Adversity Quotes

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
-- Agatha Christie

If you want to forget all your other troubles, wear too tight shoes.
-- The Houghton Line, November 1965

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
-- M. Kathleen Casey

Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.
-- Garth Brooks

We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, "Why did this happen to me?" unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way.
-- Author Unknown

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.
-- William Shakespeare, Othello

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

It just wouldn't be a picnic without the ants.
-- Author Unknown

If you're going through hell, keep going.
-- Winston Churchill

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
-- Theodore Rubin

The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.
-- Rona Barrett

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.
-- Jewish Proverb

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.
-- Henry Ward Beecher

Sometimes the littlest things in life are the hardest to take. You can sit on a mountain more comfortably than on a tack.
-- Author Unknown

When written in Chinese the word "crisis" is composed of two characters - one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
-- John F. Kennedy, address, 12 April 1959

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
-- Frank A. Clark

There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.
-- Lou Reed, "Magic and Loss"

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
-- Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Satires

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
-- Kenji Miyazawa

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
-- Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
-- Colette

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
-- African Proverb

The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back.
-- Author Unknown

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Things are never so bad they can't be made worse.
-- From the movie The African Queen

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.
-- Mary Engelbreit

Every path hath a puddle.
-- George Herbert, "Jacula Prudentum"

It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1909

If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.
-- Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
-- John Updike

Much of your pain is self-chosen.
-- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

There is no education like adversity.
-- Disraeli

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
-- John Steinbeck

Life didn't promise to be wonderful.
-- Teddy Pendergrass

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
-- Bernard M. Baruch

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.... Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields....
-- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change.
-- John A. Simone, Sr.

Sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted.
-- Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, Flower, Fruit, and Thorn

We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't.
-- Frank A. Clark

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
-- Michel de Montaigne

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
-- Norman Vincent Peale

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.
-- André Gide

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
-- John Vance Cheney

Adversity is the first path to truth.
-- Lord Byron

Yes, one must suffer, even in vain, so as not to have lived in vain.
-- Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
-- O. Henry, The Gifts of the Magi

A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity 'til he has tasted adversity.
-- Sa'di (Musharrif-uddin)

Adversity enhances this tale we call life.
-- Ever Garrison on adversity quotes

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
-- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 1929

Let your joy scream across the pain.
-- Ezbeth Wilder

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
-- Author Unknown

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
-- Alexander Smith

What a pity human beings can't exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow's.
-- Olin Miller

To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.
-- Oscar Wilde

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
-- Voltaire on adversity quotes

These adversity quotes give us the best solutions to deal with adversity when it strikes.
As some of the adversity quotes imply, you can choose to do your best when catastrophe strikes or we can lay back and drown ourselves in our sorrow, which by the way - makes them a lot worse.
Learn from the adversity quotes above - make the right decision on how you want to handle the challenges you are faced with in your life.