Quotes About Adversity

In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.

The ruin of his hopes leaves the steadfast man undismayed.

He realized the shipwreck had already happened and that he was floating on a raft of ruins.

The ship founders on a sandbank and then gets back afloat. Electric power stops; after a while, the machines start up again. During such recesses, the anarch measures his own strength and autonomy.

One should be guided less by catastrophes than by one's own internal weather conditions. Even when there was no wind, a hidden cliff could spell disaster; and one could quietly while away time in a cabin in the center of a typhoon.

Die Härte der Welt wird nur durch Härte gemeistert, nicht aber durch Taschenspielerei.

Together with a great number of others I had twice paid the piper for inefficient governments. We had carried off neither pay nor glory – just the opposite.

Eravamo nati dopo la guerra, eravamo la schiuma che resta dopo la mareggiata.

Nous sommes les escargots des sommets. (p. 18)

Impossibility never prevented anything from happening.

if you're dealing with monkeys, you got to expect some wrenches.....

Me and Tom used to get along first-rate concerning everything. Me and him never had no difficulties like I was always having with my other children. They used to throw rocks at me and hit me over the head with sticks, but Tom never did. Tom was always a first-rate boy when I knowed him.

We can become so afraid of death that we never live, so afraid of failure that we never risk, so afraid of pain that we never discover how strong we really are.

Frankly, the people who whine the most about how hard their lives are have very rarely experienced much to be disappointed about. They seem to find solace in their most negative memories, using these as a blank check that abdicates them from all personal responsibility. "I am how I am because of the pain of my past. If you had experienced what I have experienced, you would understand my bitterness, my anger, my paralysis, my despair.

Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.

When life feels broken and the heat gets turned up, just remember: You're being made whole again.

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.

I have to finish what I started. I'd have had that beast on my spear by now, except for Prince Meleager. He saw me wound it and thought I was in danger. The gods protect me from men who mean well!

Falling down does not make you weak, it makes you sore. Not getting back up means you're weak.

James Lister and Louis Pasteur were at first excluded from academic honor societies and laughed at for their theories on sterilization, vaccination, and pasteurization.

Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.

So if you're really unhappy down there, and if all kinds of people are telling you that you're suffering from severe perceptual disorders, look for your own way of getting here, and when you find it, could you please bring some cards, 'cause we're getting pretty tired of the marbles. - from "Pipes

People have short memories, he said, especially when bad things are concerned. People tend to forget, he said, but you won't forget.

To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesn't make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body.