ADVERSITY
See also: Affliction; Burdens; Difficulties; Hardships; Trials; Suffering
Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
The Bible, Psalm 126:5
If thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength is small.
The Bible, Proverbs 24:10 kjv
Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
The Bible, Isaiah 30:20–21
No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.
Author unknown
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security.
Author unknown
Adversity may be a blessing in disguise!
Author unknown
It is the crushed grape that yields the wine.
Author unknown
In all trouble you should seek God. You should not set him over against your troubles, but within them. God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to him. Trouble should not really be thought of as this thing or that in particular, for our whole life on earth involves trouble; and through the troubles of our earthly pilgrimage we find God.
Augustine of Hippo
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
Francis Bacon
Prosperity doth best discover vice;
but adversity doth best discover virtue.
Francis Bacon
Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream.
Honoré de Balzac
He is not drowning His sheep when He washeth them, nor killing them when He is shearing them. But by this He showeth that they are His own; and the new shorn sheep do most visibly bear His name or mark, when it is almost worn out and scarce discernible on them that have the longest fleece.
Richard Baxter
We are always in the forge, or on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
H.W. Beecher
A prosperous state makes a secure Christian, but adversity makes him Consider.
Anne Bradstreet
Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.
John Calvin
Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of his fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil. It is the Heavenly Father’s will thus to exercise them so as to put his own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, his first-born, he follows this plan with all his children.
John Calvin
A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.
Charles de Gaulle
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
Henry Fielding
That which does not kill you makes you stronger.
Viktor Frankl
What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.
André Gide
As aromatic plants bestow
No spicy fragrance while they grow;
But crushed or trodden to the ground,
Diffuse their balmy sweets around.
Oliver Goldsmith
God would not rub so hard if it were not to fetch out the dirt that is ingrained in our natures. God loves purity so well He had rather see a hole than a spot in His child’s garments.
William Gurnall
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
William Hazlitt
Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
Horace
Never forget that God tests his real friends more severely than the lukewarm ones.
Kathryn Hulme
See that you are not suddenly saddened by the adversities of this world, for you do not know the good they bring, being ordained in the judgments of God for the everlasting joy of the elect.
John of the Cross
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
Helen Keller
Only in winter can you tell which trees are truly green. Only when the winds of adversity blow can you tell whether an individual or a country has steadfastness.
John F. Kennedy
Adversity is the diamond dust heaven polishes its jewels with.
Robert Leighton
It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by the rain of life.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
James Russell Lowell
They gave our Master a crown of thorns. Why do we hope for a crown of roses?
Martin Luther
Afflictions are but the shadow of God’s wings.
George Macdonald
God’s people have no assurances that the dark experiences of life will be held at bay, much less that God will provide some sort of running commentary on the meaning of each day’s allotment of confusion, boredom, pain, or achievement. It is no great matter where we are, provided we see that the Lord has placed us there, and that He is with us.
John Newton
Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
Plutarch
Gold is tested by fire; man is tested by adversity.
Proverb
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
African proverb
When the storm passes over, the grass will stand up again.
Kikuyu proverb
Adversity makes a man wise, not rich.
Romanian proverb
The good are better made by ill,
As odors crushed are sweeter still.
Samuel Rogers
Grace grows best in winter.
Samuel Rutherford
Whenever I find myself in the cellar of affliction, I always look about for the wine.
Samuel Rutherford
After winter comes the summer. After night comes the dawn. And after every storm, there come clear, open skies.
Samuel Rutherford
If it were no more than once to see the face of the Prince of this good land, and to be feasted for eternity with the fatness, sweetness, dainties of the rays and beams of matchless glory, and incomparable fountain-love, it were a well-spent journey to creep hands and feet through seven deaths and seven hells, to enjoy Him up at the well-head. Only let us not weary: the miles to that land are fewer and shorter than when we first believed. Strangers are not wise to quarrel with their host, and complain of their lodging. It is a foul way, but a fair home. Oh that I had but such grapes and clusters out of the land as I have sometimes seen and tasted in the place whereof your Ladyship maketh mention! But the hope of it in the end is a heartsome convoy in the way. If I see little more of the gold till the race be ended, I dare not quarrel. It is the Lord!
Samuel Rutherford, Letter to Lady Kenmure
I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin, and offend your Lord, in your sufferings.
Samuel Rutherford
One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
Albert Schweitzer
Adversity is like the period of the rain … cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower, the fruit, the date, the rose and the pomegranate.
Sir Walter Scott
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
Seneca
Misfortune is the test of a man’s merit.
Seneca
The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.
Seneca
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and
venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt in public
haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the
running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every
thing.
I would not change it.
William Shakespeare
Bless you, prison, for having been in my life. The meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Christian, remember the goodness of God in the frost of adversity.
C.H. Spurgeon
No faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs in adversity.
C.H. Spurgeon
At the timberline where the storms strike with the most fury, the sturdiest trees are found.
Hudson Taylor
The measure of every man’s virtue is best revealed in time of adversity – adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.
Thomas à Kempis
Many love Jesus so long as no adversities happen to them. Many praise Him and bless Him, so long as they receive any comforts from Him. But if Jesus hide Himself and withdraw a little while, they fall either into complaining or into too great dejection of mind.
Thomas à Kempis
We must face today as children of tomorrow. We must meet the uncertainties of this world with the certainty of the world to come.
A.W. Tozer
The godly have some good in them, therefore the devil afflicts them; and some evil in them, therefore God afflicts them.
Thomas Watson
The person who bears and suffers evils with meekness and silence, is the sum of a Christian man.
John Wesley