Adapting to Adversity Quotes

When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next?

The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.

In family life people almost always adjust themselves to misfortune. They make a bed of it and hope makes them accept that bed, however hard it is.

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, you realize you're standing on another trapdoor.

I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival.

I think the bottom line is that we have to learn from what's going on in other countries. We have to learn from what people are doing to and live fully in really dire, hard circumstances, and then compare that to our own experience.

During the great storms of our lives we imitate those captains who jettison their weightiest cargo.

All you can do is handle it, worst thing you can do is panic. Use it to your advantage, avoid insanity, manage to conquer ever obstacle, make impossible possible. Even when winning's illogical, losing is still far from optional.

Perform your long and heavy task with energy, treading the path to which Fate has been pleased to call you.

I've been at the very bottom of poverty, and it's not so bad. It's even kind of interesting. You can live there with a certain amount of style.

To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.

In a clutch or a corner, I tend to make a weapon out of what is near at hand. That can be anything from a crowbar to a cat, though if I had a choice, I would prefer an angry cat, which I have found to be more effective than a crowbar. Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can. ~Odd Thomas

In adversity be spirited and firm, and with equal prudence lessen your sail when filled with a too fortunate gale of prosperity.

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison-- Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.

My father once told me of a trick question he used in a college class on forest fire control. If there was a fire coming from a certain direction and wind was coming from another, what was the best thing to do? The right answer was, "Run like hell and pray for rain," but few students ever got it. So allow yourself the freedom of knowing there are times to bail out, quit, run, leave the struggle, and have more time for joy.

We lived in the bowels of New York City. It was a struggle just to survive. This nice suburban kid hadn't had to do much of that before.

If you want to coach you have three rules to follow to win. One, surround yourself with people who can't live without football. I've had a lot of them. Two, be able to recognize winners. They come in all forms. And, three, have a plan for everything. A plan for practice, a plan for the game. A plan for being ahead, and a plan for being behind 20-0 at half, with your quarterback hurt and the phones dead, with it raining cats and dogs and no rain gear because the equipment man left it at home.

The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.

Problems, obstacles, and challenges can either become the markers of our limits and limitations, or they can become the springboard into a whole new world.

One of the things that happened is I did a lot of shitty gigs. When you do a bunch of shitty bar gigs you have to get used to people yelling at you, you're used to thinking on the fly, to dealing with weird situations.

You think in a different way when you don't have any money. The joy of poverty is that you use your imagination to come up with stuff.

I believe the minorities need to have a strategy of survival because needless aggression when you cannot change the situation does not help. Wisdom is more important than saving some cultural symbol.