Quotes About Adversity

Every morning, the Omori POWs were assembled and ordered to call out their number in Japanese. After November 1, 1944, the man assigned number twenty-nine would sing out "Niju ku!" at the top of his lungs.

If you dig into it, it comes back to you. That's the way war is.

A month earlier, twenty-six-year-old Zamperini had been one of the greatest runners in the world, expected by many to be the first to break the four-minute mile, one of the most celebrated barriers in sport. Now his Olympian's body had wasted to less than one hundred pounds and his famous legs could no longer lift him. Almost everyone outside of his family had given him up for dead.

It is in times of superlative hardship that individuals live their epic adventures, stories that thrill, fascinate, inspire, and illuminate.

At last, a door thumped open. A man rushed out and snapped to a halt, screaming "Keirei!" It was the Bird. Louie's legs folded, the snow reared up at him, and down he went.

Louie, looking as battered as his plane, walked to Super Man. He leaned his head into one of the cannon holes and saw the severed right rudder cables, still spliced together as he had left them. He ran his fingers along the tears in Super Man's skin. The plane had saved him and all but one of his crew. He would think of it as a dear friend.

The crash of Green Hornet had left Louie and Phil in the most desperate physical extremity, without food, water, or shelter. But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity.

In September 1942, a B-17 crashed in the Pacific, stranding nine men on a raft. Within a few days, one had died and the rest had gone mad.

Four more times the Japanese strafed them, sending Louie into the water to kick and punch at the sharks until the bomber had passed.

He felt his consciousness slipping, his mind losing adhesion, until all he knew was a single thought: He cannot break me.

There's more than one thing I can't do and there are a lot more things than that that you can't do or you wouldn't be in the newspaper business. You'd be a jockey and a scholar and a connoisseur of femininity like I am

alive.3 Johnny found myriad avenues of

Thorbjørn Christiansen

Louie never saw a Chong diner finish his meal.

actress Esther Williams on the wall. The note that Louie had left on the locker was gone, as was the liquor. Among Louie's things, Krey found photographs that Louie had taken inside his plane. In some of them, Louie

Zamperini looked toward his crewmates. They were too weak

Who hit you in the butt with a saddle and told you you could ride?" a starter hissed before a race. "The same S.O.B. that hit you in the butt and told you you could start!" he shot back. Pollard had found the one place on earth that could hold his interest. He was broke, hungry, and, according to his sister Edie, "happy as heck.

You don't throw a whole life away just because it's banged up a little bit.

Louie grabbed the flare gun, loaded it, and fired. The flare shot straight at the bomber; for a moment, the men thought that it would hit the plane. But the flare missed, passing alongside the plane, making a fountain of red that looked huge from the raft. Louie reloaded and fired again. The plane turned sharply right. Louie fired two more flares, past the tail.

If Red breaks that leg again," Howard said soberly, "it will cripple him for life." Alexander told him that maybe it was better to break a man's leg than his heart.

Laura Hillenbrand

The average army or army air forces Pacific POW had lost sixty-one pounds in captivity, a remarkable statistic given that roughly three-quarters of the men had weighed just 159 pounds or less upon enlistment.

A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory

There's no great loss without some small gain.