Abigail Adams Quotes

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

There aren't any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.

I think it's always the moments that are the trials that end up making you become a hero in the end. You're not a hero unless you've gone through the trials. And it makes these moments so much sweeter, so much better. I don't believe in 'deserved,' but I might believe in 'earned.'

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

Your response to opportunities, adversities and calling, determine the type of leader you become.

He whom prosperity humbles, and adversity strengthens, is the true hero.

The one thing I know, everyone respects the true person and everyone's not true with themselves. All of these people who are heroes, these guys who have been lily white and clean all their lives, if they went through what I went through, they would commit suicide. They don't have the heart that I have. I've lived places they can't defecate in.

The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles - preferably of his own making - in order to triumph.

Everything now will prepare you for the next step. Don't run from adversity; lean into it with all your heart and God will make you a leader worth following.

You learn a whole lot more about a person if they have bad breaks and all those kind of things.

Hard times don't create heroes. It is during the hard times when the 'hero' within us is revealed.

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

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.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.

During the rocky times, it never occurred to me that one day I would hold a position of respect and responsibility in the community.

Pressure lets you know what kind of person you are.

The one thing I have discovered is that we all have challenges; the challenges vary, but our response to the challenges makes us people we are.

Character is never built in a classroom; it is built in the circumstances of life.

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

Rise to the challenges that life presents you. You can't develop genuine character and ability by sidestepping adversity and struggle.

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?

The history of struggle is rich with stories of heroes and heroines - some of them leaders, some of them followers, all of them deserve to be remembered.

The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to the same failure something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic, something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom-as something they thought was almost a necessity. It's as if at that moment the iron entered their soul; that moment created the resilience that leaders need.

The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.