Quotes About Adversity

Bryce Courtenay

Deliverance is about what I went through the first time. And I chalk it up as a learning experience.

The true test of a man's worth is not what he achieves in life, but what he overcomes.

Fear is like water. You need it. And it's good for you, as long as you have the right amount.

When I saw all those other drivers, I realized that they wanted to win that money just as much as I did. But I didn't have to worry. A tire came off my car and I was lucky I got it off the track.

We've been there and come back. When you fall in the pit, people are supposed to help you up. But you have to get up on your own. We'll take your arms, but you have to get your legs underneath you and stand.

A one-way ticket to Palookaville.

We're sorry for him because a germ he didn't have anything to do with got inside him and twisted him out of shape. Maybe we ought to feel the same way about guys with twisted egos.

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

Look for the silver liningWhene'er a cloudAppears in the blue.

Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition, would

Of the nearly two hundred men who had parted ways with Francisco Orellana's group, only eighty made it back to Quito. They had traveled, mostly on foot, more than two thousand miles, and literally everything they had started the expedition with—200 horses, 2,000 to 3,000 swine, 2,000 dogs, and more than 4,000 native bearers—was gone, dead and gone, along with the 120 of their companions who had perished en route.

People will always try to stop you doing the right thing if it is unconventional.

Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it's a strategy for survival. Sometimes ... it's a triumph.

Pain hurts, sir. I don't court it.

Sir, do you know they've cut us off? We're entirely surrounded." "Those poor bastards," Puller said. "They've got us right where we want 'em. We can shoot in every direction now.

It is deplorable, but not tragic, simply to be a victim of circumstance, for there is an important distinction between destiny and sheer victimization.

been forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby-Dick — largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and responsible for Melville's drop in popularity — was rediscovered in the 20th century as a literary masterpiece. Source: Wikipedia

And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.

better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee

it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

In this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with every human consignment to this planet of Earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind us—I too have a hand here. The