Difficult Times Help Show Us Who We Really Are

"It is not in the still calm of life, or in repose of pacific station that great characters are formed. Great necessities call our great virtues."
Abigail Adams

"A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances; and if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage that is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him."
Machiavelli

"There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstance to meet."
William F. "Bull" Halsey

"The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

About Greatness…

"All rising to a great place is by a winding stair."
Francis Bacon
Mark Twain

"Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength: and strength is not used rightly when it only serves to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own."
Henry Ward Beecher

"The most characteristic mark of a great mind is to choose some one important object and pursue it for life."
Anna Lettitia BarBauld

"He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original practical example."
Walt Whitman

"Great minds are like eagles, and build their nests in some lofty solitude."
Arthur Schopenhauer

"They are only truly great who are truly good."
George Chapman

"There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent."
Leo Tolstoy

"Not a day passes over the earth that men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows."
Charles Reade

And Finally

"Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings."
Samuel Johnson

Alas! The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.
Thomas Carlyle

"We are very near to greatness: one step one step and we are safe: can we not take the leap?"
Ralph Waldo Emerson