Quotes About Adversity

He once said that just bec ause you can go on at length doesn't mean that you have something to say, it doesn't mean you have a story to tell; just because you've been unlucky or short-changed or fucked over or fallen heavily on the thorns of life - that's no justification

We were like the Mount Everest climbers stepping over frozen corpses from prior climbing disasters in our quest for the summit. Like those climbers, we were motivated by a fear far greater than death—the fear of not reaching the top.

Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them.

I'm allergic to rocks hitting me in the face.

Any time you think you have the game conquered, the game will turn around and punch you right in the nose.

God lets everything happen for a reason. It's all a learning process, and you have to go from one level to another.

When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into innumerable streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where today it flows in shallows like a rivulet over sandbanks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, tomorrow it will flow richly and fully.

Light's all very well, brothers, but it's not easy to live with.

Terrible is the situation of a small country that stands alone.

Happiness has a high body count.

It's tough out there, boy, and as long as there are people, there's gonna be somebody trying to take what you got and trying to drag you down. It's up to you whether you let them or not.

Then if you want something and it's a good thing an you got it in the right way, you better hang on to it and don't let nobody talk you out of it. You care what a lot of useless people say 'bout you and you'll never get anywhere, 'cause there's a lotta folks [who] don't want you to make it.

Baby, we have no choice of what color we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here.

It's tough out there, boy, and as long as there are people, there's gonna be somebody trying to take what you got and trying to drag you down. It's up to you whether you let them or not.

Poor Christopher-John had fallen into the hands of Miss. Daisy Crocker. I greatly sympathized him, but as in everything else, Christopher John tried to see the bright side in having to face such a shrew every morning. "Maybe she done changed," he said hopefully on the first day of school. However, when classes were over he was noticeably quiet. Well?" I asked him. He shrugged dejectedly and admitted, "She still the same.

Then if you want something and it's a good thing and you got it in the right way, you better hang on to it and don't let nobody talk you out of it. You care what a lot of useless people say 'bout you you'll never get anywhere, 'cause there's a lotta folks don't want you to make it.

did not blame others for his own stupidity; he learned from his mistake and became stronger for it.

Times being like they is and all. But I figure times been hard all my life. Now don't seem so much worse'n any other.

He was often ridiculed by the other children at his school and had shown up more than once with wide red welts on his arms which Lillian Jean, his older sister, had revealed with satisfaction were the result of his associating with us. Still, Jeremy continued to meet us. When

People who have it too easy in early life have a disadvantage for later on, because they get to thinking that everything is going to be easy. (quoted 2017-12-30 in the Toronto Daily Star)

My second grade teacher told me I would never graduate high school. That I was going to be a juvenile delinquent.

I'm not saying my golf game went bad, but if I grew tomatoes, they'd come up sliced.

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.

Humor was not important only for me, humor was important for this nation for centuries, to survive, you know.