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adversity -
adversity 3 - adversity
4 - adversity 5
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Affliction is able to
drown out every
earthly voice. . . but the voice of
eternity
within a person it cannot drown.
Søren Kierkegaard
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Had there been no difficulties
and no thorns in the way,
then people would have been
in their
primitive state
and no progress made
in civilization and mental
culture.
Anabdabai Joshee
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Character
cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience
of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened,
vision cleared,
ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen
Keller
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For a long time it had seemed to me
that life was about to begin--real life. But there
was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got
through first,
some unfinished business, time still to be
served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were
my life.
Fr. Alfred D'Souza
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Unfortunately, all is
not beauty and peace. I don't believe I've ever met
a person who hasn't been challenged or wounded by
something. Difficulties
present choices: we
can either waste away from our wounds or use them
to grow
our souls. My husband, for example, is a survivor
of the Second
World
War. As a child, he suffered
through six years of bombings, near-escapes, and
concentration camps. Part of his soul work has been
the
gradual transformation
of this deep well of grief and
pain. As he heals
himself, he also participates
in
healing that terrible idea of war in others. I have
always said that no
one heals alone--we heal through and
for one another.
Joan Borysenko |
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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
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All
sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story
or tell
a story about them.
Isak
Dinesen
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People are never helped
in their suffering by what
they
think for themselves,
but only by revelation
of a wisdom
greater than
their own. It is this which
lifts them
out
of their distress.
Carl Jung
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If there were nothing
wrong in the world
there wouldn't be anything for us to
do.
George Bernard Shaw
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Trouble creates a capacity to
handle it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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Never confuse a single defeat
with a final
defeat.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Nothing really worth having is easy to
get. The hard-fought
battles, the goals won with sacrifice, are the ones that matter.
Aisha Tyler |
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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
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adversity - adversity 3 - adversity
4 - adversity 5 |
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Adversity
tom walsh
We all face adversity,
no matter what we are or where we are in life. I
find that adversity comes in several different forms:
things that happen in an impersonal way (losing a
job because of layoffs, getting an illness), things that
other people do to us, intentionally or unintentionally (spread
rumors or gossip, compete for jobs or promotions, hurt us
physically), and things that we do to ourselves (cut
ourselves down, fail to take action).
Of these three (and I know there are
more), I find that what I used to be best at had to do
with things I did to myself. Loneliness was an
obstacle for me, and I tended to shy away from people and
let my fear rule me. I found adversity in what
other people did to me or said to me, and I found that I
was the culprit, for I either listened to the wrong
people or took what they said too seriously or too
personally. This type of adversity has always been
the most difficult for me to deal with, but I've learned
that when I feel bad due to this sort of thing, I'm
making myself feel bad because of my reaction to outside
stimuli--the stimuli are doing nothing to make me feel
bad.
This realization has been important
to me, because I've always been very capable of dealing
with physical or uncontrollable adversity. When I've
had no job, I've gotten down to the business of getting
one, and I've been successful. When I've been broke, I've budgeted my money and worked hard to get back on
track. When things have happened to me, I've dealt
with them.
But the emotional adversity has taken
much longer to deal with, for it took me so long to find
the source--myself. I believe that much of what bothers
us in our lives, much of what we consider to be adversity
from an outside source, is really a question of adversity
from within--our own inability to give ourselves credit,
to trust ourselves, to let ourselves live fully as the
people we were made to be. When I feel the touch of
adversity now, I look first within, to find out why or
how I'm causing myself to feel bad, to respond poorly, to
act ineffectively. I almost always find the answer.
When I don't find the answer inside, I find almost always that the problem isn't nearly as
drastic as I thought it was--the mountain truly was a
molehill, and I can trust life and trust God to see me
through to a fitting resolution to any problem. It's
nice these days to look at situations that I used to see
as adversity as simply minor problems along the way,
problems that exist, of course, but that are possible to overcome.
