Overcoming Adversity Quotes

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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

All the world is full of suffering.
It is also full of overcoming.
- Helen Keller

Above all the grace and the gifts
that Christ gives to his beloved
is that of overcoming self.
- St. Francis of Assisi

This overcoming of all the usual barriers
between the individual and the Absolute
is the great mystic achievement.
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute
and we become aware of our oneness.
This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition,
hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
- William James

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

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Be open to the goodness of life -
even in the midst of apparent adversity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

God sometimes does try to the uttermost
those whom he wishes to bless.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Protect your vision.
Prevail over adversity.
Persevere in the midst of turmoil.
Passionately act upon your convictions.
Purposely walk into the day.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Adversity can crush our spirit -
or strengthen it - it is our choice.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched
the world as much as adversity has.
- Billy Graham

In times of great stress or adversity,
it's always best to keep busy,
to plow your anger and your energy
into something positive.
- Lee Iacocca

Life is truly known only to those who suffer,
lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
- Anais Nin

True friendship is a plant of slow growth,
and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity
before it is entitled to the appellation.
- George Washington

Friendship that flows from the heart
cannot be frozen by adversity,
as the water that flows from the spring
cannot congeal in winter.
- James Fenimore Cooper

Today, when the winds of adversity blow strong,
redirect their force into the
service of your highest intention.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The experience of democracy is like
the experience of life itself -
always changing, infinite in its variety,
sometimes turbulent
and all the more valuable
for having been tested by adversity.
- Jimmy Carter

I leave no trace of wings in the air,
but I am glad I have had my flight.
- Rabindranath Tagore

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,
I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
- Abraham Lincoln

I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb

There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely
as if they had never happened before.
- Willa Cather

If i had known... i would have lingered
over my coffee a little longer.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I never accepted the idea
that I had to be guided by
some pattern or blueprint.
- Little Richard

I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- Abraham Lincoln

Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had
because they didn't have the talent
or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?
- Nelson Mandela

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world,
'til you gave it back to me.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

Ever had a bad hair day -
a day when everything seemed to be going wrong?
Perhaps today is a day to soothe your ruffled feathers,
take a deep breath, and reaffirm that
the weight of the world is really not on your shoulders,
unless you choose to assume that burden.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

That's what learning is, after all;
not whether we lose the game,
but how we lose and h
ow we've changed because of it
and what we take away from it
that we never had before,
to apply to other games.
Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
- Richard Bach

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.
- Leonardo da Vinci

The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock

I have found that hollow,
which even I had relied on for solid.
- Henry David Thoreau

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end.
It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing;
it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.
- Margaret Thatcher

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
- Henry David Thoreau

No stream rises higher than its source.
Whatever man might build, could never
express or reflect more than he was.
He could record neither more nor less
than he had learned of life.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

If someone had told me I would be Pope one day,
I would have studied harder.
- Pope John Paul I

I had three chairs in my house;
one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
- Henry David Thoreau

I recognize that the person I was in my past
is not the person I am today.
That person did the very best they could,
given the knowledge, emotions, and prior experience
they had to draw upon at the time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is only when we truly know and understand
that we have a limited time on earth
and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up
that we will begin to live each day to the fullest,
as if it were the only one we had.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

If I had no sense of humor,
I would long ago have committed suicide.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him,
for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low,
could still be saved; the bitterest enemy
and also he who was your friend could again be your friend;
love that has grown cold can kindle
- Soren Kierkegaard

Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

As for accomplishments,
I just did what I had to do as things came along.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

I was wise enough to never grow up
while fooling most people into believing I had.
- Margaret Mead

We occasionally stumble over the truth
but most of us pick ourselves up and
hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

Suppose our gratitude could be zero-based gratitude.
With zero-based gratitude,
we would be grateful for everything we had each day -
regardless of whether it was more or less than yesterday.
With zero-based gratitude, I can be grateful for all the people,
the love, the food, the shelter, the services,
the health, that I am blessed with today,
regardless of what I had yesterday.
With zero-based gratitude,
I can be grateful each day for the gift of life itself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What work I have done I have done because it has been play.
If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.
- Mark Twain

I have had dreams, and I have had nightmares.
I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.
- Jonas Salk

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

I do not fear death.
I had been dead for billions and billions
of years before I was born,
and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
- Mark Twain

I honor you, Hero, for you do not play to the crowd.
You play to your own soul.
An audience of one fills the house with its appreciation and applause.
Others follow you, and may attempt to emulate you,
but that is not why you are a hero.
Fame may smile upon you, or it may not.
The world may cheer your name, or you may be the unknown warrior
who rescued comrades in battle,
or taught a young girl how to shed tears of joy.
Whatever you did, you did not do for fame.
If you had, you would not be a Hero.
You are a Hero for your bold courageous inspired action.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

My father and he had one of those English friendships
which begins by avoiding the intimacies
and eventually eliminates speech altogether.
- Jorge Luis Borges

My father always used to say that when you die,
if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.
- Lee Iacocca

Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart,
it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

I once had a rose named after me
and I was very flattered.
But I was not pleased to read
the description in the catalogue:
no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

It's YOUR time - it's YOUR life -
YOU get to choose how you use it. T
here is no way that your life is "supposed" to be.
Your parents had their vision for your life.
Your boss, your spouse, your church, your friends,
and even the family next door have their ideas
of how you should live your life.
What about YOUR vision for your life?
What do YOU want?
YES, it matters what you want.
YES you can have what you want.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation,
man would still be a beast in the forest.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant
I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished
at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
- Mark Twain

When I eventually met Mr. Right
I had no idea that his first name was Always.
- Rita Rudner

When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill

I have lost my seven best friends,
which is to say that God has had mercy on me
seven times without realizing it.
He lent a friendship, took it from me, and sent me another.
- Jean Cocteau

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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