Quotes About Adversity

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Chinese throwing stars get you a dozen stitches.

I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.

Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.

Screw up my life? He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan, I'm a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow. He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said, Do your worst.

You predicted quick victory. Now it's going to get hopelessly complicated. Jesus, don't you know any better than that by now?

Something like this will test you like nothing else, Mac said. You're going to find out who you are, Harry. You're going to find out which principles you'll stand by to your death--and which lines you'll cross. He took my empty glass away and said, You're heading into the badlands. It'll be easy to get lost.

You don't have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you.

Do you really think you can win?' 'Yeah. Hell, Ortega is only the third or fourth most disturbing thing I've tangled with today.' 'But even if you do win, what does it change?' 'Me getting kiilled now. That way, I get to be killed later tonight instead.' - Susan Rodriguez & Harry Dresden, Death Masks, Jim Butcher

I'd hate to find out that the universe really wasn't conspiring against me. It would jerk the rug out from under my persecution complex.

I'd gone with my usual option. I was running through long tunnels filled with demons and monsters and nightmares, because it was easier than going to the gym.

So really, it was just as well that Godmother had caught up to me, in spite of my best efforts to avoid her. I'd hate to find out that the universe really wasn't conspiring against me. It would jerk the rug out from under my persecution complex. -Harry

It bothered me that he was right. Without Sir Stuart's intervention, I'd have been dead again already. That's right--you heard me: dead again already. I mean, come on. How screwed up is your life (after- or otherwise) when you find yourself needing phrases like that?

The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you're going to go.

Michael half-smiled. "The Lord will never give you a burden bigger than your shoulders can bear, Harry. All we can do is face what comes and have faith." I gave him a sour glance. "I need to get myself some bigger shoulders, then. Someone in accounting must have made a mistake.

Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,' Sayna said. 'That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness.

Let come the forces of night! We will stand! We will get the hell out of here is what we will do, I muttered.

A bunch of people are gonna be mad at me, I've got some kind of medical issue that's going to kill me in a while if I don't deal with it, oh, and the island's blowing up tomorrow and taking a whole lot of the country with it if I don't fix it." Thomas gave me a steady look. "So," he said. "Same old, same old.

I believe that there's a cloud for every silver lining,' I said.

Karrin Murphy led the charge, and Sanya and I tried to keep up. She went through that sea of foes like a little speedboat, her enemies spun and tossed and turned and disoriented in her wake. Sanya and I hacked our way through stunned foes, pushing and chopping with unsophisticated brutality-and that big Russian lunatic just kept laughing the whole time.

Thomas barked out a laugh. There are seven of us against the Red King and his thirteen most powerful nobles, and it's going well? Mouse sneezed. Eight, Thomas corrected himself. He rolled his eyes and said, And the psycho death faerie makes it nine. It is like movie, Sanya said, nodding. Dibs on Legolas.

Sometimes the things that are good for you, in the long run, hurt for a little while when you first get to them.

Butters, rumbled Skaldi Hair Ball. If he really had broken fingers, it didn't look like they were bothering him much. When are you going to get in this ring and train like a man? About five minutes after I get a functional lightsaber, Butters replied easily, much to Hair Ball's amusement.

Sometimes I think that's where most of us are. Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It's that second bit that's important.