Adversity Quotes and Sayings
A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.
The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.
I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.
The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
You can’t run away from trouble. There ain’t no place that far.
Enduring habits I hate…. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don’t embrace trouble; that’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he’s got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?
You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.
If you want to forget all your other troubles, wear too tight shoes.
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Sometimes the littlest things in life are the hardest to take. You can sit on a mountain more comfortably than on a tack.
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
As long as you keep getting born, it’s alright to die some times.
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
Bad is never good until worse happens.
It just wouldn’t be a picnic without the ants.
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.
There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.
We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
Things are never so bad they can’t be made worse.
If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
Every path hath a puddle.
A bad grade is only one letter in the Essay of life.
I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Sometimes in tragedy we find our life’s purpose - the eye sheds a tear to find its focus.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted.
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
There is no education like adversity.
We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don’t.
If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
It’s not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.
Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.
That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not.
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.
Life didn’t promise to be wonderful.
Adversity is the first path to truth.
Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Suffering is above, not below. And everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise.
They say a reasonable amount ‘o fleas is good fer a dog - keeps him from broodin’ over bein’ a dog, mebbe.
Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.
I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.
Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
Convert difficulties into opportunities, for difficulties are divine surgeries to make you better.
Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargained for.
Adversity enhances this tale we call life.
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.
Yes, one must suffer, even in vain, so as not to have lived in vain.
Don’t cry when the sun is gone, because the tears won’t let you see the stars.
People are resilient. After all, every person born has recovered from nine months on life support.
There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
Despair is anger with no place to go.
In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
What a pity human beings can’t exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow’s.
Problems are messages.
There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
For fate has wove the thread of life with pain,
And twins ev’n from the birth are Misery and Man!
To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity ’til he has tasted adversity.
Let your joy scream across the pain.
The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.
Thorns and stings
And those such things
Just make stronger
Our angel wings.
When life gives you lemons, please, just don’t squirt them in other people’s eyes.
The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.
God uses suffering as a whetstone, to make men sharp with.
Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.
There are sufferings that have lost their memory and do not remember why they are suffering.
Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.
Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
The course of true anything never does run smooth.
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
If the thunder is not loud, the peasant forgets to cross himself.
Past and to come, seems best; things present, worse.
Adversity collapses around a true adherent soul.
People don’t ever seem to relate that doing what’s right is no guarantee against misfortune.
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater.
Better to lose count while naming your blessings than to lose your blessings to counting your troubles.
I bear a little more than I can bear.
Every evil is some good spelt backwards, and in it the wise know how to read Wisdom.
May you get what you wish for.
You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.
Watch a man in times of… adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off.
“The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never, never forget!” “You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.
Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
When life takes the wind out of your sails, it is to test you at the oars.
Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Human suffering, while it is asleep, is shapeless. If it is wakened it takes the form of the waker.
There are times in everyone’s life when something constructive is born out of adversity… when things seem so bad that you’ve got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.
Better bread with water than cake with trouble.
Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them.
The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.
The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.
God gave burdens, also shoulders.
There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.
When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.
Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.
Would you touch a nettle without being stung by it? take hold of it stoutly. Do the same to other annoyances, and hardly will any thing annoy you.
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity.
Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.
Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.
My strength is made perfect in weakness.
Problems are the price you pay for progress.
When you’re feeling your worst, that’s when you get to know yourself the best.
Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
Like a plant that starts up in showers and sunshine and does not know which has best helped it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the hard things or the pleasant things did me the most good.
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.
There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.
It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
No man ought to lay a cross upon himself, or to adopt tribulation, as is done in popedom; but if a cross or tribulation come upon him, then let him suffer it patiently, and know that it is good and profitable for him.
Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. When a storm approaches thee, be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower.
Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting, it may not be logical but it is often true.
I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
The misfortunes of mankind are of varied plumage.
I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.
We must try not to sink beneath our anguish… but battle on.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
Bygone troubles are good to tell.
The cold is a good counselor, but it is cold.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Rock bottom is good solid ground, and a dead end street is just a place to turn around.
Soul talks to adversity.
If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. ;
Count the garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall. Count your life with smiles and not the tears that roll.
How can something bother you if you won’t let it?
Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.
But ne’er the rose without the thorn.
You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
That was rough…. Thing to do now is try and forget it…. I guess I don’t quite mean that. It’s not a thing you can forget. Maybe not even a thing you want to forget…. Life’s like that sometimes… Now and then for no good reason a man can figure out, life will just haul off and knock him flat, slam him agin’ the ground so hard it seems like all his insides is busted. But it’s not all like that. A lot of it’s mighty fine, and you can’t afford to waste the good part frettin’ about the bad. That makes it all bad…. Sure, I know - sayin’ it’s one thing and feelin’ it’s another. But I’ll tell you a trick that’s sometimes a big help. When you start lookin’ around for something good to take the place of the bad, as a general rule you can find it.
Hardship is best sailed with a heart ship.
God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.
Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, “Why did this happen to me?” unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way.
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