Consider creative perspectives on adversity...

1. "We must make friends in prosperity if we would have their help in adversity."
   --Aesop's Fables

2. "Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity."
   --Aristotle

3. "Prosperity is not without many fears and disasters; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes."
   --Francis Bacon

4. "Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight."
   --Josh Billings

5. "You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him to a heavy load."
   --Bear Bryant

6. "All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."
   --Walt Disney

7. "There is no education like adversity."
   --Benjamin Disraeli

8. "Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not."
   --Henry Fielding

9. "In times of stress and adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something quite positive."
   --Lee Iacocca

10. "There is in every woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fires, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity."
    --Washington Irving

11. "Adversity is the foundation of virtue."
    --Japanese Proverb

12. "Adversity not only draws people together but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship, just as the cold winter forms ice-figures on the window panes which the warmth of the sun effaces."
    --Søren Kierkegaard

13. "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
    --Abraham Lincoln

14. "Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come."
    --James Russell Lowell

15. "Concentration is a fine antidote to anxiety."
    --Jack Nicklaus

16. "I never met with a single instance of adversity which I have not in the end seen was for my good-- I have never heard of a Christian on his deathbed complaining of his afflictions."
    --Alexander M. Proudfit

17. "We sometimes need adversity to fathom our true depths."
    --Pat Riley

18. "One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.~ Albert Schweitzer

19. "Gold is tried in fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity."
    --Seneca

20. "Sweet are the uses of adversity.""
    --William Shakespeare

21. "Case in point: Take adversity and make it an asset."
    --Donald Trump

22. "Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records."~ William A. Ward

23. "One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph."
    --Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary, 1954

24. "Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful."
    --Zig Ziglar

Opportunity: Sunset

"The block of granite which was an obstacle on the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong."

The Art of Learning:
A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence by Josh Waitzkin