Dalai Lama Quotes

Our most valuable teachers are our enemies.While our friends can help us in many ways, only our enemies can provide us with the challenge we need to develop tolerance, patience, and compassionthree virtues essential for building character, developing peace of mind, and bringing us true happiness.

If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.

If you did not face problems you would just drift through life. It is through solving problems in accordance with the highest light we have that inner growth is attained.

Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us

Every failure, every adversity, every heartache may be a blessing in disguise providing it softens the animal portion of our nature.

The challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul's growth.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Hard times build determination and inner strength. Through them we can also come to appreciate the uselessness of anger. Instead of getting angry nurture a deep caring and respect for troublemakers because by creating such trying circumstances they provide us with invaluable opportunities to practice tolerance and patience.

A life without problems would be a barren existence, without the opportunity for spiritual growth.

Our enemies are our greatest teachers.

Character is constructed amidst the tempests of the World

Everything's the same; I'm living with cancer and it's not going to stop me. But until you really test yourself and challenge yourself, I don't think you quite know.

If something is going on and you are struggling, embrace it. You are growing.

If you let tragedies stop you along the way, then you're never going to grow as a person.

We all have our struggles; we have our things that we grow through.

"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.

It's impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.

You can't lead a true life without suffering

That is how I came to think that heavy and hard was the beginning of living, real living; and though I might not end up with a mark on my cheek, I had no doubt that I would end up with a mark somewhere.

Obstacles are found everywhere, and in overcoming them we nourish ourselves.

When people feel that they have failed, it's usually because somebody or something caused them to feel that way and taste defeat. I refuse to dwell on that. Yes, it sucks at first, and the feeling is valid, but it all happens for a reason.

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are.

Character - Some day, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.

Enemies are an indication of character.