Quotes about Adversity

And then there was the unsettling fact that, despite whatever my mother might claim, the bullies, cheats, and self-promoters seemed to be doing quite well, while those she considered good and decent people seemed to get screwed an awful lot.

As she spoke, her voice never wavered; it was the voice of someone who has forced a larger meaning out of tragedy. Or

But know this America: we will meet them

Sometimes you were just screwed, and the best you could do was have a stiff drink—and light up a cigarette.

Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct...Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.

There can be no greater spiritual accomplishment than to come through brutal trials and then look back and see that mean times did not render us mean spirits.

At the time, I thought my life couldn't get any worse. Here's some advice: Don't ever think that.

For six years, from age nineteen until I turned twenty-five, I did not sleep uninterrupted through a single night. . . . I felt lucky to get my shoes on the right feet. . . . I moved forward only, thinking each morning anew that we were leaving the worst behind.

Man against Nature...Of all the possible conflicts, that was the one that was hopeless. Even a slim education had taught her this much: Man loses.

The way I see it, a person isn't nothing more than a scarecrow... The only difference between one that stands up good and one that blows over is what kind of a stick they're stuck up there on.

In the scullery kitchens and probably the salt mines of this world, many a child is not so much raised as hammered into shape, Artie. To be of use. Surviving by the grace of utility alone.

If fight or flight is the choice, it's way easier to fly.