Quotes About Adversity

XXII. The Sea Still Rises XXIII. Fire Rises XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock

Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.

From Monday morning until Saturday night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!

The Grindstone III. The Shadow IV. Calm in Storm V. The Wood-Sawyer

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more.

My father's wery much in that line now. If my mother-in-law blows him up, he whistles. She flies in a passion, and breaks his pipe; he steps out, and gets another. Then she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics; and he smokes wery comfortably till she comes to agin. That's philosophy, Sir, ain't it?

He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village.

Grindstone III. The Shadow IV. Calm in Storm V. The Wood-Sawyer VI.

up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath.

Good gracious, Arthur,—I should say Mr Clennam, far more proper—the climb we have had to get up here and how ever to get down

Marshalsea and all its blighted fruits. They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain, fretted

The bars were wide enough apart to admit of his thrusting his arm through to the elbow; and so he held on negligently, for his greater ease.

He had no notion of meeting danger half-way. When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before he troubled himself.

Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we stick in ruts and sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great, that in our wild alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running—hiding—doing anything but stopping.

If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well off.

Ero sempre stato trattato come se avessi insistito per nascere, in opposizione ai dettami della ragione, della religione e della morale, e contro gli argomenti più dissuasivi dei miei migliori amici.

I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape." Estella in Great Expectations

It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished; and

It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished.

I suppose I must catch it — like a cough,

a man must take the fat with the lean; that's what he must make up his mind to, in this life.

Charles Dickens

I have undergone too much, my friend, to feel pride or squeamishness now. Except - added Nicholas, hastily, after a short silence - except such squeamishness as is common honesty, and so much pride as constitutes self-respect.

I set off on the four-mile walk to our forge; pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.