Andy Stanley Quotes

Men are slower to recognize blessings than misfortunes.

I try not to get too low. I fight adversity as hard as I can fight it, not to get too low. When good things happen, I don't really embrace it. I just say it's a lucky day.

The way we react to adversity can be a major factor in how happy and successful we can be in life.

Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber.

the bad is more easily perceived than the good. A fresh lobster does not give such pleasure to the consumer as a stale one will give him pain.

In the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met.

Human psychology is attuned to the negative. It’s called the negativity bias. We dread bad things more than we savor good things.

I don't fear pain or failure anymore because I'm too grateful for the pains and failures of my past - they have made me who I am, and most of the good things in my life are a direct result of them in some way.

You know that once you're successful, there's going to be good things and bad things that people say and, honestly, to me it doesn't really matter.

Our attitude in the face of life's challenges determines our suffering or our freedom.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, even so the character of man. There is no merit in it, it is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of small daily cares have often bent the character of men, but great misfortunes seldom. There is less danger in this than in great good luck.

Let pressure pass over and through you. That way you can't be harmed by it.

I deal with the hatred by loving my supporters more.

I like to see what happens to people when they're thrown into really crappy situations. I think it's really interesting to watch what decisions they make, how they deal with the feelings they have.

When things go wrong in our life and we encounter difficult situations, we tend to regard the situation itself as our problem, but in reality whatever problems we experience come from the side of the mind. If we were to respond to difficult situations with a positive or peaceful mind they would not be problems for us; indeed, we may even come to regard them as challenges or opportunities for growth and development. Problems arise only if we respond to difficulties with a negative state of mind. Therefore, if we want to be free from problems, we must transform our mind.

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

What Cicero said of men-that they are like wines, age souring the bad, and bettering the good-we can say of misfortune, that it has the same effect upon them.

It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life’s story will develop.

People have doubted me and criticized me my whole life, and that's why I'm the way I am.

I guess I'm lucky to have been blindsided. I'm lucky to have gotten into fistfights, in a way. I'm lucky I learned how to stop them.

No man can smile in the face of adversity and mean it.

The methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age. Some have floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its surface as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at once to the bottom as foundering ships sink. Some have run away from their own thoughts. Some have coiled themselves up into a stoical indifference. Some have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have carried it as a tree does a wound, until by new wood it can overgrow and cover the old gash.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.