Quotes About Adversity

That I was poor and without means seemed to me the most bearable part of it, but it was harder that I was numbered among the nameless, that I was one of the millions whom chance permits to live or summons out of existence without even their closest neighbors condescending to take any notice of it. In addition, there was the difficulty which inevitably arose from my lack of schooling.

The man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, who had been a down-and-out tramp in Vienna in his youth, an unknown soldier of World War I, a derelict in Munich in the first grim postwar days, the somewhat comical leader of the Beer Hall Putsch, this spellbinder who was not even German but Austrian, and who was only forty-three years old, had just been administered the oath as Chancellor of the German Reich.

a former Norwegian army officer and

This paralyzing blow to Germany's economy united the people momentarily as they had not been united since 1914.

The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.

Now the Ariekei were learning to speak, and to think, and it hurt.

terrorism could not win once the real terror went.

In Paris you had to be ready to fight art and the Hellish—not to mention Nazis—so they labored under weapons for all eventualities.

Ilse Aichinger, "The Bound Man

A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.

A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.

May you always live in interesting times.

If you get up one more time than you fall you will make it through

One joy scatters a hundred griefs.

A clever person turns great troubles into little ones and little ones into none at all.

A good fortune may forbode a bad luck, which may in turn disguise a good fortune.

A true warrior, like tea, shows his strength in hot water.

That the birds of worry and care fly over you head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.

If fortune smiles, who doesn't? If fortune doesn't, who does?

The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it.

The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns yourself more than them.

A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a man perfected without trials.

Fall down seven times, get up eight. Japanese Proverb

Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts, while adversity is often as the rain of spring.