Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon - Keyword(s): , Prosperity

The moment we believe that success is determined by an ingrained level of ability as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will be brittle in the face of adversity.
Joshua Waitzkin - Keyword(s): Ability , Success , Work

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Keyword(s):

We acquire the strength we have overcome.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Keyword(s): , Strength

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
Erich Fromm - Keyword(s): , Breathing , Life

The misfortunes of mankind are of varied plumage.
Aeschylus - Keyword(s):

Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Keyword(s): , Habits

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Keyword(s): , Life

Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.
Ambrose Bierce - Keyword(s): , Life

During the Depression, or back when we were fighting Hitler, people didn't have time to sue a company if the coffee was too hot. There were urgent, pressing problems. If you think you have it tough, read history books.
Bill Maher - Keyword(s): , History , Life

Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.
Garth Brooks - Keyword(s): , God

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
John Vance Cheney - Keyword(s): , Sky , Soul , Tears

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.
Andre Gide - Keyword(s):

The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back.
Anonymous - Keyword(s): , Computers

May you get what you wish for.
Old Chinese Curse - Keyword(s):

If you're going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill - Keyword(s):

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
William Stafford - Keyword(s):

When written in Chinese the word "crisis" is composed of two characters - one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
John F. Kennedy - Keyword(s): , Opportunity

God uses suffering as a whetstone, to make men sharp with.
Henry Ward Beecher - Keyword(s): , Men

Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.
Billie Holiday - Keyword(s):

I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
Robert Frost - Keyword(s):

Despair is anger with no place to go.
Mignon McLaughlin - Keyword(s):

There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
Washington Irving - Keyword(s): , Prosperity

A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.
Mignon McLaughlin - Keyword(s):

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
Thomas Carlyle - Keyword(s): , Jewelry

Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Keyword(s):

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.
William Shakespeare - Keyword(s): , Smile

The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.
Harry Golden - Keyword(s): , Luck

A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity 'til he has tasted adversity.
Sa'di - Keyword(s): , Prosperity

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
Bernard M. Baruch - Keyword(s): , Life

The cold is a good counselor, but it is cold.
Antonio Porchia - Keyword(s):

If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change.
John A. Simone - Keyword(s): , Change

The course of true anything never does run smooth.
Samuel Butler - Keyword(s):

Bygone troubles are good to tell.
Yiddish Proverb - Keyword(s):

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Duke Ellington - Keyword(s):

The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.
Morris Mandel - Keyword(s):

Life didn't promise to be wonderful.
Teddy Pendergrass - Keyword(s): , Promises

Every flower must grow through dirt.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater.
William Hazlitt - Keyword(s):

I bear a little more than I can bear.
Elinor Hoyt Wylie - Keyword(s):

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
African Proverb - Keyword(s):

God gave burdens, also shoulders.
Yiddish Proverb - Keyword(s):

Count the garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall. Count your life with smiles and not the tears that roll.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

Bad is never good until worse happens.
Danish Proverb - Keyword(s):

There is no education like adversity.
Disraeli - Keyword(s):

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Horace - Keyword(s): , Prosperity

Problems are the price you pay for progress.
Branch Rickey - Keyword(s):

Don't let a bad day make you feel like you have a bad life.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.
Henry Ward Beecher - Keyword(s): , World

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln - Keyword(s): , Character , Power , Men

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
Andre Gide - Keyword(s):

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
M. Kathleen Casey - Keyword(s):

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?
Rose F. Kennedy - Keyword(s): , Birds , Singing

Every path hath a puddle.
George Herbert - Keyword(s):

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
Alexander Smith - Keyword(s):

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.
Alan Gregg - Keyword(s): , Prosperity , Humankind , Society

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Socrates - Keyword(s):

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
John Updike - Keyword(s):

Better bread with water than cake with trouble.
Russian Proverb - Keyword(s):

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.
Mary Engelbreit - Keyword(s): , Attitude , Change

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
Norman Vincent Peale - Keyword(s):

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.
Mignon McLaughlin - Keyword(s):

The dark and the light are braided and bound.
Marc Ian Barasch - Keyword(s):

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates - Keyword(s): , Business

But ne'er the rose without the thorn.
Robert Herrick - Keyword(s):

I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.
Elizabeth Taylor - Keyword(s):

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau - Keyword(s):

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Garrison Keillor - Keyword(s):

Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargained for.
Stanislaus I, Maxims - Keyword(s):

For fate has wove the thread of life with pain, And twins ev'n from the birth are Misery and Man!
Homer - Keyword(s):

Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
Henry Ward Beecher - Keyword(s):

Problems are messages.
Shakti Gawain - Keyword(s):

It's not the tragedies that kill us, it's the messes.
Dorothy Parker - Keyword(s):

The brook would lose its song if you removed the rocks.
Fred Beck - Keyword(s):

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Winston Churchill - Keyword(s): , Body , Attention , Health

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
Latin Proverb - Keyword(s):

Adversity is the first path to truth.
Lord Byron - Keyword(s):

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
Rainer Maria Rilke - Keyword(s):

The spiritual path is not strewn with roses.
Haridas Chaudhuri - Keyword(s):

There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.
Lou Reed - Keyword(s): , Grief

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
Colette - Keyword(s):

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.
Homer - Keyword(s):

Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. When a storm approaches thee, be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower.
Jean Paul Richter - Keyword(s):

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
Voltaire - Keyword(s):

There are sufferings that have lost their memory and do not remember why they are suffering.
Antonio Porchia - Keyword(s):

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Keyword(s):

It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.
Ashleigh Brilliant - Keyword(s):

They say a reasonable amount 'o fleas is good fer a dog - keeps him from broodin' over bein' a dog, mebbe.
Edward Westcott - Keyword(s):

