Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
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.
WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch Book
Everyone has to have either this or that problem, if he can't find any problem, he loses all reason for living.
GAO XINGJIAN, Nocturnal Wanderer
A little bit of pain is good for you. I feel alive. Everybody needs struggle. Once you overcome an obstacle, you springboard into the future. Life is interesting and short and it's not supposed to be easy, and if it is, you're probably just in denial and you're existing here like a zombie.
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.
ANNE BRADSTREET, Meditations Divine and Moral
One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.
ARISTOPHANES, The Thesmophoriazusae
How adversity doth ope the eye! A moon can be seen by day as well as by night; but, to see the stars, you must be in darkness.
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
CARL JUNG, The Transcendent Function
- That thorny path, those stormy skies,
- Have drawn our spirits nearer;
- And rendered us, by sorrow's ties,
- Each to the other dearer.
BERNARD BARTON, Not Ours the Vows
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.
SAM, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Prosperity gathers smiles, while adversity scatters them.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs
People never fail to amaze me. They face the unimaginable with a shot of grace and a rush of adrenaline; they steel their nerves; they summon their cool or anger or faith or whatever it takes to pull them through, and they go on to live another day.
OPRAH WINFREY, O Magazine, Apr. 2007
There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
As the paper though it entereth the press white, yet when it cometh forth black is eagerly sought to be perused; so do thou let thy life, though darkened by adversity, be made all the more useful to thy fellows.
A spiritually optimistic point of view holds that the universe is woven out of a fabric of love. Everything that is happening is ultimately for the good if we're willing to face it head-on and use our adversities for soul growth.
JOAN BORYSENKO, Ensouling Ourselves
The shade of faith and the cloak of true godliness is the best equipage for the storm of adversity.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs
That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Twilight of the Idols
- There is not unmitigated ill in the sharpest of this world's sorrows;
- I touch not the sore of thy guilt; but of human griefs I counsel thee,
- Cast off the weakness of regret, and gird thee to redeem thy loss:
- Thou has gained, in the furnace of affliction, self-knowledge, patience and humility,
- And these be as precious ore, that waiteth the skill of the coiner:
- Despise not the blessings of adversity, nor the gain thou hast earned so hardly,
- And now thou hast drained the bitter, take heed that thou lose not the sweet.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, Proverbial Philosophy
Let not adversity oppress thee: be rather like unto the nail; the farther 'tis hammered, the firmer it holds.
Keen adversity is the best crucible in which to try a man's integrity.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs
All have their miseries.... He is not truly a man who has not experienced adversity.
Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon man his image and superscription.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
In estimating the adversities of life, we would seldom have much reason to complain of the evils we suffer, did we understand the dangers we daily escape.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouze you to remove, what a little will only accustom you to endure.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
The truth is that adversity is a part of most days. Whether you are ultimately weakened or strengthened by each event, or the accumulation of events, will depend on you first mastering the ability to Take It On!
ERIK WEIHENMAYER, The Adversity Advantage
If afflictions refine some, they consume others.
THOMAS FULLER, Gnomologia
Dealing with adversity is like preparing for surgery. By putting our faith in what the doctor has said, we believe we will be better off if we have the surgery. But that does not make it any less painful. By submitting to the hand of a surgeon, we are saying that our ultimate goal is health, even at the cost of pain. Adversity is the same way. It is a means to an end. It is God's tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives.
CHARLES F. STANLEY, How to Handle Adversity
There is no education like adversity.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Endymion
Adversity is the first path to truth.
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, and stumble from defeat to defeat.
RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI, Granta
Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it.
The highest form of success ... comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, The Strenuous Life
Adversity is a soul sister to success. And on the journey to greatness, our willingness to befriend these twin sisters, and know them as one, will have much to do with our greatness.
NOAH BENSHEA, The Journey to Greatness
Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain--cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth, the flower, and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.
SIR WALTER SCOTT, The Talisman
- Sweet are the uses of adversity,
- Which like the toad, ugly and venemous,
- Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It
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