Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
Adversity Quotes
When Anaxagoras was told of the death of his son, he only said, “I knew he was mortal.” So we in all casualties of life should say, I knew my riches were uncertain; that my friend was but a man. Such consideration would soon pacify us, because all our troubles proceed from their being unexpected.
‘Tis easy enough to be pleasant, when life flows like a song. But the man worthwhile is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner; neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired […]
The question in life is not whether you get knocked down. You will. The question is, are you ready to get back up… And fight for what you believe in?
The fire of adversity will melt you like butter, or temper you like steel. The choice is yours.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: ‘It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.’
The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things.
Adversity exasperates fools, rejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious.
