adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4

Never forget that God tests
his real friends more severely
than the lukewarm ones.

Kathryn Hulme

   

Sometimes, the problems you must face are more than you wish to cope with, and tomorrow doesn't seem to offer any solutions.  You may ask yourself "Why me?" but the answer is sometimes unclear.  You may even tend to feel that life hasn't been just or fair to burden you with such obstacles.  The roads any of us choose to follow are never free of bumps or curves, but eventually the turns lead to a smoother path ahead.  Believe in yourself and your dreams.  You will soon realize that the future holds many promises for you.  Remember. . . difficult times don't last forever.

Geri Danks

      

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are
feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled.  For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our
ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

M. Scott Peck

  

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

   

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
  

Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring
a season of sober reflection.  People see clearer at such times.
Storms purify the atmosphere.

Henry Ward Beecher
   
   

  

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

James Russell Lowell

   

You can think about your problems or you can worry about them, and there is
a vast difference between the two.  Worry is thinking that has turned toxic.
It is jarring music that goes round and round and never comes to either
climax or conclusion.  Thinking works its way through problems to conclusions
and decisions; worry leaves you in a state of tensely suspended animation.
When you worry, you go over the same ground endlessly and come out the
same place you started.  Thinking makes progress from one place to
another; worry remains static.  The problem of life is to change worry
into thinking and anxiety into creative action.

Harold B. Walker
  

It is in the whole process of meeting and
solving problems that life has meaning.
Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure.  Problems call
forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.  It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.

M. Scott Peck

  
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.

Arthur Gordon

  
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.
 
attributed to
William Shakespeare

adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4

    

  

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
  

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
  

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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

 

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
 

Out of suffering have emerged the
strongest souls; the most massive
characters are seared with scars.

Edwin H. Chapin

Adversity is the trial of principle.
Without it people hardly know
whether they are honest or not.

Henry Fielding
 

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
 
 

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

William Hazlitt
 

Kites rise highest against the wind--
not with it.

Winston Churchill

Adversity causes some people to break;
others to break records.

William A. Ward
 

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

   

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 A. Ward

 

Hope and patience are two sovereign remedies for all,
the surest reposals, the softest cushions to lean on in adversity.

Robert Burton

 

  
 

It appears that when life is broken by tragedy God shines through the breach.

George A. Buttrick
   

adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4
  

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
 

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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