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Know
this: If you are following your own moral rules, the very things
you're ashamed of are likely the things about which you can feel most
proud. Say you've battled obesity, mental illness, addiction, or
abuse:
take pride in the extraordinary courage you've shown by surviving and
working toward health. If others make you feel ashamed for what
you
are--your heritage, your sense of what is true for you--you'll find
that
expressing pride in those same qualities is the road to inner peace.
Martha Beck |
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It is often better to
have a great deal of harm happen to
one than a little;
a great deal
may rouse you to remove
what a little will only accustom you to endure.
Grenville Kleiser
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Challenges
make you discover things about yourself that you never really
knew.
They're what make the instrument stretch, what makes you
go beyond the norm.
Cicely
Tyson
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We
live in a world in which the worst
looks as if it is
going to
happen
and the worst often does happen,
and yet out
of the anguish and waste,
love and trust come in new forms.
Robert
A.K. Runcie
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adversity -
adversity 3
adversity
4 - adversity 5
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Adversity in the things
of this world
opens the door for spiritual salvation.
A.J. Toynbee |
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People meet with adversity and
fight against it tooth and nail, as
something evil, not knowing that it is merely preparation
for greater things and a larger and fuller life.
Henry T. Hamblin |
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When
apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but make
the best of it, and always look forward for better things.
Ralph Waldo Trine |
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Adversity is
the trial of principle. Without it a person hardly
knows whether he or she is honest or not.
Henry Fielding |
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I'm very
grateful that I was too poor to get to art school
until I
was 21. . . .
I was old enough when I got there
to know
how to get something out of it.
Henry Moore
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"Crises" can
help us discover much about ourselves and enrich our
lives.
Another wonderful experience that can grow
out of a seeming disaster is
the joy of appreciation.
AIDS patients who relearn how to walk, for example,
are often delighted at being able to take two or ten
steps again. They
appreciate tremendously something
that they took for granted their entire
lives. How
many "healthy" or "normal" people are
grateful that they can
walk or talk? My guess is,
very few. But how much value is there in
something
taken entirely for granted? If "disaster"
enriches our lives with
gifts that would otherwise have
been taken for granted, is it really a disaster?
Or
is it a gift in disguise?
Elisabeth
Kuebler- Ross |
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Our most significant opportunities will be found in
times of greatest difficulty.
Thomas S. Monson
Pathways To Perfection |
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It is true that people are sometimes hit by
adversities beyond their
control. But those so affected are better helped when they are
awakened to the resources they do possess than when they
are told they don't have any.
Nathaniel
Branden
Self-Esteem
Every Day |
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So
it is more useful to watch a person in times of peril, and in
adversity to
discern what kind of person she or he is; for then at last words of
truth are
drawn from the depths of one's heart, and the mask is torn off,
reality remains.
Lucretius |
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Adversity draws
people together and produces beauty and harmony
in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces
ice-flowers
on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.
Søren Kierkegaard |
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Difficulty is the
nurse of greatness--a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks
her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.
William C. Bryant |
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A person doesn't
realize how much he or she can stand until put
to the test. You can stand far more than you think you can.
You are much stronger than you think you are.
Martin Neimoller |
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You
cannot direct which way the winds of adversity
will blow, but you can adjust your sails.
Shantidasa |
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I thank God for my handicaps for,
through them,
I have found myself, my work, and my God.
Helen Keller |
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There are no more interesting pages in biography than those which
record how Emerson, as a child, was unable to read the second
volume of a certain book, because his widowed mother could not
afford the amount (five cents) necessary to obtain it from the
circulating library.
"Poor fellow!" said Emerson, as he looked at his delicately-reared
little son, "how much he loses by not having to go through the hard
experiences I had in my youth." It was through the necessity laid
upon him to earn that Emerson made his first great success in life
as a teacher.
"I know," he said, "no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a
sovereign mind as that tenacity of purpose, which, through all change
of companions or parties or fortunes, changes never, bates no jot of
heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at its port."
Orison Swett
Marden
An Iron Will |
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