Quotes About Adversity

Sometimes I think it is my fate to live in the wreckage and confusion of crumbling houses.

Soy optimista: los gobiernos crecientemente desastrosos que he visto desde que tengo uso de razón -escribió [Castillo] en 1982 en respuesta a una pregunta acerca de si vivía de la literatura-, me han hecho entender a Nietzsche: lo que no me mata me hace fuerte. Y si el dolor y la desgracia capaz de soportar un hombre son la medida de su fuerza, mi pueblo y yo somos invulnerables.

We knew how to combine our strengths in order to overcome our weaknesses, and how to live off faith when nothing else was available.

What seems like the right thing to do could also be the hardest thing you have ever done in your life

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Danger, you know, sometimes makes timid men bold.

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. . . . Great necessities call out great virtues.

Great necessities call forth great leaders.

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

I hate to complain...No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.

The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

Great necessities call out great virtues.

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed...the habits of a vigorous mind are formed contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

Suffering is the finest teacher", said an old friend long ago. "It teaches you details.

Fight fire with fire, and all you'll end up with is ashes.

Fighting fire with fire only gets you ashes!

Terrible (whom he greatly admired), was molded largely by traumatic childhood

I feel just like the boy who stubbed his toe–too damned badly hurt to laugh and too damned proud to cry!

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

[I feel] somewhat like the boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.

I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.