Wisdom Quotes about Difficulties, Problems & Obstacles

Collection of inspirational wisdom sayings & quotes on life's difficulties, conflicts, obstacles, problems and challenges, and how to see your problems in a different light and overcome them.

Shifting our perspective to a metaphysical & spiritual understanding of why we have problems and difficulties, these challenges can now be seen as "opportunities".  This new perspective can change the usual way we view and approach our trials, making room for more inspirational ways to overcome them with confidence, faith and courage.

Trials are but lessons
that you failed to learn,
presented once again.
So, where you made a faulty choice before,
you can now make a better one,
and thus escape all pain
that what you chose before has brought to you.

~ A Course In Miracles ~





Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which,
in prosperous circumstances,
would have lain dormant.

~ Horace 65-68 B.C. ~





Difficulties are opportunities to better things,
they are stepping stones to greater experience.
Perhaps some day you will be thankful
for some temporary failure in a particular direction.
When one door closes,
another always opens,
as a natural law it has to be, to balance.

~ Brian Adams (from 'How to Succeed') ~




Actually, we have no problems -
we have opportunities for which we should give thanks…
An error we refuse to correct has many lives.
It takes courage to face one's own shortcomings,
and wisdom to do something about them.


~ Edgar Cayce ~





Though no-one can go back
and make a brand new start,
anyone can start from now
and make a brand new end.

~ Author Unknown ~

Pain by itself is merely pain,
but the experience of pain coupled with an understanding
that the pain serves a worthy purpose is suffering.
Suffering can be endured because there is a reason for it that is worth the effort.
What is more worthy of your pain than the evolution of your soul?

~ Gary Zukav - from "Seat Of The Soul" ~

When you welcome your emotions as teachers,
every emotion brings good news,
even the ones that are painful.

~ Gary Zukav & Linda Francis - from "The Heart Of The Soul" ~

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur
when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled.
For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort,
that we are likely to step out of our ruts
and start searching for different ways
or truer answers.

~ M. Scott Peck ~

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired,
and success achieved.

~ Helen Keller ~

We look for solutions in many places,
but where is the solution?
The solution is in the human heart.

~ Author Unknown ~





When we are no longer able to change a situation,
we are challenged to change ourselves.

~ Viktor Frankl - from Man's Search For Meaning ~





We all cling to the past,
and because we cling to the past,
we become unavailalbe
to the present.

~ Author Unknown ~





The greater the obstacle,
the more glory in overcoming it.

~ Moliere ~





There is no agony like
bearing an untold story inside of you.

~ Maya Angelou ~





Change is never a loss,
it is change only.

~ Vernon Howard (1918 – 1992)
Author and Mystic ~






What is, is.
What isn't, isn't.
You become so obsessed with what isn't
that you miss what is.

~ Author Unknown ~





Keep your face to the Sunshine
and you will not see the Shadows.

~ Helen Keller ~





When one door closes, another opens;
but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door
that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

~ Alexander Graham Bell ~





Regrets can hold you back
and prevent the most wonderful
things taking place in our lives.

~ Author Unknown ~

		When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~ Charles A Beard, American Historian (1874-1949) ~

Things turn out best for the people
who make the best of the way things turn out.

~ Art Linkletter, Actor/TV Show Host ~





Opportunities
to find deeper powers within ourselves
come when life seems most challenging.

~ Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) ~





See every difficulty as a challenge, a stepping stone,
and never be defeated by anything or anyone.

~ Eileen Caddy (from 'The Dawn of Change') ~

Adversity
introduces a man
to himself.

~ Author Unknown ~





What does not destroy me,
makes me stronger.

~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) ~





If you think your whole life is going wrong
just because so much of it is going wrong,
then you're wrong.
Mostly when things go wrong,
they're meant to go wrong,
so we can outgrow what we have to outgrow.

~ Author Unknown ~





When you feel that you have reached the end
and you cannot go one step further,
when life seems to be drained of all purpose;
what a wonderful opportunity
to start all over again,
to turn over a new page.

~ Eileen Caddy ~





Ideologies separate us.
Dreams and anguish bring us together.

~ Eugen Ionescu 1909-1994)
French playwright & dramatist ~





Inner silence promotes clarity of mind;
It make us value the inner world;
It trains us to go inside
To the source of peace and inspiration
When we are faced with problems and challenges.

~ Deepak Chopra ~





This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival;
a joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house empty
of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourable.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the same, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each guest has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Malal al-Din Rumi ~