Quotes About Adversity

Remember, Rose, whatever you've suffered, no matter how bad it's been, you can use that, use that to be a stronger person.

St. Augustine wrote something once, something I think about often," he said. " Ã¢â'¬ËœGod triumphs on the ruins of our plans.' And maybe that is what is happening here. We make blunders, we make mistakes, and somehow new doors open, new possibilities arise, opportunities of which we've never dreamed.

I've always been proud of you, except when you retreat, and give in to your suffering. I haven't been so proud when you do that. But you always come back. No matter how dreadful the defeat, you come back.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colors, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

I don't really believe I am a hero to the world. But I long ago decided that I must live as if I were a hero—that I must pass through all the difficulties which confront me, because they are only my inevitable circles of fire.

He had not perished. That might be his only significant accomplishment. He had survived. Yes, he'd been defeated, more than once. But fortune had refused to release him. And he was here now, whole, and quietly accepting of the fact though he honestly did not know why.

And I suppose I do believe, in the final analysis, that a peace of mind can be obtained in the face of the worst horrors and the worst losses. It can be obtained by faith in change and in will and in accident; and by faith in ourselves, that we will do the right thing, more often than not, in the face of adversity.

We were on the Devil's Road together before all this happened," she said. "We'll be on it soon again.

And believe me when I say you will survive this, and that you must for all of us. You will survive because you always have and you always will.

I told myself anything I needed to keep my sanity.

As I let him go, he could scarcely stand. But he was no coward, this man. And he bowed his head for only an instant and then he looked at me with clouded eyes.

How will you protect the Sacred Core if you have no strength to fight those who oppose you?

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colors, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn

Her lean face, with its well-shaped pale lips, broke into the freshest and most robust smile, as if neglect and pain had never gnawed at her.

She came at him sideways, away from his legs, reaching down to pull the duct tape away. He didn't even notice the pain, spitting out the rag someone had put in his mouth earlier. She turned, and handed him a bottle of water. You're probably thirsty. The drug I gave you tends to make your mouth dry. No, I think that was caused by the sock someone stuffed in there, he said. Your work?

They had known each other for many years. Young Jacob had found his way onto a ship borne for the tropics, indentured to a pair of wealthy male planters, and he'd run away, ending up at the decaying ruins of La Briere, the plantation house of the de Malheurs. Lucien had been living there alone, the only survivor of a virulent outbreak of cholera, and the two young men, barely more than boys, had bonded together, determined to escape.

Lady Miranda Rohan struck him as someone extremely difficult to crush. Thus, the challenge was immediately appealing.

Wasn't it amazing how resilient people were, how they persisted, how they kept trying to connect!

Disaster followed disaster... the hero stuck in there, though. Macon had long ago noticed that all adventure movies had the same moral: Perseverance pays. Just once he'd like to see a hero like himself -- not a quitter, but a man who did face facts and give up gracefully when pushing on was foolish.

People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

But what helped more was to walk down a crowded sidewalk sometimes, or through a busy shopping mall, and reflect that almost everyone there had suffered some terrible loss. Sometimes more than one loss. Many had lost their dearest loves, but look at them: they were managing. They were putting one foot in front of the other. Some were even smiling. It could be done.

I feel the place is falling apart on me, but Mrs. Scarlatti says not to worry. It always looks like that, she says. Life is a continual shoring up, she says, against one thing and another just eroding and crumbling away. I'm beginning to think she's right.

And that's where he and I differed, Poppy said. Because I was always telling him, 'Look,' I said. 'Face it,' I said. 'There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got,' I said.

If the sore spot is not fatal, if it does not grow and block something, you can use its power for many years, until the heart resorbs it.