S02 · Adversity and Setbacks
Misfortune and reversals
Blows of bad luck, sudden losses or seasons when external circumstances turn harsh.
Cues
Showing 6 of 6 cues
Life as a game of dice
The conditions of our existence at any moment are like dice already thrown: the roll cannot be changed and must be accepted, while how skillfully we play the dice after they fall is entirely up to us.
“To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.”
“Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.”
“Excellence withers without an adversary. It is not what you endure that matters, but how you endure it.”
“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”
“Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people ... and ask yourself whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and eternal resistance ... do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible.”