I got in trouble with the police, and that was a rude awakening. That was it. I'd seen the bottom of the pit, and it was time to scrape myself out of it.
It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls.
The reward of suffering is experience.
Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.
— Aesop
I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.
Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us--and those around us -- more effectively. Look for the learning.
You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, This is a misfortune but To bear this worthily is good fortune.
Every silver lining has a cloud.
— Avon
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
When walking through the valley of shadows, remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.
We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.
It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
They that sow in tears shall reap joy. [Psalms 126:5]
— Bible
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.
— Bible
Enter through the narrow gate. The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it. But how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it. [Mathew 7:13-14]
— Bible
Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. [Isaiah 48:10]
— Bible
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist -- it reduces him to his fighting weight.
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Just because Fate doesn’t deal you the right cards, it doesn’t mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential.
Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.
Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness --a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.
Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
Dust is a protective coating for fine furniture.
It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.
Adversity is the first path to truth.
Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
No pressure, no diamonds.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God. Consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.
We say, sorrow, disaster, calamity. God says, chastening and it sounds sweet to him though it is a discord to our ears. Don't faint when you are rebuked, and don't despise the chastening of the Lord. In your patience possess your souls.
Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
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.
What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.
Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.
If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do? I don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him? To shrug.
In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
A wounded deer leaps the highest.
People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine
A man is a god in ruins.
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported without the latter.
Failure is success if we learn from it.
When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.
Every hardship; every joy; every temptation is a challenge of the spirit; that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance; and nothing happens which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human soul.
Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.
He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.
Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.
I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.
What is to give light must endure the burning.
The proof of gold is fire...
Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.
Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.
— Gesser
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.
March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.
Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood. Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart.
The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.
We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.
Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds; all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
Some people bear three kinds of trouble -- the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.
Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, Shake well before using. That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.
It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.
Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.
Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.
— Homer
The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.
— Horace
As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.
— Horace
Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
— Horace
A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.
— Horace
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
— Horace
The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.
Abuse a man unjustly, and you will make friends for him.
Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
There is in every 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.
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.
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.
— Johnson
Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.
He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity
Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilization and mental culture.
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
As iron put into the fire loseth its rust and becometh clearly red-hot, so he that wholly turneth himself unto God puts off all slothfulness, and is transformed into a new man.
Adversities do not make a man frail. They show what sort of man he is.
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?
If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs, its just possible you haven't grasped the situation.
Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.
Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
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.
It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.
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.
Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.
You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
Search for the seed of good in every adversity. Master that principle and you will own a precious shield that will guard you well through all the darkest valleys you must traverse. Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the mountaintop. So will you learn things in adversity that you would never have discovered without trouble. There is always a seed of good. Find it and prosper.
There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.
Only entropy comes easy.
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.
Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
They sicken at the calm that know the storm.
Cushion the painful effects of hard blows by keeping the enthusiasm going strong, even if doing so requires struggle.
Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
I would never have amounted to anything were it not for adversity. I was forced to come up the hard way.
The racism, the sexism, I never let it be my problem, it's their problem. If I see a door comin' my way, I'm knockin' it down. And if I can't knock down the door, I'm sliding through the window. I'll never let it stop me from what I wanna do.
That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph: and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve: which could not happen unless we had commence with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.
Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.
Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
— Plutarch
Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.
— Plutarch
The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.
The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.
A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
A stumble may prevent a fall.
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
Stumbling is not falling.
Any port in a storm.
Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?
— Qur'an
All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.
Am I willing to give up what I have in order to be what I am not yet? Am I able to follow the spirit of love into the desert? It is a frightening and sacred moment. There is no return. One's life is charged forever. It is the fire that gives us our shape.
Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.
I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door -- or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.
If we study the lives of great men and women carefully and unemotionally we find that, invariably, greatness was developed, tested and revealed through the darker periods of their lives. One of the largest tributaries of the RIVER OF GREATNESS is always the STREAM OF ADVERSITY.
In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.
The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don't let it get the best of you.
People are like stained -- glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid.
When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity until he has tasted adversity.
— Saadi
When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.
Trouble shared is trouble halved.
It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.
You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome --to be got over.
Tough times never last, but tough people do.
Every burden is a blessing.
The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.
One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.
Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.
It's a matter of ABC: When we encounter ADVERSITY, we react by thinking about it. Our thoughts rapidly congeal into BELIEFS. These beliefs may become so habitual we don't even realize we have them unless we stop to focus on them. And they don't just sit there idly; they have CONSEQUENCES. The beliefs are the direct cause of what we feel and what we do next. They can spell the difference between dejection and giving up, on the one hand, and well-being and constructive action on the other. The first step is to see the connection between adversity, belief, and consequence. The second step is to see how the ABCs operate every day in your own life.
No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.
— Seneca
The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.
— Seneca
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
— Seneca
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
— Seneca
The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.
— Seneca
Things were bad but now they are OK.
One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.
Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.
Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
If you want to win anything -- a race, your self, your life -- you have to go a little berserk.
For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.
— Sirach
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.
— Sting
Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!
We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.
Many who seem to be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable.
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man s, I mean.
The stars are constantly shining, but often we do not see them until the dark hours.
The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.
There will be no crown bearers in heaven who are not cross bearers on earth.
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.
Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth
No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in a storm.
The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
Your dips an falls do not confound me, half as much as your heights astound me.
When I dig another out of trouble, the hole from which I lift him is the place where I bury my own.
We need tough days to drive us to our knees.
We all know that sponges grow in the ocean but I wander how much deeper the ocean would be if that wasn't the case.
Two frogs fell into a bowl of cream. One didn't panic, he relaxed and drowned. The other kicked and struggled so much that the cream turned to butter and he walked out.
Adversity is a fact of life. It can't be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it.
If the going is real easy, beware, you may be headed down hill and don't know it.
He who knows the darkness shall learn to live in the light.
Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.
If your cup seems too bitter, if your burden seems to heavy, be sure that it is the wounded hand that is holding the cup, and that it is me who carried the cross that is carrying the burden.
If your knees are knocking, kneel on them.
If you're on thin ice, you might as well dance.
In times of storm, the shallowness of the root structure is revealed.
No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.
I didn't know I'd have to be torn down before I could be built up.
Frogs have it easy, they can eat what bugs them
You have endured worse things; God will grant an end even to these.
— Virgil
I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.
Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.
Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for it.
Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think of himself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches
Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions.
The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.
A reasonable amount o fleas is good for a dog -- keeps him from brooding over being a dog, maybe.
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow as Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me the pot's at the other end.
It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song. But the man worth while is the one who can smile, when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is troubled, And it always comes with the years. And the smiles that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through tears.
Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.
One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.
Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.