Quotes About Adversity

Illegitimus non carborundum" (Don't let the bastards grind you down!)

I nearly died of double bronchial pneumonia at the age of five.

I've learnt that through life you just get on with it. You're going to meet a lot of dishonest people along the line and you say good luck to them. I hope they live in comfort. Then I start sticking more pins in their effigies.

I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs.

There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.

the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse.

You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.

You can surrender to the evil or you can find a way to push back against it, that's the choice

in the midst of suffering, it was important to remember one thing: everyone suffered. Some more, some less; some now, some later; some in one way, some in another. But no one was exempt. It was, he said, a lesson, not a punishment. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Some women were given children; others were not. Some women had parents

You can never tell you the mountain will allow and who it will not.

There's nothing wrong with a little fear. Being fearful can save your life-it's saved mine on more than one occasion-but too much fear can stop you from living.

Adventurous men enjoy shipwrecks, mutinies, earthquakes, conflagrations, and all kinds of unpleasant experiences," wrote Bertrand Russell. "They say to themselves, for example, 'So this is what an earthquake is like,' and it gives them pleasure to have their knowledge of the world increased by this new item.

Courage is not the absence of despair it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

One does not become fully human painlessly

I think that one of the benefits of optimism and idealism is that they lead you into things you would never have tried if you'd let yourself imagine how hard it was going to turn out to be.

Humore is an affirmation of man's dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

cette façon que vous avez de vouloir renoncer plutôt que de perdre.

Tuomet mes iš tikr?j? buvome pasiek? dugn? - nesakau "prarajos", nes nuo tada patyriau, kad praraja dugno neturi ir kad mes visi galim mušti gylio rekordus, niekada neišsemdami tos ?domios institucijos galimybi?.

L'ironia è una dichiarazione di dignità. È l'affermazione della superiorità dell'essere umano su quello che gli capita.

Biz insanlar, hem de nice bir zamandan beri mutsuz bir çocukluk içindeyiz.

We were then truly at the very bottom – I won't say at the bottom of the 'abyss' because I have since learned that the abyss is bottomless and that all records of falling and sinking can be broken there without ever exhausting the possibilities of that interesting institution.

Quando è a terra, un aquilone ha bisogno di molta amicizia; a livello del suolo perde forma e vita, e si rattrista facilmente. Gli ci vuole altezza, spazio libero e molto cielo attorno per sbocciare in tutta la sua bellezza.

Si tiene duro più facilmente se si fa finta di ridere.»

and one evening she came across him in the middle of the Maidaguri road, where he lay, his face in the dust, in the midst of a group of natives who were laughing with that light, eternal laughter which is their way of enduring all things.