Quotes About Adversity

In fact, we are often more interesting and sympathetic as human beings when something has gone wrong than when we are convinced of our own infallibility.

I pictured my clothesline full of troubles and saw myself pinning on another one.

and you and I are on our own. No magic wand is gonna fix things." I didn't want to believe that, so I pushed those words away so I wouldn't have to think about them. Then I said, "Did

washed my hair in the bathroom of the Texaco gas station that very morning. And I pretended like my daddy hadn't just waltzed off and left us with nothing but three rolls of quarters and a mayonnaise jar full of wadded-up dollar

ole Waffle House,

Sometimes I think he's the kind of friend that grownups call a 'fair-weather friend.' That means when everything's going smoothly, he's the best friend a guy could want. But as soon as something goes wrong…(he) sort of turns on you.

sometimes life is really hard. It just is. Things happen that make you want to die, but if you hang on, they do eventually get better.

Those two had a lot of shocks ahead. Everybody did—that was the bitch of it, wasn't it? Nothing ever stayed smooth and beautiful and good, not skin, not faces, not the road of life. What mattered was the way you lived with what happened to you.

By nature and avocation, Charlotte looked for trouble.

Think of your own life. Haven't your most valuable lessons come from your most trying experiences? Hard times, like heavy weights, build muscle. I observed, among the women I interviewed, that the most audacious were those who had endured the most adversity, especially as children

Maybe there aren't any jobs," she confided. "But I can't let my mind paralyze me." Every day she'd look in the mirror and repeat to herself: "This is an opportunity," until she began to believe it. The last time I talked to her, she was considering several offers.

it's not what happens to you, but how you handle what happens that makes a difference.

When it comes to making money, said Barbara Blair, one of my interviewees, "attitude is everything." And that holds truest when life is toughest.

No matter how tough things are, there will always be people who are prospering.

He who ascends to mountaintops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below

nothing to learning for I have none; nothing to youth for I was old when I began; nothing to popularity for I was hated all round.… This is the modest truth and my friends at Rome call me more god than man.

it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before.

Although my initial question has escaped an answer, the interest of the period itself— a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought, of Satan triumphant— was compelling, as it seemed to me, consoling in a period of similar disarray. If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before.

That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine.

Success comes not to him who has suffered the least but to him whose will is firmest and morale strongest.

it is true, even people with painful childhoods. . . grow up to be more interesting people. So, there's always a positive to a negative.

The drowning man may be saved by a plank or a rope, but there are circumstances in which plank or rope can not avail him. How much better for him to have learned that in himself is the principle of buoyancy.

The times have been bad, the hay was black with rain, the corn did not kern well, the mottled cow dropped her calf, the tenants have not paid, and so my poor boy gets nothing but advice in bushels and exhortations in yards.

There is a Turkish proverb that says, "No matter how far you have gone down a wrong road, turn back," and that is exactly what I did. It was painful, but also one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced.