It is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often a blessing. Surmounted difficulties not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles.
If you have not clung to a broken piece of your old ship in the dark night of the soul, your faith may not have the sustaining power to carry you through to the end of the journey.
As a lifelong practitioner of martial arts, I'm trained to remain calm in the face of adversity and danger.
One time or another we all face adversity's chilling wind. One man flees from it, and like an unresisting kite falls to the ground. Another yields no retreating inch, and the wind that would destroy him lifts him as readily to the heights. We are not measured by the trials we meet, only by those we overcome.
Adversity builds character and character takes you places money can't.
If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn.
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
Adversity is an effective, thorough and highly personalized teacher.
I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.
Strength is nothing more than enduring life - to be able to survive the heartaches and agonies we go through with our heads held high. Sometimes just walking through adversity to get to the other side is a sign of strength.
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
Many of the lessons we are to learn in mortality can only be received through the things we experience and sometimes suffer. And God expects and trusts us to face temporary mortal adversity with His help so we can learn what we need to learn and ultimately become what we are to become in eternity.
ADVERSITY CAN HARDEN YOU. OR IT CAN LOOSEN YOU UP AND MAKE YOU BETTER —IF YOU LET IT.
Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us past it, and then if we turn round to gaze at the remote past, we can barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.
Paralyze resistance with persistence.
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)
Most people, once they graduate from the School of Hard Knocks, automatically enroll in the University of Adversity.
When I wrote "Lead Me," I had no idea that God was preparing me to lead my family through a season of great adversity. It was only a month after Pieces of a Real Heart was released that my wife, Sarah, and I found out that our son had a severe, life-threatening heart defect.
