Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Adversity.
Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
William Shakespeare
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.
Robert Collier
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
Proverb
I used to hurt so badly that I'd ask God why, what have I done to deserve any of this? I feel now He was preparing me for this, for the future. That's the way I see it.
Janet Jackson
Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for it.
Earl Warren
Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.
Charles Dickens
Back, n. That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.
Ambrose Bierce
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.
John Neal
In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.
George Leonard
Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
Robert Leighton
Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us.
Henry Ward Beecher
...The wife, soon to be a mother, could hardly catch her breath in the heavy, choking dust, for even in the pure air she breathed hard from her burden. Each jolt of the wagon, for those ahead had made wagon ruts almost 'ex' deep, wrung from her clenched lips a half-groan that she did her best to keep from the anxious, solicitous husband plodding slowly along, guiding and goading the poor dumb cattle, themselves weary from the long trek. So through the long day of jolting and discomfort and sometimes pain, sometimes panting for breath, the mother, anxious only that the unborn babe should not be injured, rode, for she could not walk; and the children walked, for the load was too heavy and big for them to ride; and the father walked sturdily alongside and prayed....Then the morning came when from out that last wagon floated the cry of the newborn babe, and mother love made a shrine, and Father bowed in reverence before it. But the train must move on. So out into the dust and dirt the last wagon moved again, swaying and jolting, while Mother eased as best she could each pain-giving jolt so no harm might be done her, that she might be strong to feed the little one, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. Who will dare to say that angels did not cluster round and guard her and ease her rude bed, for she had given another choice spirit its mortal body that it might work out its God-given destiny?
J. (Joshua) Reuben Clark, Jr., T
Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
Zig Ziglar
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
Horace
You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.
Maxwell Maltz
God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth. How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven.
George MacDonald
I have been walking onto ballfields for 16 years, and I've never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left -- Murderers Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor living and playing with these men on my right-- the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today. I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys up there behind the wire, my friends, the sports writers. I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy. I have a mother and father who fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth. I have a wife, a companion for life, who has shown me more courage than I ever knew. People all say that I've had a bad break. But today --today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.Lou Gehrig Delivers Farewell to Baseball Address at Yankee Stadium
Lou Gehrig, The Pride of the Yan
Growing up I had a horrible speech impediment. I stuttered to where I couldn't even talk in class. I couldn't even give one-word answers because I would stutter, which in turn made me mad. I fought a lot and I stayed in trouble a lot. I never had someone come in and say, 'We want to have you see a speech therapist to help you'. I was too poor. People that live on the borderline of poverty do not get charity because it does not go that far down the line. I wish I had someone to help me, but it never happened. I did it myself. I still get stuck on a word sometimes, but I don't let it bother me. When I go home, people say, 'Man, it would take you 10 minutes to say a sentence when you were young, and now you're traveling around the country, speaking to corporations and thousands of people. How...did you do it?'
Bo Jackson, interview, article w
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
English Proverb
