In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time. (Robert Collier, American Writer Publisher)

Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. (Epicurus)

Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves. (William Davenant)

In times of storm, the shallowness of the root structure is revealed. (Unknown)

It is not ease but effort, not facility but difficulty, that makes man. There is perhaps no station in life in which difficulties do not have to be encountered and overcome before any decided means of success can be achieved. (Samuel Smiles, 1812-1904 Scottish Author)

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. (Unknown)

Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have. (Norman Vincent Peale)

Observe the postage stamp! Its usefulness depends upon its ability to stick to one thing until it gets there. (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818-1885 American Humorist)

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. (Bernice Johnson Reagon)

The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility of becoming. You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit to maximize your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit. (Jim Rohn)

Adversity introduces a man to himself. (Unknown)

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds. (Hanmer Parsons Grant)

Smooth seas do not make skilful sailors. (African Proverb)

Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it. (Winston Churchill)

Everything has evolutionary value, if you know how to ultilize it's educational worth. (Dean Fraser)

The struggle is what makes us strong. (Dean Fraser)

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. (Hermann Hesse, 1877-1962 German-born Swiss Novelist Poet)

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have mastered, you will never grow. (C.R. Lawton)

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment, can you grow more surely toward the stars. (Brian Tracy, American Trainer Speaker Author Businessman)

Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. (Viktor E. Frankl, 1905 Austrian Psychiatrist Neurology Writer Man's Search for Meaning)

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm. (Charles Caleb Colton, 1780-1832 British Sportsman Writer)

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are. (Epictetus ,50-120 Stoic Philosopher)

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it. (Ellen Glasgow, 1874-1945 American Novelist)

When a defining moment comes along, you can do one of two things. Define the moment, or let the moment define you. (Movie - Tin Cup)

There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them. (Denis Waitley, 1933 American Author Speaker Trainer Peak Performance Expert)

Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands. (Cathy Better)

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well. (Josh Billings, 1815-1885 American Humorist Lecturer)

Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think. (Jawaharlal Nehru, 1889-1964 Indian Nationalist Statesman)

Crises refine life. In them you discover what you are. (Allan K. Chalmers)

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes. (Louis Kossuth)

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. (Seneca, 4 BC-65 AD Spanish-born Roman Statesman philosopher)

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse. (Helen Keller, 1880-1968 American Blind/Deaf Author Lecturer Amorist)

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even. (Muhammad Ali, 1942 American Boxer)

You chose the race, the country, the family and circumstances that would allow you to experience all that you needed to learn, release, transmute and move beyond in order to reclaim your self-mastery. You made the choice - no one made it for you - and you did so in order to heal the past as you evolve and move forward into the bright, new future that is growing ever closer on the horizon. (Archangel Michael through Ronna Herman) - http://www.RonnaStar.com (Source: Sedona Journal of Emergence June 2004) - http://www.sedonajournal.com

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. (Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962 American First Lady Columnist Lecturer Humanitarian)

Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world. (Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, 1749-1832 German Poet Dramatist Novelist)

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities. (Jose Ortega Y Gasset, 1883-1955 Spanish Essayist Philosopher)

Storms make the oak grow deeper roots. (George Herbert, 1593-1632 British Metaphysical Poet)

We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve. (Maxwell Maltz, American Plastic Surgeon Author of Psycho-Cybernetics)

It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls. (Unknown)

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship. (Louisa May Alcott, 1832-1888 American Author)

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us - and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning. (Eric Allenbaugh, American Author of Wake-Up Calls)

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you. (Anthony Robbins, 1960 American Author Speaker Peak Performance Expert / Consultant)

Make pain your friend. (Chinese Proverb)

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise. (Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887 American Preacher Orator Writer)

Question: I can't believe where I am working. It doesn't celebrate my magnificence, you know. It's not commensurate with my angel inside. Dear Spirit, get me out of this job so I can be a Lightworker!

Kryon: I will tell you this, dear Lightworker. Do you remember when you gave intent to be a lighthouse? Do you remember at what point you said, "I'll do whatever it takes - to vibrate higher - to experience the love of God"? Well, here you are at the very place where you are doing the most good and you can't wait to be removed... Maybe you're the only light at that workplace. Maybe it's dark there... What you're enduring is not permanent, so the answer is this: Celebrate where you are - every day. Be compassionate with everything around you because the compassion creates an action - an interdimensional action. It increases your light. It tells Spirit about your energy. It sends out your name. It calibrates you to the rest of us. Did you know that? (Kryon, Book Nine, 2002) www.kryon.com

Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things will sometimes fall apart so something else can all fall into place. (Dean Fraser)

Trials, temptations, disappointments - all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. (James Buckham)

If we study the lives of great men and women carefully and unemotionally we find that, invariably, greatness was developed, tested and revealed through the darker periods of their lives. One of the largest tributaries of the RIVER OF GREATNESS is always the STREAM OF ADVERSITY. (Cavett Robert)

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube. (Unknown)

A careful inventory of all your past experiences may disclose the startling fact that everything has happened for the best. (Unknown)

A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life's mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which otherwise would have remained dormant. (Richard M. Nixon, 1913-1994 Thirty-seventh President of the USA)

If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be. (John R. Miller)

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. (John Wooden, 1910 American Basketball Coach)

You can choose to experience gratitude at any stage of your spiritual growth. Gratitude is not only for those times when things seems to be running smoothly, but it also for those times when you perceive discord, pain and delusion. (Omni through John Payne) - www.consciouscreation.com/journal/Archives.htm

Sometimes you must have the experience of what you don't desire in order to experience its opposite. For example, some of you must have financial difficulties in order to freely choose to be prosperous. If you find yourself in such a situation, rejoice, my friends! You are becoming more conscious and therefore more free to choose what you wish to create for yourself! Acceptance begins the path to freedom, the ability to truly exercise your conscious free will in your life. (White Eagle through Karen Cooper) (Source: Sedona Journal of Emergence - July 2003) - www.sedonajournal.com

The things which hurt, instruct us best. (Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790 American Scientist Publisher Diplomat)

The heavier the load, the stronger becomes the back. (Unknown)

Every hardship; every joy; every temptation is a challenge of the spirit; that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance; and nothing happens which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human soul. (Elias A. Ford)

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward. (Henry Ford, 1863-1947 American Industrialist Founder of Ford Motor Company)

Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit. (M. Scott Peck, American Psychiatrist Author)

I am grateful for all my problems. After each one was overcome, I became stronger and more able to meet those that were still to come. I grew in all my difficulties. (James C. Penney, 1875-1971 American Retailer Philanthropist Founder JC Penny's)

I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy. (Anthony Robbins, 1960 American Author Speaker Peak Performance Expert / Consultant)

Mistakes are their own instructors. (Horace)

We grow because we struggle, we learn and overcome. (R. C. Allen)

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it. (Michael Jordan)

If you're going through hell, keep going. (Winston Churchill, 1874-1965)

When one door closes, another door opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which opened for us. (Alexander Graham Bell, 1847-1922)

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. (Winston Churchill, 1874-1965)

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters: one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917-1963)

Experience is not what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to you. (Aldous Huxley)

My cancer scare changed my life. I'm grateful for every new, healthy day I have. It has helped me prioritize my life. (Olivia Newton-John)

Do not consider painful what is good for you. (Euripides)

Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask, but when we are challenged to be what we can become. (Morris Adler)