Thoughts of Adversity Quotes in English with Images Sayings

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

- William James Download or Share

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.

- Jane Fonda Download or Share

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

- Samuel Johnson Download or Share

He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.

- Ben Jonson Download or Share

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.

- Anandabai Joshee Download or Share

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

- Carl Jung Download or Share

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

- Ryszard Kapuscinski Download or Share

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

- John Keats

Adversities do not make a man frail.  They show what sort of man he is.

Thomas P Kempis

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

James Russell Lowell

Adversity Thoughts in English

Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.

- Adversity Quotes by Sir Walter Scott

Adversity is the diamond dust heaven polishes its jewels with.

Robert Leighton

Adversity attracts the man of character. He seeks out the bitter joy of responsibility.

Charles De Gaulle

Kites rise highest against wind, not with it.

- Winston Churchill Quotation

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

- A Quotation From Lee Salk

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

- Dorothy L. Sayers

Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

- Plutarch

Difficulty is a severe instructor.

- Edmund Burke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

- Theodore Roethke

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

- Seneca

Things were bad but now they are OK.

- Harold J. Seymour

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in triumph in war.

- Seneca

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

- Seneca

Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.

- Jean Paul Richter

Exercise, exercise your powers: what is now difficult will finally become routine.

- G. C. Lightenberg

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

- James Rogers

The hardest struggle of all is to something different from what the average man is.

- Charles M. Schwab

Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.

-  Aristotle

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

- Pliny The Elder

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

- Seneca

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

-  Abraham Lincoln

Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

- Plutarch

For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

- Sirach

Adversity Thought in English

Adversity makes strange bedfellows.

William Shakespeare

Nearly all men can meet adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

- Abraham Lincoln

A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity until he has tasted adversity.

- Saadi

You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

- Walt Schmidt

A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.

- English proverb Sayings of British Origin

A stumble may prevent a fall.

- English Proverb Sayings of British Origin

Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.

- Italian Proverb Sayings of Italian Origin

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.

- Maori Proverb Sayings of Maori Origin

Stumbling is not falling.

- Portuguese Proverb Sayings of Portuguese Origin

Any port in a storm.

- Scottish Proverbs Sayings of Scottish Origin

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

- Seneca

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

- William Shakespeare

Out of adversity comes opportunity.  

Benjamin Franklin

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity.  Another man s, I mean.

- Mark Twain Quotes

Adversity is a fact of life.  It can't be controlled.  What we can control is how we react to it.

- Unknown

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

- Albert Schweitzer

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

- Frank Tyger

Adversity is a state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free from admirers then.

- Samuel Johnson

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

- Arthur Golden

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.

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

I would never have amounted to anything were it not for adversity. I was forced to come up the hard way.

JC (James Cash) Penney

When things do not go your way, remember that every challenge - every adversity - contains within it the seeds of opportunity and growth.

- Roy T. Bennett

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.

- Soren Kierkegaard

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.

- Søren Kierkegaard

Many who seem to be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable.

- Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Challenge and adversity are meant to help you know who you are. Storms hit your weakness, but unlock your true strength.

- Roy T. Bennett,

Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

  Samuel Johnson

Adversity Sayings in English

No pressure, no diamonds.

- Mary Case Download or Share

He who knows the darkness shall learn to live in the light.

- Unknown Download or Share

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

- M Kathleen Casey Download or Share

I didn't know I'd have to be torn down before I could be built up.

- Unknown Download or Share

If the going is real easy, beware, you may be headed downhill and don’t know it.

- Unknown Download or Share

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

- Unknown Download or Share

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

- Charles Caleb Colton Download or Share

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

- Adversity Quotes by Henry Kissinger

There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.

- Thomas E. Lawrence Download or Share

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

- Adversity Quotes by Lord Byron Download or Share

Behold, I have refined thee, but not wish silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.

- Bible Sacred Scriptures of Christians and Judaism Download or Share

Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.

- Og Mandino Download or Share

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains.

- Adversity Quotes by Emilie Cady Download or Share

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.  Let the day own trouble be sufficient for the day.

- Bible Sacred Scriptures of Christians and Judaism Download or Share

They that sow in tears shall reap joy.

- Bible Sacred Scriptures of Christians and Judaism Download or Share

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist - it reduces him to his fighting weight.

Josh Billings Download or Share

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 Download or Share

Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.

- Les Brown Download or Share

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.

- Les Brown Download or Share

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.

- Quotes by William C. Bryant Download or Share

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

- Thomas Carlyle Download or Share

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

- Charles Caleb Colton Download or Share

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does, it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.

- Edwin Hubbell Chapin Download or Share

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

Gilbert K. Chesterton Download or Share

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

- Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton Download or Share

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down.  Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

- Jerry Chin Download or Share

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 bizarre which seems inherent in them.

- Jean Cocteau

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 Download or Share

What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.

- Kitty O'neill Collins Download or Share

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

- Francis Ford Coppola Download or Share

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.

- Epictetus

Adversity Quotes List

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.

- Bryan Adams Download or Share

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.

- Aesop Download or Share

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.

- by Louisa May Alcott Download or Share

The reward of suffering is experience.

- Aeschylus Download or Share

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

- Danny Devito Download or Share

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

- Emily Dickinson Download or Share

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

- Frank Herbert Dune Download or Share

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.

- George Eliot Download or Share

A man is a god in ruins.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson Download or Share

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine

- Ralph Waldo Emerson Download or Share

It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls.

- Heartland Advisor Download or Share

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.

