In difficult times, we learn lessons that we could have learned in no other
way: We learn about life, but more importantly, we learn about ourselves.
Adversity visits everyone: no human being is beyond Old Man Trouble’s
reach. But Old Man Trouble is not only an unwelcome guest, he is also an
invaluable teacher. If we are to become mature human beings, it is our duty to
learn from the inevitable hardships and heartbreaks of life.
If
you're facing tough times, or if you're leading people who are, consider the
great ideas that follow.
ON ADVERSITY…
"He knows not his own strength who has
not met adversity."
Ben Johnson
"In the depth of winter I learned that within me there lay an
invincible summer.’
Albert Camus
"In life, you’ll have you back up against the wall many times. You
might as well get used to it."
Bear Bryant
"A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since
it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his
potentialities."
Charles DeGaulle
’If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with a little rain."
Dolly Parton
ADVERSITY IS TEMPORARY, BUT CHARACTER
IS PERMANENT
"A talent is formed in stillness, a
character in the world's torrent."
Goethe
"God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach
us lessons that we could learn in no other way."
C. S. Lewis
"Often God shuts a door in our face so that he can open the door
through which he wants us to go."
Catherine Marshall
"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive
characters are seared with scars."
E. H. Chapin
When life kicks you, let it kick you forward.
E. Stanley Jones
THE BEST WAY TO FACE
ADVERSITY IS HEAD ON…
"This is courage: to bear unflinchingly
what heaven sends."
Euripides
"It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by
adversity and not to desert his post."
Cicero
"Deep suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the
initiation into a new state."
George Eliot
"I shall be richer all my life for this sorrow."
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming
it."
Helen Keller
TOUGH TIMES HELP US GROW…
"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals
it."
Horace
"Hardships are wonderful because they make us strong."
Lawrence Welk
"The size of your burden is never as important as the way you carry
it."
Lena Horne
"It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and
spiritually."
M. Scott Peck
"It’s nice to be successful, but nice isn’t the essence of living.
Struggle is."
Mary Tyler Moore
AND FINALLY . . .
"As threshing separates the wheat from
the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue."
Richard Francis Burton
"Adversity has the effect of eliciting
talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant."
Horace
"It takes as much courage to have tried
and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
"Difficulties are meant to rouse, not
discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict."
William E. Channing
"The greatest test of courage on earth
is to bear defeat without losing heart."
Robert G. Ingersoll
This page was written and
compiled by Criswell Freeman, Psy.D.
