quotations and passages about adversity

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin--real life.
But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first,
some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid.
Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

Fr. Alfred D'Souza

Joan Borysenko

Unfortunately, all is not beauty and peace. I don't believe I've ever met a person who hasn't been challenged or wounded by something. Difficulties present choices: we can either waste away from our wounds or use them to grow our souls. My husband, for example, is a survivor of the Second World War. As a child, he suffered through six years of bombings, near-escapes, and concentration camps. Part of his soul work has been the gradual transformation of this deep well of grief and pain. As he heals himself, he also participates in healing that terrible idea of war in others. I have always said that no one heals alone--we heal through and for one another.

People are never helped
in their suffering by what
they think for themselves,
but only by revelation
of a wisdom greater than
their own. It is this which
lifts them out
of their distress.

C.G. Jung

Isak Dinesen

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story
or tell a story about them.

"Crises" can help us discover much about ourselves and enrich our lives. Another wonderful experience that can grow out of a seeming disaster is the joy of appreciation. AIDS patients who relearn how to walk, for example, are often delighted at being able to take two or ten steps again. They appreciate tremendously something that they took for granted their entire lives. How many "healthy" or "normal" people are grateful that they can walk or talk? My guess is, very few. But how much value is there in something taken entirely for granted? If "disaster" enriches our lives with gifts that would otherwise have been taken for granted, is it really a disaster?
Or is it a gift in disguise?

Elisabeth Kuebler- Ross

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition
in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which
we have little experience--the task of surviving prosperity.

Alan Gregg

If there was nothing wrong in the world
there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

George Bernard Shaw

Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Never confuse a single defeat
with a final defeat.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

People's best successes come
after their disappointments.

Henry Ward Beecher

I'm very grateful that I was too poor to get to art school
until I was 21. . . . I was old enough when I got there
to know how to get something out of it.

Henry Moore

I thank God for my handicaps for, through them,
I have found myself, my work, and my God.

Helen Keller

I have always grown from my problems and challenges,
from the things that don't work out. That's when I've really learned.

Carol Burnett

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as
every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly
after what is true, and every fresh experience points out
some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.

John Keats

Adversity is like the period of the rain. . . cold, comfortless,
unfriendly to people and to animals; yet from that season
have their birth the flower, the fruit, the date,
the rose and the pomegranate.

Sir Walter Scott

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

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Adversity
tom walsh

we all face adversity, no matter what we are or where we are in life. i find that adversity comes in several different forms: things that happen in an impersonal way (losing a job because of layoffs, getting an illness), things that other people do to us, intentionally or unintentionally (spread rumors or gossip, compete for jobs or promotions, hurt us physically), and things that we do to ourselves (cut ourselves down, fail to take action).

of these three (and i know there are more), i find that what i used to be best at had to do with things i did to myself. loneliness was an obstacle for me, and i tended to shy away from people and let my fear rule me. i found adversity in what other people did to me or said to me, and i found that i was the culprit, for i either listened to the wrong people or took what they said too seriously or too personally. this type of adversity has always been the most difficult for me to deal with, but i've learned that when i feel bad due to this sort of thing, i'm making myself feel bad because of my reaction to outside stimuli--the stimuli are doing nothing to make me feel bad.

this realization has been important to me, because i've always been very capable of dealing with physical or uncontrollable adversity. when i've had no job, i've gotten down to the business of getting one, and i've been successful. when i've been broke, i've budgeted my money and worked hard to get back on track. when things have happened to me, i've dealt with them.

but the emotional adversity has taken much longer to deal with, for it took me so long to find the source--myself. i believe that much of what bothers us in our lives, much of what we consider to be adversity from an outside source, is really a question of adversity from within--our own inability to give ourselves credit, to trust ourselves, to let ourselves live fully as the people we were made to be. when i feel the touch of adversity now, i look first within, to find out why or how i'm causing myself to feel bad, to respond poorly, to act ineffectively. i almost always find the answer.

when i don't find the answer inside, i find almost always that the problem isn't nearly as drastic as i thought it was--the mountain truly was a molehill, and i can trust life and trust God to see me through to a fitting resolution to any problem. it's nice these days to look at situations that i used to see as adversity as simply minor problems along the way, problems that God and i can easily deal with together.

Misfortune is the test of a person's merit.

Seneca

A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them,
since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind
and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart.

Pietro Aretino

They have seen but half the universe who
never have been shown the house of pain.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouse you to remove
what a little will only accustom you to endure.

Grenville Kleiser

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened,
vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Keller

Adversity is another way to measure the greatness of individuals.
I never had a crisis that didn't make me stronger.

Lou Holtz

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch, what makes you go beyond the norm.

Cicely Tyson

Had there been no difficulties
and no thorns in the way,
then people would have been
in their primitive state
and no progress made
in civilization and mental culture.

Anabdabai Joshee

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 live in a world in which the worst
looks as if it is going to happen
and the worst often does happen,
and yet out of the anguish and waste,
love and trust come in new forms.

Robert A.K. Runcie

There are not so many lessons in glad times.
Adversity is by far the better teacher.
Adversity will be part of almost all our lives.
So it is not in escaping adversity,
but in answering it, that our character is defined.

Christopher Warren

Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice. . . but the voice of eternity within a person it cannot drown.

Søren Kierkegaard

Adversity in the things of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation.

A.J. Toynbee

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

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 Buckham

Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and repeat to yourself
the most comforting words of all: This, too, shall pass.

Ann Landers

Without adversity, without change, life is boring. The paradox of comfort is that we stop trying.

John Amatt

One of the secrets of life is
to make stepping stones
out of stumbling blocks.

Jack Penn

The worst thing in your life may contain seeds of the best.
When you can see crisis as an opportunity,
your life becomes not easier, but more satisfying.

Joe Kogel