Quotes About Adversity

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries

The more comfortable you can be with being uncomfortable, the faster you will grow as a human being, and the more success you will have in life. This is exactly what distinguishes successful people from unsuccessful ones.

When sorrow comes, they come not single spies, but in battalions. I've allies in heaven, Jack, i've commrades in hell...say hello for me...

Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors its worst members.

One's hard luck and misfortune form the measuring stick for future good luck and fortune.

The walls are everywhere. Limits. You're not smart enough, not rich enough. You get tired. You die. Some people like to pretend they've broken out. That they're running free. But there's no escape. You have to find a way to live within the walls. And then, they don't matter.

I don't damsel well. Distress, I can do. Damseling? Not so much.

Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another.

I stood my ground. You evil scientist are all the same--evil. Count me out. Fang and I brushed past Mr. God and walked quickly but smoothly to the exit. It was barely noon, and I'd already made a huge enemy. Dang, I'm good.

When did they start coming after you?" "Was it—was it after the oil- slick Hummer crash?" the Gasman asked Iggy tentatively. My eyes widened. Oil-slick Hummer crash? Iggy rubbed his chin, thinking. "Or maybe it was more---after the bomb," the Gasman said in a low voice, looking down. "I think it was the bomb," Iggy agreed. "That definitely seemed to tick them off." "Bomb?" I asked incredulously.

I want to be able to see stuff, Iggy said. Like I used to, when I was little. And I want to be able to totally kick Jeb's butt.

Listen, street punk. You're a guy, and you're a couple inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier, and ooh, you're in a gang. But I've survived ten years of Catholic school, and I will cut you off at your knees without a blink. Do you understand?

We probably looked like starving orphan children. Hey! We were starving orphan children.

It sucked, but it was way cool at the same time, Gazzy said. I felt like the Blue Angels! Yeah, except the blue Angels are an extremely well funded, well equipped, well trained, well fed, and no doubt squeaky-clean group of crack navy pilots, I said. And we're a bunch of unfunded, unequipped, semitrained, not nearly well fed enough, and filthy mongrel avian-human hybrids. But other than that, it's exactly the same.

Bad stuff happens. Sometimes it makes no sense at all. Sometimes its unfair. Sometimes, it just plain sucks. Bad stuff happens sometimes. Always remember that, but remember that you have to move on somehow. You just pick your head up and stare at something beautiful like the sky, or the ocean, and you move the hell on.

Max-Dogs, dogs, go away, let me live another day.

Pain is a message, and you can choose to ignore that message.

Another day. Get up and face it.

Please, I begged silently, please do not let my last moments on earth be me crammed into a tiny boat in the dark, surrounded by mechanical singing pirates.

Pain fades," I said slowly. "But being a nutcase seems to stick around. Guess who got the better deal here?" The last thing I remember is Mr. Chu's face blazing with fury.

My choices were to either give in and let them kill all of us or fight back with everything I had. I chose the second one, 'cause I'm just funny that way.

James Patterson

Everything I loved was taken away from me, and I did not die.

Just because life is hard and always ends in a bad way doesn't mean that all stories have to. Even if that's what they tell us in school and the New York Book Review.