Quotes About Adversity

My day has been a pleasant one. My joys have far exceeded my sorrows and my friends have brought me far more than my enemies have taken from me.

A man's troubles are always half disposed of when he finds endurance the only alternative.

I say , this picture sometimes appalled us, and made us rather bear those ills we had. Than fly to others, that we knew not of.

Of one thing I could be glad: not one of my dear friends upon whom I had brought this great calamity, reproached me, either by word or look, for having led them into it. We were a band of brothers, and never dearer to each other than now. The thought which gave us the most pain was the probable separation which would now take place in case we were sold off to the far south as we were likely to do.

I wanted to be another Nat Turner; and if I did not look out, I should get as many balls into me, as Nat did into him. Thus ended the infant Sabbath school, in the town of St. Michael's.

The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.

The only thing that went wrong was the human race itself.

Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency;

Previous to that I had been somewhat cynical about the American as a fighting man. I had seen too much bellyaching and laying off. But with the chips down, that all faded away. I can now believe—which I never would have before—the stories of Bataan and Wake. For an American it's got to be awfully easy or awfully tough.

The soldiers were overwhelmed and blinded by the forces of nature, by the soaking vegetation, the mountains that vanished in the clouds, the rivers swirling with turbid, dangerously rapid water, by the mud, the heat, by everything. It was a formless, green-gray world, devoid of outline, inimical, a world in which every movement, even eating was an effort.

You shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: you must be proud of your foes. Thus have I already taught.

I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.

I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.

The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.

Wo aber die Gefahr ist, wächst, Das Rettende auch. But where danger is, salvation also blooms.

throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you

He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.

He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.