Quotes About Adversity

Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of 'difficult' conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends.

Literary fairy tales tell of 'difficult' conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough.

We leafed through a series of the [1941 Soviet] Front newspaper. I came across the following phrase in a leading article: 'The much-battered enemy continued his cowardly advance.

In spite of everything, life would go on, the life of a nation making its way through a land of stone.

Quando gli chiedevano perché si inerpicasse sulle macerie e cantasse a rischio della vita, Zubarev si limitava ad allargare le braccia. Forse voleva dimostrare non solo a se stesso e ai suoi compagni, ma anche al nemico, che chi distrugge deve comunque arrendersi di fronte alla bellezza della vita anche là dove il lezzo di cadavere ristagna giorno e notte.

There is no fear worse than a new fear;

You can't walk straight on a crooked line. You try you'll break your leg. How can you walk straight in a crooked system?

In those days, leaving the old behind in times of starvation was not an unknown act, although in this band it was happening for the first time.

Both learned that from hardship, a side of people emerged that they had not known. The People had thought themselves to be strong, yet they had been weak. And the two old ones whom they thought to be the most helpless and useless had proven themselves to be strong.

Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco. Unglück lehrte mich, den Unglücklichen zu helfen.

To the Dalai Lama, suffering and adversity are the necessary conditions for developing patience and tolerance. These qualities are vital if we want to reduce negative emotions like hatred or anger. When things go well, we have less need to be patient and forgiving. It's only when we come across problems, when we suffer, that we truly learn these virtues. Once we internalize them, compassion flows naturally.

In some sense, winning against impossible odds—when most others cannot or would not try—is the only mark of a great general.

Nicholas Monsarrat's epic postwar novel of the Battle of the Atlantic, The Cruel Sea, is a quite different, nightmarish elemental story of men at sea amid

E cunoscut faptul c? umorul, mai mult decât orice alt atribut uman, înlesneÈ™te o anumit? detaÈ™are È™i permite individului s? se ridice deasupra circumstanÈ›elor, fie È™i numai pentru câteva momente.

Everything you have in life can be taken from you except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. This is what determines the quality of the life we've lived — not whether we've been rich or poor, famous or unknown, healthy or suffering. What determines our quality of life is how we relate to these realities, what kind of meaning we assign them, what kind of attitude we cling to about them, what state of mind we allow them to trigger.

As we see, the priority stays with creatively changing the situation that causes us to suffer. But the superiority goes to the "know-how to suffer," if need be.

the most painful part of the beatings is the insult which they imply.

While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was brought home to us: we really had nothing now except our bare bodies—even minus hair; all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence

The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.

Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.

People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.

Be a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.