69 Inspiring Quotes On Adversity

Life is a journey filled with peaks and valleys, where moments of adversity challenge our resilience and test our spirit. In these trying times, finding comfort and motivation can often come from the wisdom of those who have faced similar situations and emerged stronger. Our curated collection of 69 inspiring quotes on adversity serves as a beacon of hope, offering insights and encouragement to help guide you through life's toughest challenges. Each quote has been carefully selected to inspire perseverance, ignite strength from within, and remind you that every challenge is an opportunity for growth and transformation. Whether you're seeking solace or motivation, these words of wisdom are here to uplift and empower you on your path forward.

1. “If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy” - Robert Ingersoll

2. “I think that little by little I'll be able to solve my problems and survive.” - Frida Kahlo

3. “Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right.” - Sherrilyn Kenyon

4. “I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.” - Daphne du Maurier

5. “Memories of the past year came tumbling down on me. The recent changes and reverses were almost overwhelming. I was learning that life flowed like a river. When the run-off was normal, the water ran smoothly. But if there came a downpour, it gushed. In the likeness to a flooding river, life events were caught up in the course of the devouring stream.” - Mary Margaret Jensen

6. “Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.” - Betty Smith

7. “Life, like classical music, is full of difficult passages that are conquered as much through endurance and determination as through any particular skill.” - Sheri L. Dew

8. “Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.” - Edgar Allan Poe

9. “You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.” - Mary Tyler Moore

10. “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.” - Henry David Thoreau

11. “You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” - Edwin Louis Cole

12. “If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived. (The Inconvenient Messiah, BYU Speeches, Feb 15, 1982)” - Jeffrey R. Holland

13. “It takes no more time to see the good side of life than to see the bad.” - Jimmy Buffett

14. “There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.” - Nick Hornby

15. “Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment. ” - Og Mandino

16. “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

17. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” - Maya Angelou

18. “If the road is easy, you're likely going the wrong way.” - Terry Goodkind

19. “The roughest roads often lead to the top.” - Christina Aguilera

20. “Those doves below, the ones utterly cared for, never endangered ones, cannot know tenderness.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

21. “But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.” - Sarah Dessen

22. “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” - Theodore Roosevelt

23. “If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?” - Thomas A. Kempis

24. “Affliction is a good man's shining time.” - Edward Young

25. “Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.” - Virginia Euwer Wolff

26. “Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable. It is important that the body survives, but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails.” - Dave Pelzer

27. “If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.” - Solon

28. “Learning to endure times of disappointment, suffering, and sorrow is part of our on-the-job training. These experiences, while often difficult to bear at the time, are precisely the kinds of experiences that stretch our understanding, build our character, and increase our compassion for others.” - Joseph B. Wirthlin

29. “It takes darkness to be aware of the light.” - Treasure Tatum

30. “Some people is born at the start of a long hard row to hoe. Well, I am older than God's dog and been in this world a long time and it seems to me that right from the git-go, Larkin Stanton had the longest and hardest row I've ever seen.” - Sheila Kay Adams

31. “For when God is said by these things to try men and prove them, to see what is in their hearts and whether they will keep His commandments or no, we are not to understand, that it is for His own information, or that He may obtain evidence Himself of their sincerity (for he needs no trials for His information); but chiefly for their conviction, and to exhibit evidence to their consciences...So when God tempted or tried Abraham with that difficult command of offering up his son, it was not for His satisfaction, whether he feared God or no, but for Abraham's own greater satisfaction and comfort, and the more clear manifestation of the favour of God to him.” - Jonathan Edwards

32. “It's only as bad as you make it.” - Benjamin J. Carey

33. “Funerals aren't scheduled.” - Benjamin J. Carey

34. “But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope,That one day we shall thank thee perfectlyFor pain and hope and all that led or droveUs back into the bosom of thy love.” - George MacDonald

35. “In the realm of the unknown, difficulties must be viewed as a hidden treasure! Usually, the more difficult, the better. It's not as valuable if your difficulties stem from your own inner struggle. But when difficulties arise out of increasing objective resistance, that's marvelous!” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

36. “Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.” - Billy Graham

37. “You never really know what's coming. A small wave, or maybe a big one. All you can really do is hope that when it comes, you can surf over it, instead of drown in its monstrosity.” - Alysha Speer

38. “What do they say about meeting a bear in the woods? Oh right, you shouldn't. And to make sure you don't, you should make a lot of noise so that they'll will know where you are and keep their distance because, supposedly, they're as nervous of us as we are of them. Which is all goo, except this bear doesn't seem the least bit nervous. He's giving me a look like I'm Goldilocks, ate his porridge, broke his chair, slept in his bed, and now it's payback time."- Widdershins” - Charles de Lint

39. “Life with trials hard may press me;Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.” - Henry F. Lyte

40. “Faithfulness imparts God's reason for all circumstances. No matter what the world says, losing is no longer an option.” - Criss Jami

41. “Peace is more of an internal settlement rather than what is visible on the external.” - Criss Jami

42. “No stars gleam as brightly as those which glisten in the polar sky. No water tastes so sweet as that which springs amid the desert sand. And no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity. Tested faith brings experience. You would never have believed your own weakness had you not needed to pass through trials. And you would never have known God’s strength had His strength not been needed to carry you through.” - Charles H. Spurgeon

43. “If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.” - H. Jackson Brown Jr.

