Tribulation
will not hurt you,
unless
as it too often does,
it hardens you and
makes you
sour, narrow and skeptical.
Edwin
Hubbell Chapman
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
It
appears that when life is broken by tragedy God shines through the breach. -George
A. Buttrick
If you will call your troubles
experiences, and remember that every experience
develops
some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and
happy,
however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.
-John R. Miller
It
was a high speech of Seneca that "The good things which belong
to
prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong
to
adversity are to be admired."
-Francis Bacon
Out of
suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most
massive characters are seared with scars.
-Edwin H. Chapin
Emergencies
have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness
which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the
compass. It was
hunger that drove us to exploration. And
it took a depression
to show us the value of a job.
-Victor Hugo
As the valley
gives height to the mountain,
so can sorrow
give meaning to pleasure;
as the well is the source of
the fountain,
deep adversity can be a
treasure. -William Ward
We do not
succeed in changing things according to our desire,
but
gradually our desire changes. The situation that we
hoped
to change because it was intolerable becomes
unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle,
as we were
absolutely determined to do, but life has
taken us round it,
led us past it, and then if we turn
round to gaze at the remote past,
we can barely catch
sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.
-Marcel Proust
Hope and
patience are two sovereign remedies for all,
the surest reposals, the
softest cushions to lean on in adversity.
-Robert Burton
The
first question to be answered by any individual or any social group,
facing a hazardous situation, is whether the crisis is to be met as
a
challenge to strength or as an occasion for despair.
-Harry
Emerson Fosdick
Kites
rise highest against the wind--
not with it.
Winston Churchill
Adversity causes some people to break;
others to break records.
William A. Ward
Only
in winter can you tell which trees are truly green. Only when the winds of adversity blow can
you tell
whether an individual or a country has
steadfastness. -John
F. Kennedy
Mishaps
are like knives, that either serve us or cut us,
as we
grasp them by the blade or the handle.
-James
Russell Lowell
Sweet are the uses
of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venemous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt in public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
I would not change it.
William Shakespeare
Adversity
is the trial of principle. Without it people hardly know
whether they are honest or not. -Henry Fielding
I
walked slowly out on the beach. A few yards below high-water
mark I stopped and read the words again: WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.
I let the paper blow away, reached down and
picked up a fragment of shell. Kneeling there under the
vault of the sky, I wrote several words, one above the
other.
Then I walked away, and I did not look back.
I had written my troubles on the sand.
The tide was coming in.
People of character
find a special attractiveness in
difficulty,
since it is only by coming to grips with
difficulty
that they can realize their potentialities.
-Charles DeGaulle
The mark of your ignorance is the
depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the
caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls
a butterfly. -Richard
Bach
We
could never learn to be brave and patient,
if there were
only joy in the world. -Helen Keller
I am
an old man and have known
a great many troubles,
but most
of them have never happened. -Mark
Twain
Nothing
happens to anybody which they are not fitted by nature to
bear. -Marcus Aurelius
To be
thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into
the
very lap of fortune, for our faculties then undergo
a
development and display an energy of which
they were
previously unsusceptible. -Benjamin Franklin
Prosperity is a
great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the
mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
-William Hazlitt
Adversity in the things
of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation.
-A.J. Toynbee
Affliction is able to
drown out every earthly voice. . . but the voice of eternity
within a person it cannot drown.
-Søren Kierkegaard
For a long time it had seemed to me
that life was about to begin--real life.
But there
was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got
through first,
some unfinished business, time still to be
served, a debt to be paid.
Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were
my life. -Fr. Alfred D'Souza
Never confuse a single defeat
with a final
defeat. -F. Scott Fitzgerald
Trouble creates a capacity to
handle it. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
If
you have not clung to a broken piece of your old ship in the
dark night
of the soul, your faith may not have the sustaining
power
to carry you through to the end of the journey.
-Rufus
M. Jones
Had there been no difficulties
and no thorns in the way,
then people would have been
in their
primitive state
and no progress made
in civilization and mental
culture. -Anabdabai Joshee
Challenges
make you discover things about yourself that you never really
knew.
They're what make the instrument stretch, what makes you
go beyond the norm. -Cicely
Tyson
Adversity is like the period of the
rain. . . cold, comfortless,
unfriendly to people and to animals; yet from that season
have their birth the flower,
the fruit, the date,
the rose and the pomegranate. -Walter Scott
The
ultimate measure of a person is not where he or she
stands in
moments of comfort and convenience, but where
he or she stands
at times of challenge and controversy. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Character
cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience
of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened,
vision cleared,
ambition inspired, and success achieved.
-Helen
Keller
I'm very
grateful that I was too poor to get to art school
until I
was 21. . . . I was old enough when I got there
to know
how to get something out of it. -Henry Moore
We all face adversity,
no matter what we are or where we are in life. I
find that adversity comes in several different forms:
things that happen in an impersonal way (losing a
job because of layoffs, getting an illness), things that
other people do to us, intentionally or unintentionally (spread
rumors or gossip, compete for jobs or promotions, hurt us
physically), and things that we do to ourselves (cut
ourselves down, fail to take action).
Of these three (and I know there are
more), I find that what I used to be best at had to do
with things I did to myself. Loneliness was an
obstacle for me, and I tended to shy away from people and
let my fear rule me. I found adversity in what
other people did to me or said to me, and I found that I
was the culprit, for I either listened to the wrong
people or took what they said too seriously or too
personally. This type of adversity has always been
the most difficult for me to deal with, but I've learned
that when I feel bad due to this sort of thing, I'm
making myself feel bad because of my reaction to outside
stimuli--the stimuli are doing nothing to make me feel
bad.
This realization has been important
to me, because I've always been very capable of dealing
with physical or uncontrollable adversity. When I've
had no job, I've gotten down to the business of getting
one, and I've been successful. When I've been broke, I've budgeted my money and worked hard to get back on
track. When things have happened to me, I've dealt
with them.
But the emotional adversity has taken
much longer to deal with, for it took me so long to find
the source--myself. I believe that much of what bothers
us in our lives, much of what we consider to be adversity
from an outside source, is really a question of adversity
from within--our own inability to give ourselves credit,
to trust ourselves, to let ourselves live fully as the
people we were made to be. When I feel the touch of
adversity now, I look first within, to find out why or
how I'm causing myself to feel bad, to respond poorly, to
act ineffectively. I almost always find the answer.
When I don't find the answer inside, I find almost always that the problem isn't nearly as
drastic as I thought it was--the mountain truly was a
molehill, and I can trust life and trust God to see me
through to a fitting resolution to any problem. It's
nice these days to look at situations that I used to see
as adversity as simply minor problems along the way,
problems that God and I can easily deal with together.
Free
Daily Quotations!
You
can receive a free daily email with two inspiring quotations
by signing up here. And don't worry--we don't share
any email addresses with anyone, for any reason.
