Top 413 Adversity Quotes

No one escapes hard seasons. These quotes on adversity come from people who were tested by failure, loss, and setback, and kept going anyway. They are reminders that struggle is often where strength is built, not where it ends.

What is next to ecstasy? Pain. What is next to pain? Nothingness. What is next to nothingness? Hell.
Umaro Ahmed
Umaro Ahmed
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Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Jeff Keller
Jeff Keller
Also featured in: success

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Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
Charles F. Kettering
Charles F. Kettering
Also featured in: inspiration

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The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego.
Hazrat Yusuf
Hazrat Yusuf
Also featured in: wisdom

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Failure is Central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation.
Henry Petroski
Henry Petroski
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Discipline is the foundation upon which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.
Jim Rohn
Jim Rohn
Also featured in: motivation success leadership

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In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. In the darkness the man with a candle is an easy target.
Michael Grant
Michael Grant
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Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes it's built on catastrophe.
Summer Radstone
Summer Radstone
Also featured in: success

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We must meet the challenge rather than wish it were not before us.
William J. Brennan
William J. Brennan
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The cure for pain is in the pain.
Rumi
Rumi
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Don't fix what's not broken.
Robert Aikins
Robert Aikins
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It's easy to get good players. Getting them to play together, that's the hard part.
Casey Stengel
Casey Stengel
Also featured in: friendship

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Sometimes the moments that challenge us the most, define us.
Deena Kastor
Deena Kastor
Also featured in: time family

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Think how hard physics would be if particles could think.
Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann
Also featured in: wisdom

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I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.
J.M.W. Turner
J.M.W. Turner
Also featured in: work

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The worst kind of pain is when you're smiling just to stop the tears from falling.
Hiro Mashima
Hiro Mashima
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We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.
Jim Rohn
Jim Rohn
Also featured in: motivation

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Fear of failure is a far worse condition than failure itself, because it kills off possibilities.
Michael D. Eisner
Michael D. Eisner
Also featured in: courage

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Sometimes I think it's a shame, when I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain.
Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Lightfoot
Also featured in: wisdom change

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Stars can't shine without darkness.
D.H. Sidebottom
D.H. Sidebottom
Also featured in: positivity inspiration

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Pain shared is pain lessened; joy shared is joy increased. Thus do we refute entropy.
Spider Robinson
Spider Robinson
Also featured in: happiness

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Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here.
Daniel Keyes
Daniel Keyes
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In the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection.
Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan
Also featured in: wisdom leadership

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Success takes communication, collaboration and, sometimes, failure.
Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba
Also featured in: success

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When you taste super-success after tasting super-failure, there is huge relief.
Akshay Kumar
Akshay Kumar
Also featured in: success

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We all make mistakes, and it's not until we make mistakes that we learn.
Liam Hemsworth
Liam Hemsworth
Also featured in: wisdom

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The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.
David Tepper
David Tepper
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What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.
Gary Rachkov
Gary Rachkov
Also featured in: time family

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Never mistake law for justice. Justice is an ideal, and law is a tool.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
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It is easy to make promises - it is hard work to keep them.
Bob Johnson
Bob Johnson
Also featured in: work

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Making things easy is hard.
Ted Nelson
Ted Nelson
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God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.
Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier
Also featured in: courage faith

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The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.
Arthur Nielsen
Arthur Nielsen
Also featured in: positivity

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Always make new mistakes.
Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson
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Before something great happens, everything falls apart. Just hold on long enough to get through the smoke screen.
Kelly Swanson
Kelly Swanson
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Sometimes a good idea comes to you when you are not looking for it. Through an improbable combination of coincidence, naivete and lucky mistakes...
Mary Morris
Mary Morris
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There are no problems, only challenges. - Uncle Press.
D.J. MacHale
D.J. MacHale
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To complicate is easy. To simplify is difficult.
Bruno Munari
Bruno Munari
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GRIT is Guts, Resilience, Industriousness and Tenacity. GRIT is the ability to focus, stay determined, stay optimistic in the face of a challenge, and simply work harder than the next guy or gal.
Unknown Author
Unknown Author
Also featured in: motivation positivity courage work

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
Marianne Williamson
Marianne Williamson
Also featured in: positivity courage

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To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.
Joshua Foer
Joshua Foer
Also featured in: wisdom change

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It's not hard being great occasionally. It's difficult to be good consistently.
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
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The higher they fly the harder they fall.
George Ade
George Ade
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That's your first mistake. Do not trust me.
Randy Orton
Randy Orton
Also featured in: friendship

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The greatest mistake is to continue to practice a mistake.
Bobby Lewalden
Bobby Lewalden
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Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu
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Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with His Presence.
Paul Claudel
Paul Claudel
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Trust, once lost, is hard to recover.
Alex Michaelides
Alex Michaelides
Also featured in: friendship

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