7 Quotes to Help You Thrive in Tough Times

We can't choose whether hard times happen, but we can choose how we respond.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

I’ve come across several quotes these last few days — some in my notes, some in my daily reading — that have stopped me in my tracks.

Something about them spoke to my soul in a visceral way.

Today, I’d like to share them with you.

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On responding to adversity

1. “Everything negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise.” - Kobe Bryant

The world is a challenging place at the moment. There’s a lot of negativity, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear. It’s enough to overload our minds and nervous systems.

As miserable as it is, adversity can be an opportunity to showcase our best selves and, as Kobe said, rise to the occasion.

Whatever your talents, the world desperately needs them.

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2. "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” - Dale Carnegie

It can feel fruitless to persevere day after day, trying to achieve our dreams, especially when we don’t see any outward signs of progress. It’s natural to conclude, “This will never work,” or “I don’t have what it takes to succeed.” I’ve felt this way a lot recently.

But if we’re able to keep going, keep trying, keep searching for a solution, a breakthrough — although not guaranteed — is possible.

Some pursuits are worth quitting in the face of futility. But if you have a dream, don’t give up.

Take a break if you must. But keep hope alive.

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3. From Ordinary Heroes, by Joseph Pfeifer:

I forced myself into a deliberate calm. Though I had extensive experience with high-rise fires and taught the subject at the fire academy, none of us had ever been confronted with a massive high-rise fire on numerous upper floors. My focus was: What do I need to do right now?

(This quote was also featured in

Polina Pompliano

’s excellent deep dive, “9 Techniques to Help You Become a ‘Master of Disaster’ in Any Crisis”.)

On September 11, 2001, Joseph Pfeifer was the first FDNY battalion chief to arrive at the World Trade Center. In that moment of maximum peril, he forced himself to slow down his thinking and focus on the task at hand.

In moments of panic, especially when events are spiraling out of control, it’s easy to become anxious and fearful. But by focusing on what’s immediately in front of us instead of what might happen in the future, we can short-circuit our fears and ground ourselves in the present moment.

Stay calm. Breathe in deeply. Take the next action. Rinse and repeat. That’s all we can do.

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On not giving in to despair

4. From C.S. Lewis’s 1948 essay, “On Living in an Atomic Age”:

(This is a long passage, but it’s instructive on how to face turbulent times. I couldn’t find a link to the original essay, unfortunately.)

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’

I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.

We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together.

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.

They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

We can’t control how scary the world is. But we can control how we respond to it. Living well, at its essence, is an act of defiance.

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5. From The Comfort Book, by Matt Haig:

For when you reach rock bottom:

You have survived everything you have been through, and you will survive this too. Stay for the person you will become. You are more than a bad day, or week, or month, or year, or even decade. You are a future of multifarious possibility. You are another self at a point in future time looking back in gratitude that this lost and former you held on.

Stay.

Nothing more for me to add. This is beautiful.

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On living well

6. From Maria Popova, author of The Marginalian newsletter. From her post, “18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian”:

How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are.

Everything in life is a subset of one or a combinatorial function of all three.

Seek people who love and give generously, who have the strength to suffer without causing damage. (Only strong people are safe people, the measure of strength being not the absence of vulnerability — and “weakness” is just a judgment term for vulnerability — but the ability to carry one’s vulnerability with such self-awareness and valor so as not to harm other lives.)

Seek to be such a person.

Everything we do, in a way, can be traced back to these three qualities. How we love and how we give are straightforward — they are a reflection on how we treat others.

How we suffer, though, is more complex. Suffering is humbling; it requires us to surrender control of our circumstances and forces us to meditate on our purpose.

When we suffer well, we cultivate resilience. In time, we learn to use our pain for good. When we don’t suffer well, life becomes harder to endure.

Learning how to suffer is a lifelong pursuit. There is nothing more difficult; but in many ways, there is nothing more rewarding.

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7. Maria Popova, again, same article:

Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky.

Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action.

Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature.

If Viktor Frankl can exclaim “yes to life, in spite of everything!” — and what an everything he lived through — then so can any one of us amid the rubble of our plans, so trifling by comparison.

Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.

So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called, as the world was about to come unworlded by its first global war, “the little joys”; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave the lifeline that saves us.

If you do nothing else this week, choose joy, even if only for a moment.

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I hope you found these quotes meaningful, like I did. If you like this format, I can do it more often. I have more quotes than I know what to do with!

Which quote resonated with you the most? Let me know in the comments. 👇