Adversity Quotes to Help You Overcome the Obstacles of Life

As much as we may hate dealing with adversity, we need them in order to grow, to become stronger. How you react to adversity will determine if you’ll get something out of it. For some, it’s the only thing that can wake them up and get them to get back on track. For others, it’s just another reason to continue down a meaningless path in life.

I put together a list of adversity quotes to help you see that problems are a sign of life, a necessity for progress, and a tool for personal growth if you use them correctly. In the face of difficulties, you can either rise up or stay down.

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

– Zig Ziglar


“You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”

– Mary Tyler Moore


“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”

– Helen Keller


“Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.”

– Charles Caleb Colton


“The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”

– Norman Vincent Peale


“Sometimes in tragedy we find our life’s purpose – the eye sheds a tear to find its focus.”

– Robert Brault


“Learning to endure times of disappointment, suffering, and sorrow is part of our on-the-job training. These experiences, while often difficult to bear at the time, are precisely the kinds of experiences that stretch our understanding, build our character, and increase our compassion for others.”

– Joseph B. Wirthlin


“Misfortunes make us wise.”

– Mary Norton


“If the road is easy, you’re likely going the wrong way.”

– Terry Goodkind


“A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.”

– Chinese Proverb


“The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.”

– Unknown


“Good fortune and bad are equally necessary to man, to fit him to meet the contingencies of this life.”

– French Proverb


“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


“It takes darkness to be aware of the light.”

– Treasure Tatum


“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

– Abraham Lincoln


“We must try not to sink beneath our anguish but battle on.”

– J.K. Rowling


“Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.”

– Robertson Davies


“Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.”

– Ralph Blum


“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.”

– Harry Golden


“Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above them.”

– Washington Irving


“There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.”

– Nicolas Chamfort


“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”

– Lucius Annaeus Seneca


“There is no education like adversity.”

– Disraeli


“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

– Theodore Roosevelt


“Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.”

– Billie Holiday


“Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right.”

– Sherrilyn Kenyon


“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.”

– Elisabeth Kübler-Ross


“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

– M. Kathleen Casey


“Adversity is the mother of progress.”

– Mahatma Gandhi


“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”

– Maya Angelou


“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”

– Helen Keller

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