44. “Did you have a rough month? I did :( but, you know what? There’s no time to dwell on a missed opportunity or worry about what I should’ve done or said, beating myself up & making myself miserable about my mistakes. That doesn’t work. So will take notes from that, put it behind me, move on & finish the year STRONG” - Pablo

45. “From the mud of adversity grows the lotus of joy” - Carolyn Marsden

46. “Life is at its best when everything has fallen out of place, and you decide that you're going to fight to get them right, not when everything is going your way and everyone is praising you.” - Thisuri Wanniarachchi

47. “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.” - Helen Keller

48. “by indignities men come to dignities” - Francis Bacon

49. “It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls.” - Bruce Barton

50. “La terre nous en apprend plus sur nous que tous les livres. Parce qu'elle nous résiste. L'homme se découvre quand il se mesure avec l'obstacle.(Terre des hommes)” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

51. “In the ashes of adversity, lies opportunity.” - S.L. Coelho

52. “Before your reach your destination, you'll find yourself going through the wilderness. There's some survival skills that you'll need master through the wilderness journey. While in the wilderness, your faith will be tried and tested. You'll become humble. Your vision for your life will get clearer. You're in training for your purpose. You'll lose some friends, because there's some folks who are only with you because of where they think your journey will lead THEM. Don't worry, they're a little confused... but it was meant for them to get lost during this phase. Walk on. Continue on your journey. Soon, you'll be approaching the mountain. Get ready to climb!” - Yvonne Pierre

53. “Be careful who you choose as your friends because their bad habits can become your bad habits. Choose wisely...we all have a choice in life.” - Mimi Jenkins

54. “A crisis creates the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn't think we possessed.” - Jon M. Huntsman Sr.

55. “We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.” - Theodore Roosevelt

56. “The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritation gets into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get rid of them he uses the irritation to do the lovelist thing an oyster ever has the chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience, but…make a pearl.-In the Treasure Chest, ed. Charles L. Wallis” - Harry Emerson Fosdick

57. “If the rock band U2 had been born in Orange County, California, would they have become just another church worship band?” - Steve Turner

58. “My Dear Son,I am so very proud of you. Now, as you embark on a new journey, I'd like to share this one piece of advice. Always, always remember that - adversity is not a detour. It is part of the path.You will encounter obstacles. You will make mistakes. Be grateful for both. Your obstacles and mistakes will be your greatest teachers. And the only way to not make mistakes in this life is to do nothing, which is the biggest mistake of all. Your challenges, if you let them, will become your greatest allies. Mountains can crush or raise you, depending on which side of the mountain you choose to stand on. All history bears out that the great, those who have changed the world, have all suffered great challenges. And, more times than not it's precisely those challenges that, in God's time, lead to triumph.Abhor victimhood. Denounce entitlement. Neither are gifts, rather cages to damn the soul. Everyone who has walked this earth is a victim of injustice. Everyone.Most of all, do not be too quick to denounce your sufferings. The difficult road you are called to walk may, in fact be your only path to success.” - Richard Paul Evans

59. “When the winds of life are pushing you back, THAT'S when you push forward the hardest.” - Yvonne Pierre

60. “Only adversity provides the opportunity for greatness.” - Wayde Goodall

61. “Through adversity, not only are we given an opportunity to discover our inner strength, we are also given the gift of foresight so we can shine a light for others who go through the experience after us.” - Rachael Bermingham

62. “So, with my knees pierced by needles and my shoulder sewn together by the slender thread of endorphins, I keep to my genuflection and end my story the only way that really fits. As a prayer that seals surrender. World without end. Amen.” - Sabrina Vourvoulias

63. “He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.” - Ben Jonson

64. “Our triumph over sorrow is not that we can avoid it but that we can endure it. And therein lies our hope; that in spirit we might become bigger than the problems we face.” - Marianne Williamson

65. “Without darkness, we may never know how bright the stars shine. Without battles, we could not know what victory feels like. Without adversity, we may never appreciate the abundance in our lives. Be thankful, not only for the easy times, but for every experience that has made you who you are.” - Julie-Anne

66. “Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

67. “Every violent storm will eventually give way to sunshine; every dark night will finally fade into dawn.” - Steve Goodier

68. “Humor can make a serious difference. In the workplace, at home, in all areas of life – looking for a reason to laugh is necessary. A sense of humor helps us to get through the dull times, cope with the difficult times, enjoy the good times and manage the scary times.” - Steve Goodier

69. “God can deliver you so well that some people won’t believe your testimony.” - Shannon L. Alder