Quotes About Adversity

But enemies, as his mother used to say, are the price of success.

Empathy? What's that?" Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. "It's a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.

The world is full of monsters, after all. Perhaps the best one can hope for is to have the most terrible on your side.

Got to have fear to have courage,

Different men have different ways, Logen had told him once, and you have to have fear to have courage.

Have you no pity?' Glokta could only shrug. 'I did have. As a boy I was soft-hearted beyond the point of foolishness. I swear, I would cry at a fly caught in a spider's web.' He grimaced at a brutal spasm through his leg as he turned for the door. 'Constant pain has cured me of that.

Straining and straining, getting nowhere, but unable to stop pushing in case the rock should fall and crush him. Meanwhile, arrogant bastards who were in just the same danger lazed on the slopes beside him saying, 'Well, it's not my rock.

Winning teaches you nothing," said Tunny. "You see what a man really is when he loses.

The skies make no special dispensation for Magi, boy, they piss on everyone the same.

Pain is the best schoolmaster, as you will soon discover.

All the great heroes of old, you know - the great kings, the great generals - they all faced adversity from time to time." Jezal looked up. He had almost forgotten that Bayaz was there. "Suffering is what gives a man strength, my boy, just as the steel most hammered turns out the hardest.

You cannot expect all the heroes to survive a good song

Course. Doing better next time. That's what life is.

Defeats do men far more good than victories.

Summers past love company, seems every time you turn around there's more o' the bastards at your back.

Strange how, as long as the hardship lasts, we can stand it. As soon as the crisis is over, the strength all leeches away in an instant.

What? A family?" Ninefingers frowned, rubbing grimly at the stump of his middle finger. "I did have one. And now I've got another. You don't pick your family, you take what you'er given and you make the best of it." He pointed at Ferro, then at Quai. "You see her, and him, and you?" He slapped his hand down on Jezal's shoulder. "That's my family now, and I don't pal on losing a brother today, you understand?

She was not a woman to be deterred by hatred: not from her workers, not from her rivals, not from the men she bullied, bribed or blackmailed to get her way. It is when they truly hate you, after all, that you know you have won. So she met the seething dislike with effortless superiority, paraded past with her shoulders back and chin high. If she was to be cast as the villain, so be it. They were always the most interesting characters anyway.

Experience had taught her that not all scars showed, and those that did might be the least bothersome.

There are times for growing stronger and times for comforting, and sometimes both times see a few tears.

I learnt a long time back to accept whatever comes my way. Best savor the good and bear up under the bad. There ain't no changin' none of it.

Good morning," I said awkwardly. Being shipwrecked doesn't make shyness any easier.

Words of kindness had always been more difficult for me to handle than harsh reprimands. Ever since I had been quite young, I could resist those who went against me, had been able to deny their opinions. My inner strength came from an ability to handle, then separate myself from, adversity. Compassion, however, brought up more raw emotion than judgments could ever stir.

Rose spoke up softly beside me. 'It's how you handle the unfairness of life -that's what matters, I think.'...In this city of imprisonment, I had seen faith and optimism, strength and fortitude in the face of adversity.