Quotes About Adversity

The stone that once held the Magellan escutcheon met with a special fate: It was covered with excrement.

the seas began to churn, tossing the ship as if she were nothing more than an oversized piece of flotsam.

Serrano attempted to head into the wind and ride out the storm, but overpowering gusts tore the sails

the strait, he argued, they should sail back to Spain to assemble a better-equipped fleet.

The humiliating rejection proved to be the making of Ferdinand Magellan.

Santiago washed ashore before breaking up.

As soon as they had abandoned ship, Santiago broke up, and the storm carried away all her life-sustaining provisions

The storm had stranded the castaways about seventy miles from the rest of the fleet, without food or wood or fresh water

in freezing weather. They were cold and exhausted; soon they would be starving.

Their land route back to Port Saint Julian presented seemingly overwhelming obstacles:

His relief did not last long. He faced the largest body of water on the planet

By this time, he had lost two ships. The three remaining vessels ventured into the passage without benefit of maps.

Magellan's crew, confined aboard their ships, relied on worm-eaten biscuits

the castaways evolved a plan. They would drag the planks over the mountains until they reached the river

proved daunting to the crew. They left most of the planks behind, and after four wretched days of marching overland

severe storm sprang up. The strong offshore winds blew Magellan's ships out to sea

the rest of his life. An ordinary seaman might attain a modest degree of wealth

Humanity is under siege.

Until I realized that I was asking myself the wrong question. I was asking myself, Why me?" She gradually realized that she could ask a different question: What do I do as a result of having had that experience? "That was the big shift: What now?" She became almost breathless as she tried to explain the changes she experienced once she had shifted from "Why me?" to "What now?

If you find yourself in enough trouble to be staring death in the face, you've gotten there by a well-worn path.

Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death.

Shit happens, and if we just want to restrict ourselves to things where shit can't happen... we're not going to do anything very interesting.

Only 10 to 20 percent of untrained people can stay calm and think in the midst of a survival emergency.

Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push and you push alone.