Quotes About Adversity

Paradoxically, the more people give up their crutches, the soothing mechanisms of their lives, their self-nourishing habits and deadening routines, the more they are able to embrace life.

Numerous case histories have been documented about children previously neglected or abused by their parents, who, when placed with loving foster parents, have distorted their new surroundings and therefore reacted adversely.

The only society I like is rough and tough, and the tougher the better. There's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people.

I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend; Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out — yet the Wild must win in the end.

Catastrophe is change on the fast track. Disaster is a laboratory for adaptability.

We are well advised to accept the reality that the great lessons in life often come to us through some form of extreme hardship.

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the strong shall thrive;That surely the weak shall perish, and only the fit survive.Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,This is the Will of the Yukon—Lo, how she makes it plain!

La struggle for life, che, unos se regeneran y otros caen; así es la vida...

And then the storm of shit begins.

La literatura se parece mucho a la pelea de los samuráis, pero un samurái no pelea contra otro samurái: pelea contra un monstruo. Generalmente sabe, además, que va a ser derrotado. Tener el valor, sabiendo previamente que vas a ser derrotado, y salir a pelear: eso es la literatura.

Suddenly drawing courage from nowhere, he decided he was not going to die. Now or never, he thought, and began to swim back up. It seemed to take forever to reach the surface and then he could hardly manage to keep himself afloat, but he did. That afternoon he learnt to swim without arms, like an eel or a snake. In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.

These weren't comforting nights, much less pleasant ones, but Espinoza discovered two things that helped him mightily in the early days: he would never be a fiction writer, and, in his own way, he was brave.

Ambos habíamos nacido más o menos por las mismas fechas. Ambos habíamos rajado de nuestras respectivas Repúblicas, cuando pasó lo que pasó.

quieren ver a los grandes maestros en sesiones de esgrima de entrenamiento, pero no quieren saber nada de los combates de verdad, en donde los grandes maestros luchan contra aquello, ese aquello que nos atemoriza a todos, ese aquello que acoquina y encacha, y hay sangre y heridas mortales y fetidez.

Je loopt altijd gevaar. Dat is de zuivere waarheid. Je loopt altijd gevaar en bent een speelbal van het lot, zelfs op de meest onwaarschijnlijke plaatsen.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

Woe betide whomsoever I met on my path!

I have had . . . easier days. Although in retrospect, this one is not atypical.

I think the best people, the ones who have reached the highest plateaus as human beings, are those who have known a great deal of adversity and have dealt with it and then moved ahead.

The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz. That's all you have to remember. No matter what the other man says.

To finally confront the worst there is, to look it squarely in the face and say, "I know you. You have hurt me, almost to death, but still I live. And I will go on living.

No being gets to decide what his life is 'supposed to be.' " She lifted her eyes and her gaze stabbed him. "Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

One had a knife. But I had a staff and was trained to use it.

Many will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and don it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.