No man ought to lay a cross upon himself, or to adopt tribulation, as is done in popedom; but if a cross or tribulation come upon him, then let him suffer it patiently, and know that it is good and profitable for him.
Martin Luther - Keyword(s):

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
Michel de Montaigne - Keyword(s):

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
O. Henry - Keyword(s):

Past and to come, seems best; things present, worse.
William Shakespeare - Keyword(s):

It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
Cicero - Keyword(s): , Hair

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Josh Billings - Keyword(s):

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.
Jewish Proverb - Keyword(s):

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
Norman Vincent Peale - Keyword(s):

Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
William James - Keyword(s):

If the thunder is not loud, the peasant forgets to cross himself.
Russian Proverb - Keyword(s):

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
Stephen King - Keyword(s):

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell - Keyword(s): , Happiness

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
Kenji Miyazawa - Keyword(s): , Grief

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.
Barbara Bloom - Keyword(s):

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie - Keyword(s):

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

When life gives you lemons, please, just don't squirt them in other people's eyes.
J. Andrew Helt - Keyword(s):

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde - Keyword(s):

It just wouldn't be a picnic without the ants.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
Walt Disney - Keyword(s):

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
Theodore Rubin - Keyword(s):

To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.
Oscar Wilde - Keyword(s):

Don't allow your wounds to turn you into a person you are not.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is constantly in your favour both ways. But there! this world is only a probation, and man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.
Jerome K. Jerome - Keyword(s):

We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, "Why did this happen to me?" unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.
Josephine Hart - Keyword(s):

Yes, one must suffer, even in vain, so as not to have lived in vain.
Antonio Porchia - Keyword(s):

Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus - Keyword(s):

Better to lose count while naming your blessings than to lose your blessings to counting your troubles.
Maltbie D. Babcock - Keyword(s): , Blessings

Every evil is some good spelt backwards, and in it the wise know how to read Wisdom.
Coventry Patmore - Keyword(s):

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
James Russell Lowell - Keyword(s):

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Keyword(s):

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.
Max Lerner - Keyword(s):

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Edmund Burke - Keyword(s):

The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Keyword(s):

Human suffering, while it is asleep, is shapeless. If it is wakened it takes the form of the waker.
Antonio Porchia - Keyword(s):

It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.
William Hazlitt - Keyword(s):

Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them.
Hugh Miller - Keyword(s): , Opportunity

The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.
Confucius - Keyword(s):

Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
Marcel Proust - Keyword(s):

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
Frank A. Clark - Keyword(s):

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Sophocles - Keyword(s):

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller - Keyword(s):

If you want a place in the sun, you've got to expect a few blisters.
Abigail van Buren - Keyword(s):

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering - that is a fact.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Keyword(s):

Rock bottom is good solid ground, and a dead end street is just a place to turn around.
Buddy Buie and J.R. Cobb - Keyword(s):

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.
William Shakespeare - Keyword(s):

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
Arthur Golden - Keyword(s):

Adversity introduces a man to himself.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
Virginia Woolf - Keyword(s):

Don't cry when the sun is gone, because the tears won't let you see the stars.
Violeta Parra - Keyword(s):

At times, challenges hit with the force of a roaring, rushing waterfall. The true test, however, is whether you can put your arms up and enjoy the feel of the water.
Aviva Kaufman - Keyword(s):

People don't ever seem to relate that doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune.
William McFee - Keyword(s):

There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.
Harry Crews - Keyword(s):

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
Winston Churchill - Keyword(s):

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton - Keyword(s):

Convert difficulties into opportunities, for difficulties are divine surgeries to make you better.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

Your heart has been sore wounded too. Dear Light, love shall cherish you, till you again look on life with happy eyes.
Byron Caldwell Smith - Keyword(s):

Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.
Seneca - Keyword(s):

Like a plant that starts up in showers and sunshine and does not know which has best helped it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the hard things or the pleasant things did me the most good.
Lucy Larcom - Keyword(s):

There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.
Woody Hayes - Keyword(s):

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
Truman Capote - Keyword(s):

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
Boris Pasternak - Keyword(s):

You can't run away from trouble. There ain't no place that far.
Uncle Remus - Keyword(s):

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes - Keyword(s):

The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.
Rona Barrett - Keyword(s):

Sometimes the littlest things in life are the hardest to take. You can sit on a mountain more comfortably than on a tack.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

A bad grade is only one letter in the Essay of life.
Lee Drake - Keyword(s):

Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.
Edwin Markham - Keyword(s):

Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Bernie S. Siegel - Keyword(s):

An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. When life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means it's going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things.
Robert Service - Keyword(s):

Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
William Faulkner - Keyword(s):

Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.
Jean Anouilh - Keyword(s):

When you're feeling your worst, that's when you get to know yourself the best.
Leslie Grossman - Keyword(s):

Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting, it may not be logical but it is often true.
Mr. Spock - Keyword(s):

You never know what you've got until it's gone.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.
John Aughey - Keyword(s):

A bend in the road is not the end of the road... unless you fail to make the turn.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
Charles C. West - Keyword(s):

That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not.
James K. Feibleman - Keyword(s):

You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.
Walt Schmidt - Keyword(s):

Watch a man in times of... adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off.
Lucretius - Keyword(s):

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.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
John Steinbeck - Keyword(s): , Sleep

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Keyword(s):

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
Rainer Maria Rilke - Keyword(s):

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.
Orson Scott Card - Keyword(s):

We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't.
Frank A. Clark - Keyword(s):

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
Anonymous - Keyword(s):

What a pity human beings can't exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow's.
Olin Miller - Keyword(s):

Sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted.
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter - Keyword(s):

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.
August Wilson - Keyword(s):

Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.
Jean-Paul Sartre - Keyword(s):