Stoic quotes on adversity

Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.

…for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.

Fire tries gold, misfortune tries brave men.

Do not, I beg you, dread those things which the immortal gods apply to our minds like spurs: misfortune is virtue’s opportunity.

You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them. By force a way is made.

The conclusion is, not that hardships are desirable, but that virtue is desirable, which enables us patiently to endure hardships.

Unhappy am I because this has happened to me? Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future.

Unbroken prosperity cannot bear a single blow; but he who has waged an unceasing strife with his misfortunes has gained a thicker skin by his sufferings, yields to no disaster, and even though he fall yet fights on his knee.

It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence.

And that which was bitter to bear is pleasant to have borne; it is natural to rejoice at the ending of one’s ills.

For these two things are, as it were, at opposite poles—good fortune and good sense; that is why we are wiser when in the midst of adversity.

Fortune has no jurisdiction over character.