Quotes About Adversity

If you view the world as a predominately hostile place, it will be," wrote Ed Buryn.

Since critics found it hard to defeat him on intellectual grounds, they stooped to personal attacks.

D. Rockefeller drew strength by simplifying reality and strongly believed that excessive reflection upon unpleasant but unalterable events only weakened one's resolve in the face of enemies.

While other founding fathers were reared in tidy New England villages or cosseted on baronial Virginia estates, Hamilton grew up in a tropical hellhole of dissipated whites and fractious slaves, all framed by a backdrop of luxuriant natural beauty.

The uproar didn't weaken Rockefeller's resolve, yet for all his bravado the boycott exacted a grave toll on his operations.

Since Coster's death the year before, Bacon knew he was in over his head and reeled under the responsibility. "My

When rebuffed by a bank officer for a loan, he shot back in anger, "Some day I'll be the richest man in the world.

Only in such passages do we see that Hamilton, for all his phenomenal success in the Continental Army, still felt unlucky and unlovely, still cursed by his past.

Shaped by a childhood of uncertainty, he aspired to be self-sufficient in business

the illness left one leg shorter than the other.

He had suffered many personal misfortunes in marriage and exercised woefully bad judgment.

Thomas Jones, a Loyalist judge in New York, wrote that not "a stick of wood, a spear of grass or a kernel of corn could the troops in New Jersey procure without fighting for it.

Had he known what lay ahead, it seems doubtful that he would have persevered.

While Tarbell's articles were running, Rockefeller, his wife, his son, and two of his three daughters were afflicted by serious medical problems or nervous strain.

Understandably, the Rockefellers did not wish to broadcast their misfortunes to the world.

Hardly a period of his life was free of illness and depression.

It's twaddle, poisonous twaddle, put out for a purpose. As a matter of fact, we were all in a sinking ship, if existing cut-throat competition continued, and we were trying to build a lifeboat to carry us all to the shore. You don't have to threaten men to get them to leave a sinking ship in a lifeboat.

No longer at the mercy of unpredictable economic forces, he thrived even in recessions.

Though he brushed off his critics as minor irritants and professed faith in his own integrity, it could not have been easy to face such universal opprobrium.

From the outset, the young Hamilton had phenomenal stamina for sustained work: ambitious, orphaned boys do not enjoy the option of idleness.

Mr. Adams is vain, suspicious, and stubborn, of an excessive self-regard, taking counsel with nobody."9 Jefferson predicted to Létombe that Adams would last only one term and urged the French to invade England.

When they didn't flinch, Rockefeller launched an all-out attack.

She never entirely recuperated.

Her hardships tapped some deep reserve of strength and wisdom in the simple country woman