- Eric Allenbaugh Download or Share

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day.  You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

- Barbara De Angelis Download or Share

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

- Duke Ellington Download or Share

When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

- Mary Kay Ash Download or Share

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

- St. Augustine Download or Share

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.

- Malcolm S. Forbes Download or Share

We are always on the anvil; by trails God is shaping us for higher things.

- Henry Ward Beecher Download or Share

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.'

- Marcus Aurelius Download or Share

Every silver lining has a cloud.

- Avon Download or Share

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

- Francis Bacon Download or Share

When walking through the valley of shadows, remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.

- H. K.Barclay Download or Share

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

- Henry Ward Beecher Download or Share

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

- Arnold Bennett Download or Share

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

- Taylor Benson Download or Share

Failure is success if we learn from it.

- Malcolm S. Forbes Download or Share

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.

- Henry Ford Download or Share

What is to give light must endure the burning.

- Viktor E. Frankl Download or Share

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.

- Anatole France Download or Share

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.

- Edward Everett Hale Download or Share

Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

- Edward Everett hale Download or Share

The proof of gold is fire…

- Benjamin Franklin Download or Share

Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.

- Robert C. Gallagher Download or Share

Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.

- Herbert Gesser Download or Share

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.

- Khalil Gibran Download or Share

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.

- Kahlil Gibran Download or Share

Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood.  Heat is required to forge anything.  Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart.

- Arnold H. Glasgow Download or Share

The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Download or Share

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest.  We must learn to sail in high winds.

- Hanmer Parsons Grant Download or Share

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a grater.  Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

- William Hazlitt Download or Share

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.

- Ernest Hemingway Download or Share

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

- Heraclitus BC Download or Share

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

- Napoleon Hill Download or Share

In my room as a kid… I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.

- Dustin Hoffman Download or Share

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

- Lou Holtz Download or Share

Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.

- Homer C. Download or Share

A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.

- Horace Download or Share

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

- Horace Download or Share

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

- Horace Download or Share

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

- Horace Download or Share

The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.

- Horace Download or Share *

Abuse a man unjustly, and you will make friends for him.

- Edgar Watson Howe Download or Share

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

- Victor Hugo Download or Share

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

- Washington Irving Quotes Download or Share

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 blazers in the dark hour of adversity.

- Washington Irving Download or Share

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 Download or Share

You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.

- Apollo 13 movie

Short Adversity Quotes in English

Dust is protective coating for fine furniture.

Mario Burata Download or Share

Adversity is the first path to truth.

Lord Byron Download or Share

The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.

- Doug Horton Download or Share

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Only entropy comes easy.

- Lewis Mumford Download or Share

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

- Richard M. Nixon Download or Share

They sicken at the calm that know the storm.

- Dorothy Parker Download or Share

Every burden is a blessing.

- Robert H. Schuller Download or Share

Tough time never last, but tough people do.

Robert H. Schuller Download or Share

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man.  Kites rise against, not with, the wind.

- John Neal

Don’t tell your troubles to others. Most of them don’t care a hang and the rest are damn glad of it.

- Robert Schauffler

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.

- Will Rogers

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

- Rosalind Russell

Adversity Quotation List

You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.

- Maxwell Maltz

Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trails as came to those who passed before you?

- Qur'an Holy Book

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.

- Lauren Van du Post

God brings men into deep waters: not to drown them, but only to cleanse them.

- Aughey

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trails.

- Chinese Proverb Sayings of Chinese Origin

Cushion the painful effects of hard blows b keeping the enthusiasm going strong, even if doing so requires struggle.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in avoiding them.  A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.

- Norman Vincent Peale

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.

- Malcolm X

Trouble is the common denominator of living.  It is the great equalizer.

- Ann Landers

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?

- Rose F. Kennedy

If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs, its just possible you haven't grasped the situation.

- Jean Kerr

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.

- Thomas Kempis

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.

- Oswald Chambers

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

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.

- Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

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."

- Oswald Chambers

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.

- Og Mandino

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.

- Og Mandino

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.

- Leroy Satchel Paige

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.

- Thomas Paine

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 though the window.  I'll never let it stop me from what I wanna do.

- Rosie Perez

That which causes us trails 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 commenced with error, ignorance, and imperfection.  We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.

- Albert Pike

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.

- Ralph Ransom

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.

- Mary Caroline Richards

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.

- Joan Rivers

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.

- Cavett Robert

It is 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.

- Greek Saying

Adversity Quotes List

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome to be got over.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.

- Merle Shain

Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.

- William Shakespeare

If you want to win anything - a race, your self, your life - you have to go a little berserk.

- George Sheehan

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.

- Samuel Smiles

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow.

- The Talmud

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!

- Swahili Warrior Song Quotes

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Rabindranath Tagore

Breakdowns can create breakthroughs.  Things fall apart so things can fall together.

- Unknown

Frogs have it easy, they can eat what bugs them

- Unknown

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.

- Unknown

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 the leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it.

- Bible Sacred Scriptures of Christians and Judaism

When you are in contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it.  This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.

- Dwight Eisenhower

Adversity either makes a person bigger or makes him smaller. It never leaves him as he was before… Adversity can be the abrasive that puts an edge on courage.  It can be the trumpet that calls forth the latent nobility in man.  It can bring you close to God.

- Norman Vincent Peale

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.

- Sir Walter Scott

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,

- Charles " Tremendous" Jones

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.

- Vance Havner

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 trouble.

- Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.

- Henry Fielding

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.

- Elias A. Ford

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.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

- James Beckham

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.

- Ayn Rand, 

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 provisions 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.

- Anne Frank

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.

- Martin E. P. Seligman