Quotes About Adversity

I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family. Her father committed suicide. She committed suicide the year before I went to the moon.

When I returned from the Moon, I fell into a series of depressions and bouts with alcohol because I had great difficulty finding something meaningful to do. After you have done what no human beings have done in all of history ... it is hard to get excited about a "normal" job or a mundane military career. So for a while, I experienced a roller coaster of emotions, and it wasn't until I returned to what I was passionate about -- space exploration -- that I truly found my equilibrium again.

The journey of life is not taking place on a flat surface, there is hills and valleys on roads

The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.

The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.

The strength of a woman is not measured by the impact that all her hardships in life have had on her; but the strength of a woman is measured by the extent of her refusal to allow those hardships to dictate her and who she becomes.

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.

I was young and angry enough not to feel that, though this wasn't courage: young and angry is not the same as brave.

You can fall out of your own safe life that quickly, and nothing you thought you knew will ever be the same again.

We're out here on the wrong side of a dying world trying to piece together the story of what's happened from torn fragments that we can only snatch at as they flutter past us in the wind.

I have found that people who can successfully resist temptation invariably lead depressingly stunted lives.

Now I know why women get their ears pierced. Once they've survived this ordeal of mutilation, they can face the discomforts of childbirth with equanimity.

What you guys don't understand about women is a lot. Smart women, they get bored easy. This one here, she's so much better than the rest, she has to manufacture her own challenge. If she didn't come from behind, she'd fall asleep on her own goddamn feet." Greeney

If you sum up what people tell you about their experiences [on the path of individuation], you can formulate it this way: They came to themselves, they could accept themselves, they were able to become reconciled to themselves, and thus were reconciled to adverse circumstances and events.

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers.