Inspirations

The reward of suffering is experience.

- Aeschylus

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.

- Aesop

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.

- Louisa May Alcott

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us--and those around us, more effectively. Look for the learning.

- Eric Allenbaugh

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

- Barbara De Angelis

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

- St Augustine

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

- Francis Bacon

When walking through the ''valley of shadows,'' remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.

- H K Barclay

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

- Henry Ward Beecher

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

- Henry Ward Beecher

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

- Arnold Bennet

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

- Taylor Benson

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.

- Isaiah 48:10, Bible

Enter through the narrow gate. The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it. But how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it.

- Mathew 7:13-14, Bible

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

- Bible

They that sow in tears shall reap joy.

- Psalms 126:5, Bible

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

Just because Fate doesn�t deal you the right cards, it doesn�t mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential.

- Les Brown

Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.

- Les Brown

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness --a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.

- William C Bryant

Trials, temptations, disappointments, all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

- James Buckham

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains

- Emilie Cady

No pressure, no diamonds.

- Mary Case

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

- M Kathleen Casey

When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God. Consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.

- Oswald Chambers

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.

- Edwin Hubbel Chapin

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

- Gilbert K Chesterton

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

- Gilbert K Chesterton

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

- Jerry Chin

In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.

- Robert Collier

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

- Charles Caleb Colton

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

- Danny Devito

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

- Emily Dickinson

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

- Frank Herbert, Dune

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

- Duke Ellington

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

- Epictetus

When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

- Malcolm S Forbes

Failure is success if we learn from it.

- Malcolm S Forbes

Every hardship; every joy; every temptation is a challenge of the spirit; that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance; and nothing happens which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human soul.

- Elias A Ford

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

- Henry Ford

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

- Anatole France

What is to give light must endure the burning.

- Viktor E Frankl

The proof of gold is fire...

- Benjamin Franklin

Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.

- Robert C Gallagher

Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.

- Gesser

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.

- Kahlil Gibran

Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood. Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart.

- Arnold H Glasgow

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.

- Hanmer Parsons Grant

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds; all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

- Edward Everett Hale

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, ''Shake well before using.'' That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

- Vance Havner

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.

- Ernest Hemingway

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

- Napoleon Hill

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

- Lou Holtz

Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.

- Homer

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

- Horace

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

- Horace

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

- Horace

The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.

- Doug Horton

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

- Washington Irving

I used to hurt so badly that I'd ask God why, what have I done to deserve any of this? I feel now He was preparing me for this, for the future. That's the way I see it.

- Janet Jackson

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

- William James

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

- Charles Tremendous Jones

He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity

- Ben Jonson

Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilization and mental culture.

- Anandabai Joshee

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

- Carl Jung

Adversities do not make a man frail. They show what sort of man he is.

- Thomas A Kempis

As iron put into the fire loseth its rust and becometh clearly red-hot, so he that wholly turneth himself unto God puts off all slothfulness, and is transformed into a new man.

- Thomas A Kempis

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?

- Rose F Kennedy

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

- Henry Kissinger

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

- Robert Leighton

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

- James Russell Lowell

You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.

- Maxwell Maltz

Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.

- Og Mandino

Search for the seed of good in every adversity. Master that principle and you will own a precious shield that will guard you well through all the darkest valleys you must traverse. Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the mountaintop. So will you learn things in adversity that you would never have discovered without trouble. There is always a seed of good. Find it and prosper.

- Og Mandino

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

- Og Mandino

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.

- John Neal

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

- Richard M Nixon

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.

- Leroy Satchel Paige

Cushion the painful effects of hard blows by keeping the enthusiasm going strong, even if doing so requires struggle.

- Norman Vincent Peale

I would never have amounted to anything were it not for adversity. I was forced to come up the hard way.

- James Cash Penney

The racism, the sexism, I never let it be my problem, it's their problem. If I see a door comin' my way, I'm knockin' it down. And if I can't knock down the door, I'm sliding through the window. I'll never let it stop me from what I wanna do.

- Rosie Perez

That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph: and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve: which could not happen unless we had commence with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.

