Coping with Adversity Quotes

as the shadows assume shapes I fight the slow retreat now my once-promise dwindling dwindling now lighting new cigarettes pouring more drinks it has been a beautiful fight still is.

The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That's all you need to know. Nothing more. Don't demand to know "why such things exist." Anyone who understands the world will laugh at you, just as a carpenter would if you seemed shocked at finding sawdust in his workshop, or a shoemaker at scraps of leather left over from work.

I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages.

We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirits strong even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.

I can't remember ever having a tragic demeanor. Although my life was tragedy.

When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you. . . . Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you. After being severely wounded two weeks before my nineteenth birthday I had a bad time until I figured out that nothing could happen to me that had not happened to all men before me. Whatever I had to do men had always done. If they had done it then I could do it too and the best thing was not to worry about it.

I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

I'm just a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world.

Eventually this all passes. The public horrors of today eventually blow away. And, yes, you are changed by the awful wake of reckoning they leave behind. Hopefully in the process you don't lose your ability to throw your arms in the air again and spin in wild abandon. That is the ultimate F.U. and - finally - the most beautiful survival tool of all. Don't let them take that away from you.

When the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come that following of Jesus which is an unspeakable joy.

She was forever tilted sideways by the notion that pain was inevitable, chance was cruel, and all human ingenuity should go towards the making of a good cup of tea.

One is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen.

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

Life must go on, even if it's no joke...just pretend to believe in the future.

Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

It gave me strength and toughness because I had to face reality, no matter how uncomfortable or painful it was.

Not to feel one's misfortunes is not human, not to bear them is not manly.

Let me tell you something you haven't learned yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn't matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events - they all conspire against you to steal away your energy, to erode your confidence, to make you question things you wouldn't have given a second thought to when you were young. It happens gradually, a chipping away that you don't even notice at first, and then one day it's there. You wake up and you just don't have the fire anymore." He smiled.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

... a warrior could not avoid pain and grief but only the indulging in them

The thing to do is to keep your mind when the world around you is losing theirs.

Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.