Quotes About Adversity

I had only one pair of white shoes with a very high heel, and they were terrible. They got terribly dirty, because I had no money and I walked all over Paris by foot. I also only had one black dress, which I had to wash every night.

You better have an anchor in life. It doesn't matter if you're a Division I head football coach or Joe Schmo from Okemoh. Bad things happen. If you're not anchored, you're going to be washed away.

In the first phase of shock over, say, your mortgage being called in or your job washed out, it's essential to engage with others and share the fear, release the feelings, do fun things to take your mind off it.

By the time I left the bar, I was 30. I was a dishwasher. They call it a bar-back, but essentially, I washed dishes for a living. I had no high-school diploma, I had no agent, and my literary successes were non-existent... but it was the only thing I ever wanted to do, so I did feel trapped.

So many people were ready to write me off as being washed up at 20, I started to believe all that negative stuff myself.

My 12th was my most Christian and most boring year of my life. Try as I did, day after day, to cling to righteousness, I was washed down in suds of sinful surroundings.

People are quick to be like, 'You're irrelevant. You're a flop; you're washed up.'

MMA is not one of those up and down basketball seasons where you have a ton of games and you can still make the playoffs. It doesn't work like that in MMA. You get a couple losses, you get washed up, you get the door slammed behind you and they bring in the next person behind you who is here to take your place.

From the age of 11, I was cleaning floors, washing dishes, making sandwiches and being a cashier. Survival was the name of the game. Life was so hard that I had to struggle to keep up my standards. Under these conditions, I didn't think about science too much.

My home life, growing up, was like tumbling inside a washing machine as I shuttled around the middle of Kentucky with my mother. She was never content to stay in one place, or with one man, for too long. She was as smart as she was independent, though, and always landed some job that brought in a little money.

Washington is gripped by crab-in-the-bucket syndrome. And there's no cure in sight. Put a single crab in an uncovered bucket, and it will find a way to climb up and out on its own. Put a dozen crabs in a bucket, and 11 will fight with all their might to pull down the striver who attempts escape.

Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

Sometimes everyone does their best and things still go wrong.

The words bounced off her like a stone skipping over the surface of a lake. A stone may skip a long way, but it always sinks eventually.

She still held sorrows, but she was not made of them. Her life was not a tragedy.

No matter how much you wanted to do right in this world, the world would find a way to crush you.

You're stronger than you were when it happened.

But do not make the mistake, Seraphina, of supposing that suffering ennobles anyone.

We try to do right, and we ... we ... they gang up on us, fear and pain and revenge and ... and then we find we've done wrong.

I couldn't work out how to get home. Someone moved the mountains.

Crisis first, love later.

Sometimes everyone does their best and things still end up wrong.

This is our lot. Is that what your getting at? And one must choose to walk on, rather that petulantly sitting on one's rump and pouting?

Fight in a time of war as the man you want to be in a time of peace.