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

adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4

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

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

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

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

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

Marcus Aurelius

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obstacles to living life fully - e-zine archives - quotations contents

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

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

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 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