- Albert Pike

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

- Laurens Van du Post

The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.

- Sextus Propertius

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

- Chinese Proverb

A stumble may prevent a fall.

- English Proverb

A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.

- English Proverb

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.

- Maori Proverb

Stumbling is not falling.

- Portuguese Proverb

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.

- Ralph Ransom

Am I willing to give up what I have in order to be what I am not yet? Am I able to follow the spirit of love into the desert? It is a frightening and sacred moment. There is no return. One's life is charged forever. It is the fire that gives us our shape.

- Mary Caroline Richards

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door -- or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

- Joan Rivers

If we study the lives of great men and women carefully and unemotionally we find that, invariably, greatness was developed, tested and revealed through the darker periods of their lives. One of the largest tributaries of the RIVER OF GREATNESS is always the STREAM OF ADVERSITY.

- Cavett Robert

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

- Theodore Roethke

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

- James Rogers

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don't let it get the best of you.

- Will Rogers

People are like stained -- glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within

- Elizabeth Kubler Ross

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

- Lee Salk

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

- Dorothy L Sayers

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.

- Greek Saying

You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

- Walt Schmidt

Every burden is a blessing.

- Robert H Schuller

Tough times never last, but tough people do.

- Robert H Schuller

The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.

- Charles M Schwab

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

- Albert Schweitzer

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

- Seneca

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

- Seneca

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

- Seneca

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

- Seneca

One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.

- Merle Shain

For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

- Sirach

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.

- Samuel Smiles

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!

- Swahili Warrior Song

Many who seem to be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable.

- Publius Cornelius Tacitus

We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.

- Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow.

- The Talmud

Two frogs fell into a bowl of cream. One didn't panic, he relaxed and drowned. The other kicked and struggled so much that the cream turned to butter and he walked out.

- Source Unknown

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them

- Source Unknown

If your knees are knocking, kneel on them.

- Source Unknown

The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.

- Source Unknown

The stars are constantly shining, but often we do not see them until the dark hours.

- Source Unknown

There will be no crown bearers in heaven who are not cross bearers on earth.

- Source Unknown

We need tough days to drive us to our knees.

- Source Unknown

Nothing bad ever happens without equal or growth

- Source Unknown

There are times in everyone's life when something constructive is born out of adversity... when things seem so bad that you've got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.

- Source Unknown

If you're on thin ice, you might as well dance.

- Source Unknown

If the going is real easy, beware, you may be headed down hill and don't know it.

- Source Unknown

I didn't know I'd have to be torn down before I could be built up.

- Source Unknown

He who knows the darkness shall learn to live in the light.

- Source Unknown

Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.

- Source Unknown

Adversity is a fact of life. It can't be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it.

- Source Unknown

In times of storm, the shallowness of the root structure is revealed.

- Source Unknown

No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in a storm.

- Source Unknown

I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

- Sam Walton

Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.

- William A Ward

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

- Oprah Winfrey

Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.

- Zig Ziglar

Inspire-U-2-Overcome-Adversity

Get Inspired for the Perseverance Component of Grit

The reward of suffering is experience.

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us--and those around us, more effectively. Look for the learning.

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

When walking through the ''valley of shadows,'' remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

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

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.

Enter through the narrow gate. The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it. But how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

They that sow in tears shall reap joy.

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.

Just because Fate doesn�t deal you the right cards, it doesn�t mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential.

Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness --a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains

No pressure, no diamonds.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God. Consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

Every hardship; every joy; every temptation is a challenge of the spirit; that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance; and nothing happens which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human soul.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

What is to give light must endure the burning.

The proof of gold is fire...

Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.

Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.

Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood. Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart.

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds; all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, ''Shake well before using.'' That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

I used to hurt so badly that I'd ask God why, what have I done to deserve any of this? I feel now He was preparing me for this, for the future. That's the way I see it.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity

Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilization and mental culture.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

Adversities do not make a man frail. They show what sort of man he is.

As iron put into the fire loseth its rust and becometh clearly red-hot, so he that wholly turneth himself unto God puts off all slothfulness, and is transformed into a new man.

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.

Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.