Quotes About Adversity

The essence of life is that it's challenging.

There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

Each day, we're given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can't handle whatever is happening. It's too much. It's gone too far. We feel bad about ourselves. There's no way we can manipulate the situation to make ourselves come out looking good. No matter how hard we try, it just won't work. Basically, life has just nailed us.

we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us.

Every challenge presents an opportunity for spiritual growth, whether it's a small irritation or when everything as you've known it falls apart.

We can use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts.

Sometimes you just have to let everything fall apart.

A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next.

This pattern is what we observe in many difficult situations. For instance, if someone is very ill, everyone pulls together to help, but if the illness goes on for a year or two, people start pulling away because they're not up for that much.

When we find ourselves in a mess, we don't have to feel guilty about it. Instead, we could reflect on the fact that how we relate to this mess will be sowing the seeds of how we will relate to whatever happens next. We can make ourselves miserable, or we can make ourselves strong. The amount of effort is the same. Right now we are creating our state of mind for tomorrow, not to mention this afternoon, next week, next year, and all the years of our lives.

Rather than trying to get rid of an obstacle or buying into a sense of being attacked, we can use it to see what we do when we're squeezed.

We can meet our match with a poodle or with a raging guard dog, but the interesting question is—what happens next?

step into my learning zone. I feel the discomfort and see that I have survived.

Everything that occurs is not only usable and workable but is actually the path itself. We can use everything that happens to us as the means for waking up. We can use everything that occurs—whether it's our conflicting emotions and thoughts or our seemingly outer situation—to show us where we are asleep and how we can wake up completely, utterly, without reservations.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

Booker T. Washington was right when he said, "Let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him.

The waves just keep coming and knocking you down, but you stand up again and with some sense of rousing yourself, standing up.

we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice. If

Mud, raised by hurricanes, wells up in the noblest and purest of hearts.

The quarrels of friends are the opportunities of foes.

Anger is a rough water; if you can canalize it into a water mill, you can benefit from it. Anything bad can be transformed into good.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

The high road is littered with pot shots.

If a negative viewer looks at you with an ugly fiendish eye, find a way and pluck off his eyes, or better still, protect your good image.