Martin Seligman Quotes

Faith is reacting positively to a negative situation.

No matter what happens or how difficult things become, you will eventually feel better.

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you.

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.

The ups and downs, the problems and stress, along with all the happiness, have given me optimism and hope because I am living proof of survival.

When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.

Life gives no one immunity against adversity, but life gives to everyone the power of positive thought which is sufficient to master all circumstances of adversity and convert them into benefits.

Keys to Finding Hope: 1. Hope depends upon taking care that we have at least two alternatives, in every situation we find ourselves, and with every task confronting us. 2. In any situation, no matter how much we may feel we are at the mercy of vast forces out there, that are totally beyond our control, we can always find something that is within our control, however small, and work on that. 3. Nothing that happens to us is just senseless and meaningless. In the context of our total life, it will eventually turn out to have meaning.

We all go through things in life, and it's just how you deal with it. Try to stay positive throughout the worst.

You're going to have highs and lows, but it's how you get through the lows.

If losing a fight is the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your life, you're doing pretty good.

If you're feeling low, don't despair. The sun has a sinking spell every night, but it comes back up every morning.

There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.

There are seldom, if ever, any hopeless situations, but there are many people who lose hope in the face of some situations.

I like to keep my issues drawn, it's always darkest before the dawn.

Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't we?

If you ever hear yourself or anyone you care about starting to express the belief that a problem is permanent, it’s time to immediately shake that person loose. No matter what happens in your life, you’ve got to be able to believe, 'This, too, shall pass,' and that if you keep persisting, you’ll find a way.

You must remember that no one lives a life free from pain and suffering.

When life is at that extremely hard time, all we can control is our attitude.

Being negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult. You may be given a cactus, but you don't have to sit on it.

It is only by knowing how little life has in store for us that we are able to look on the bright side and avoid disappointment.

The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.

I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher.