Quotes about Adversity

can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all, 'saying yes to life in spite of everything,' (...) presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation.

If one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.

Most important, he realized that, no matter what happened, he retained the freedom to choose how to respond to his suffering.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control

Lessing who once said, "There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.

sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.

must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what

most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. There is a scene

meaning is possible even in spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable.