Quotes About Adversity

preparation, knowledge, and discipline can deal with any form of danger; that danger confronted properly is not something a man must fear.

How difficult would it be for these men who had risked their lives to adapt to something

Nails that stuck out often were hammered back into place.

But it could have been worse. He did have a pass to shop for food at the Army–Air Force Exchange Service—otherwise known as the PX at nearby Greenham Commons Air Base—so at least they'd have proper hot dogs, and brands that resembled the ones he bought at the Giant at home in Maryland.

You couldn't allow yourself to get bored. THAT would be a fight.

Damn, guys, for about three minutes there it was just a little hairy, y'know?

humble rabbit, cornered by a fox, has nothing to lose by striking out, and rabbits have teeth, and sometimes the rabbit gets lucky.

What are the deeds of heroes, except a few frightened people doing the best they can in the circumstances?

They were on foot, for the Royce had developed some curious wasting disease and was even more under the spanner.

But there you go. Nobody said life was supposed to be easy, or fair, or even a guaranteed minimum length.

The truth is, my life never went according to plan, or a plan, or anything resembling a plan. It just sort of sprawled. Some lucky people have lives like a new colony, where the public buildings and houses and streets and markets and town walls are all laid out and completed before the first settler moves in. The rest of us are like old villages which grew up haphazard, strung out along a road or squashed in between two mountains.

Wouldn't it be wonderful, wouldn't it be absolutely fucking grand if Life somehow contrived to let five minutes go by without dumping some new and incrementally horrible load of shit on my head from a great height?

It's like the Stone Age over there, just sand and rubble and IEDs.

In his heart of hearts, Jack London knew that we can never build a fire. Not when we really need to.

Functioning in the face of any injustice disfigures you. If it kills you or drives you crazy, you are disfigured, and if you can contain it and channel it and work around it, you are still disfigured.

Whatever goes wrong can be used to your advantage, providing it goes wrong enough.

Hard times and funky living can season the soul, true enough, but joy is the yeast that makes it rise.

We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

Poor little babies are so afraid of pain that they spurn the myriad sweet wonders of life so that they might protect themselves from hurt. How can you respect that sort of weakness, how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring?

We seem to face an enemy who, no matter how many times we win, will best us in the end. He has so many allies: time, disease, boredom, stupidity, religious quackery, and bad habits.

The rougher the world gets around me, the sweeter I seem to myself.

Joy in spite of everything. Not just [mindless] joy, but joy in spite of everything. Recognizing the inequities and the suffering and the corruption and all that but refusing to let it rain on my parade. And I advocate this to other people.-

I have hitched and hiked over every state and half the nations, through blizzards and under rainbows, in deserts and cities, backward and side-ways, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber.

Damn! Why do those yellow-bellied fates always gang up on the elderly?