Yousuf Karsh Quotes

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

We can never be like lillies in the garden unless we have spent time as bulbs in the dark, totally ignored.

Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet & dancing slippers had slipped away & there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies & turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood.

I believe that we start to see our true personalities when we go through the most difficult moments. This is when we get stronger

As the flint contains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can awaken to life, so adversity often reveals to us hidden gems, which prosperity or negligence would forever have hidden.

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.

We're always attracted to characters who are people we could identify with and yet are put through incredibly tortured or difficult circumstances - the idea being that you don't really know who you are until you've been tested or suffered in some way.

Circumstances don't make a person; they reveal him or her.

Revelations come when you're in the thick of it, pitting yourself up against something larger than yourself.

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

What is hard to remember when you're in the middle of it is that when you get through to the other side, you always walk away with a gift. If you can stand in there and not walk away from it, you get transformed by it.

It's our challenges and obstacles that give us layers of depth and make us interesting. Are they fun when they happen? No. But they are what make us unique. And that's what I know for sure... I think.

The hardest things in my life have made me who I am.

It's the trials and tribulations that really test a person, and coming through those difficulties is what shapes a person's character.

You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.

It's not my story anymore: whenever I speak about the past now, I feel as if I were talking about something that has nothing to do with me. All that remains in the present are the voice, the presence, and the importance of fulfilling my mission. I don't regret difficulties I experienced; I think they helped me to become the person I am today, I feel the way a warrior must feel after years of training; he doesn't remember the details of everything he learned, but he knows how to strike when the time is right.

You get to know who you really are in a crisis.

There is strength deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck but little till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent before her gems are found?

Life takes hold of us with strong hands and makes us greater than we thought.

What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.

Bad times make good people, as mountainous pressures make diamonds or as fire tempers steel.

I would want people to take away this idea that sometimes people's problems or neuroses are really the things that are kind of a blessing in disguise, and even though there's sometimes pain associated with these things that sometimes in the face of adversity with obstacles to overcome, people can really kind of soar and find their higher selves.

How do you plan a rebirth? I'm not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can't endure it any long, and then you move forward until you're standing in the light.

Adversity builds character and character takes you places money can't.

We are only as great as our struggles. We only become who we are in the face of them.