Adversity Quotes

"Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. A maxim of Hill's, specifically cited as such, in Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude (1960), co-authored with W. Clement Stone, Ch. 14, p. 222."

"“If you learn life’s lessons, you will do well. If not, life will just continue to push you around. People do two things. Some just let life push them around. Others get angry and push back. But they push back against their boss, or their job, or their husband or wife. They do not know it’s life that’s pushing.”"

"Happiness depends upon ourselves."

"The strongest oak tree of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun. p. 112"

"“Life pushes all of us around. Some give up. Others fight. A few learn the lesson and move on. They welcome life pushing them around. To these few people, it means they need and want to learn something. They learn and move on. Most quit, and a few like you fight.”"

"Even in these circumstances nobility shines through, when a person bears many great misfortunes with patience, not because he is insensitive to them but because he is of noble and great spirit."

"We must be neither cowardly nor rash but brave."

"No one loves the man whom he fears."

"In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend, but in adversity it is most difficult of all things."

"He who is to be a good ruler must first have been ruled."

"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light."

"It is not once or twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world."

"Wicked men are full of regrets."

"He who has overcome his fears will truly be free."

"Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind."

"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think."

"To perceive is to suffer."

"For it is the nature of the many to be amenable to fear but not to a sense of honor, and to abstain from evil not because of its baseness but because of the penalties."

"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire."

"The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival."

"The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper."

"The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances."

"For the man who is sensible of pain, and yet stands his ground against things that are painful, is the brave man."

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."

"Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence; and the things that it is concerned with are the most formidable of things."

"A friend to all is a friend to none."

"The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching."

"Greatness of soul seems to be a sort of ornament of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them."

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."

"He is a coward who flees from everything and is afraid of everything and faces nothing."

"The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul subdues its fear, and bravely faces the danger."

"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."

"The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes."