Quotes About Adversity

Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.

You just stood up to your mother.... I should think now you could take on the world.

We are all in lockdown, all the time. We just don't know it, that's all. But we do the best we can. Most of us are just trying to get through.

But I have often thought that it made me a nicer person, I really do. When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think.

You've been through a great deal," his mother conceded. "But the back strengthens to the burdens it has to bear, and I'd like to see a little more backbone in you.

You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think. And as a result of that pain, I became bigger.

Lucy. You deal with everything.

And he said, "Lucy. You deal with everything.

the young, he thought, could withstand the rigors of love.

And living with this pandemic was like that. You did not know.

On the "hit-thumb theory" : "On his grandfather's roof as a child one summer, hammering tiles down hard, he'd discovered that if you hammered your thumb by mistake, there was a split second when you thought: Hey, this isn't so bad, considering how hard I was hit… And then—after that moment of false, bewildered, and grateful relief—came the crash and crush of real pain.

As a matter of fact, I could argue that none of us has a center of gravity. That we're tugged and pulled by competing forces every minute and we hold on as best we can.

But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable. Dottie

Long ago he'd assigned a private name to it. The hit-thumb theory. on his grandfather's rood as a child one summer, hammering tiles down hard, he'd discovered that if you hammered your thumb by mistake, there was a split second when you thought: Hey, this isn't so bad, considering how hard I was hit... And then—after that moment of false, bewildered, and grateful relief—came the crash and crush of real pain.

You're in the middle of a storm at the moment.

like I was a fish swimming round and round and then I bumped into this rock.

Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us. ii

When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think.

I have mentioned earlier how easy it is for me to become frightened, and as we drove up this turnpike with barely another car in sight I thought: Oh I wish I had not come! I am afraid of things that are not familiar.

But we do the best we can. Most of us are just trying to get through.

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain.

You cannot say to the sun, 'More sun,' or to the rain, 'Less rain.' To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. It was because I had let fear of failure stop me from trying at all.