Quotes About Adversity

There is much honor and more sense in having succeeded with what was left, making something with the damned forty acres and a muddy mule, but you have to be able to see that. No one will tell you.

I'm not sure you get wiser as you get older, Starling, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell. We can dodge some right there.

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtray, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the café curtains cover blank concrete.

Experience decorates us.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, whether you like it or not.

Mass celebrated on the hood of a jeep with shells bursting all around is as much the Mass as the liturgy celebrated in St John Lateran by the Bishop of Rome himself.

The majority either ignore their critics or use criticism as an inspiration to succeed.

Courage can be developed. But it cannot be nurtured in an environment that eliminates all risks, all difficulty, all dangers.

Many successful business owners have told us that they enjoy short periods of rough times in their chosen industries because they weed out much of the competition.

all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

when you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on

The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes, should be one of the principal studies and endeavours of our lives.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.

The most fortunate of us all in our journey through life frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which greatly afflict us. To fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives.

The critic does his utmost to blight genius in his infancy.

nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all.

nearly everything great owes its existence to "despites": despite misery and affliction, poverty, desolation, physical debility, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstacles.

Soll man die Segel streichen und dem Erlebnis ausweichen, sobald es nicht vollkommen danach angetan ist, Heiterkeit und Vertrauen zu erzeugen? Soll man 'abreisen', wenn das Leben sich ein bisschen unheimlich, nicht ganz geheuer oder etwas peinlich und kränkend anlässt? Nein doch, man soll bleiben, soll sich das ansehen und sich dem aussetzen, gerade dabei gibt es vielleicht etwas zu lernen.

Aschenbach stated outright that nearly everything great owes its existence to "despites": despite misery and affliction, poverty, desolation, physical debility, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstacles.

the idea that an unfavourable influence exerted upon a man's personal life by the times in which he lives may even extend to his physical organism.

Hidden away amongst Aschenbach's writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.

Was heisst denn auch unerträglich, wenn's doch ertragen werden muss und gar nichts anderes übrigbleibt, als es zu tragen, solange der Mensch bei Sinnen ist?

Hidden away among Aschenbach's writings was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work;