adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4 - adversity 5

Adversity is not undesirable.  Because it is
only when you are down and out in life
that you can realize its true value.

Papa Ramdas

   

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

   

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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

  

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

adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4 - adversity 5

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

  

Nothing happens to anybody which they are not fitted by nature to bear.

Marcus Aurelius

  

If you yield to adversity, the chances are it will master you, but
if you recognize in yourself the power of mastery over
conditions, then adversity will yield to you.

Ralph Waldo Trine
  

Adversity may call out dormant powers that have never before been suspected.

Alice H. Rice

  

Avoiding difficult situations or running away from them does not
usually take much skill or effort. But doing so prevents you from
testing your own limits and from growing.  The ability to face
difficulties can be crucial for your growth.  However, if you are
faced with a situation in which the difficulties are simply
overwhelming, you should step back for the time being and
wait until you have built up enough strength to deal with it skillfully.

Joseph Goldstein
7 Treasures of Awakening

  

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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

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

 

adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4 - adversity 5

  

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

  

There is never really anything to be discouraged about, because
difficulties are opportunities for inner growth, and the greater
the difficulty, the greater the opportunity for growth.

Peace Pilgrim

 
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
  

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known
defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found
their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a
sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion,
gentleness, and a deep loving concern.  Beautiful people do not just happen.

Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross

  

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it
through, how you managed to survive.  You won’t even be sure,
whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain.  When you
come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who
walked in.  That’s what this storm’s all about.

Haruki Murakami

   

adversity 2 - adversity 3 - adversity 4 - adversity 5

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact,
it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you
are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

Maya Angelou
  

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
Memoirs of a Geisha

  

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
The Works of Anne Bradstreet

   

  
Bad times have a scientific value.
These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
  

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

George A. Buttrick

  

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

Kathryn Hulme

  
Although I do not wish hardship on myself, hardship often finds me, and when it does, I have a choice.  I can treat it as a purely negative experience—one that I should put behind me as soon as possible and never think of again—or I can actively seek to identify and understand the lesson that every hardship contains within it.  For example, through hardship I can learn about humbleness (gaining a better understanding of my limitations), empathy (learning to connect to the pain of others), patience (absorbing the lesson that things do not always turn out as we planned), and resilience (gaining confidence from my ability to bounce back after the hardship is overcome).  I most certainly do not have to be happy about everything that is thrown my way, and yet once something negative happens to me, I can use it as a tool for development and growth.  Things do not necessarily happen for the best, but I can choose to make the best of things that happen.

Tal Ben-Shahar
Choose the Life You Want
   
Times of confusion and general adversity have always been a
source of great good.  Real calamity was ordained as a person's
perfect mirror, that we may see ourselves and see how helpless
we are without the support of a Supreme Being.

Fred van Amburgh
  

    

Found online:
 

 
(Found online images come from a variety of unattributed
sources from various social media pages.  They're too nice
not to share!)

    

Alone in his car heading west, it's easy for Jason
to feel sorry for himself and mad at the world.  But
then he gives a ride to Hector and learns that life
isn't nearly as negative as we sometimes see it,
and that the prejudice and discrimination that
he's experiencing aren't unique to him--and aren't
impossible to overcome.  The friendship between
this young man and his 70-year-old passenger is
an inspiring story of love and dealing with
obstacles in our lives.    
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