem so bad that you’ve got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.
– Author Unknown
The course of true anything never does run smooth.
– Samuel Butler
The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.
– Confucius
The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
– Epictetus
The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he’s got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.
– Rona Barrett
The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.
– Max Lerner
There is in every true 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.
– Washington Irving
There is no education like adversity.
– Disraeli
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t.
– Frank A. Clark
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
– Kenji Miyazawa
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
– Winston Churchill
We should always pray for help, but we should always listen for inspiration and impression to proceed in ways different from those we may have thought of.
– John H. Groberg
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
– Barbara De Angelis
You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.
– Henry Ward Beecher
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
– Walt Disney
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
– Bill Gates
