Quotes About Adversity

if Charles is undone, he'll find half his acquaintance ruined too, and that, you know, is a consolation.

Mark Twain said, "I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Be Grateful when You're Feeling Good and Graceful when You're Feeling Bad

Circumstances don't make a person, they reveal him or her.

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.

You may grind their souls in the self-same mill, You may bind them, heart and brow; But the poet will follow the rainbow still, And his brother will follow the plow. JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY (1844–90) 'The Rainbow's Treasure

Your fight is long from over, Deon. More of your kind will come... and they will come for you.

It is often in the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars.

Life can be difficult and no one escapes its challenges. Sooner or later you will find yourself pressed to your limits. It may come in the form of a broken relationship, or unemployment, or a serious illness, or the death of a loved one. When it comes you will be tempted to define your life by that painful experience. Don't succumb to that temptation. Refuse to define your life by any single event, whatever it may be. Its a real part of your life, but that is all--just a part.

My disgraceful, wicked heart, thought Amy, is braver than the world. For a moment it seemed to Amy that there was nothing in the world she could not meet and vanquish. And though she knew this to be the most foolish idea, it excited and emboldened her further.

Adversity brings out the best in us ... It's everyday living that does us in.

He had forgotten the sharp taste of stone dust that hung around the broken village houses, the dead skinny donkeys' smell and the dead wretched goats' smell, the broken terraces' smell and smashed olive groves' smell, the sour stench of high explosive, the heavy odour of spilled olive oil, all melding into a single smell he came to associate with human beings in trouble.

the measure of us is not what we say or think, but what we are when we are tested by suffering.

Suffering is not virtue, nor does it make virtue, nor does of it virtue necessarily flow.

Life was a bit about luck. Mostly though, it was a stacked deck. Life was only about getting the next footstep right.

You survived. Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right?" I don't, of course, believe this. Most things that don't kill us right off, kill us later.

I thought that the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one, between me at that moment and all the people who owned the cars that were nosed-in to their proper places in the lot, maybe between me and that woman out in the trailers by the gold mine, was how well you were able to put things like this out of your mind and not be bothered by them, and maybe too, by how many troubles like this one you had to face in a lifetime.

Porque no hay una forma adecuada de planificar la vida ni tampoco de vivirla: sólo un montón de formas inadecuadas.

Together—though perhaps only together—they were fully formed. They stayed on the road. Life went on as it had, from the thirties straight into the forties. They owned little—a bit of furniture, their clothes, no car.

Greater challenges might only have frustrated him and rendered him unhappy.

My one redeeming strength of character may be that I am good when the chips are down. With success I am worse.

Things happen that seem life-altering, then everything grinds down to being bearable--sometimes slightly better. Which could be a formula for doing anything you fuck-all wanted; or nothing ever meant much--which he did not accept for an instance . . . Still. Who ran their own brain. Your brain ran you.

Each of the positive and negative events of our lives, especially traumatic ones, help to shape us just as a raw diamond is made beautiful by the process of carving and polishing the rough stone until it awakens as a brilliant gemstone. It is only through the testing of our capabilities through trials and challenges that we can learn the deeper meanings of our lives.

Richard Hawke