Quotes about Adversity

Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, Now I am rid of all that, find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to head together, to summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy.

And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, nonsense.

I am not going to lie down and weep away a life of care.

She must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.

It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad!

God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.

There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.

if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.

For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.

It's a bad job," he said, when I had done; "but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn't be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men's doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!