Quotes About Adversity

Laughter is the only thing that cuts trouble down to a size where you can talk to it. -- character Billy Clyde Puckett in Semi-Tough

schoolwork, he'll fall into a hole that he'll be digging himself out of for the rest of his life.

I came to Canada as a teenager with no money, no contacts, and no knowledge of English.

Happiness doesn't change you. Pain does.

I guess there's good and bad in everyone and tragedy can amplify either.

If failure is not a possibility then winning is not so sweet.

Perhaps the unwelcome event you've encountered is just an opportunity to help you know how to stand up stronger.

Hill once said: "Failure seems to be nature's plan for preparing us for great responsibilities."4

The difference between the successful and the troubled is not error-free living; it is that by discovering and implementing a life calling, the successful stand on their pile of trash while the troubled sit under theirs.

Bernie Marcus was fired from a job as manager of the Handy Dan Improvement Center, then went on to start Home Depot.

Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow

The same generation that had been driven to such depths in the 1930s rose up to push back the forces of totalitarianism in a two-ocean global war in the 1940s.

Ultimately life is disease, death and oblivion. It's still better than high school.

I got picked on a lot, even by teachers too. I liked to listen to musicals and bake, and my homeroom teacher found out and mocked me in front of the whole class for baking.

the moment you begin to believe you're worthy of the good things in your life - God gets all Old Testament on your ass and does something vicious, something insane, something totally uncalled for. He gives you lupus or He allows Satan to slaughter your children and cattle or He delivers Ohio to George W. Bush.

I've lost more times than I've won, and every damn time I got back up! That's all that matters!

Then as everything, like I say, things started to come together, when things started to go our way, that's when you results started to come. I was no different driver. I was certainly learning every time I went in the car.

My big philosophy is: Try and work with good people, because the process is your life. That's going to be really, really hard. I'm glad I learned the lesson, 'Failure is OK.'

Do you feel like you've been through a meat grinder or just tumbled around in a cement mixer?

Expect the best, prepare for the worst. Right?" "As long as a person doesn't spend all their time preparing for the worst and miss when they stumble across the best.

he had a strong premonition that ship had already sailed, been set on fire by pirates and sunk into the sea.

Her insides quivered with the combination of terror and titillation. The bare bones truth was The Shimmy and Shake Shop needed an infusion of income, since her brand- new ice cream shop had to be rebuilt after a criminal tried to destroy it... and her. So much for the quiet small- town life. Murder, mayhem and milkshakes. Who'da thunk it?

But success, she was beginning to realize, was not as much a destination as an endless freeway clogged with hazards.

At the moment developing a nice little inoffensive cancer somewhere on dry land seemed infinitely preferable to what she was grimly convinced was soon to be her death by drowning way too far out at sea.