The ability to overcome adversity and failure is an evolved capacity that is essential to countless organisms, including humans. The capacity to develop an anti-fragile response to repeated failures is a fundamental, necessary, and beneficial feature of life. No meaningful goal can ever be achieved without resilience and effort.

Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

Instances such as my failure to qualify for the Indian Air Force and the other adversities I have been witness to, have all brought home to me the necessity of setbacks in one's life. Yes, they seem insurmountable at the time, but there really is no difficulty one cannot overcome if there is determination in the heart.

While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.

You have come a long way and have won many battles. Whenever you’re faced with a difficult or challenging situation, you’ll overcome it. Yes, you can.

The capacity to surmount failure without being discouraged is the chief asset of every person who attains outstanding success in any calling.

The evolutionary process of productive adaption and ascent — the process of seeking, obtaining, and pursuing more and more ambitious goals — does not just pertain to how individuals and society move forward. It is equally relevant when dealing with setbacks, which are inevitable. At some point in your life you will crash in a big way. You might fail at your job or with your family, lose a loved one, suffer a serious accident or illness, or discover the life you imagined is out of reach forever. There are a whole host of ways that something will get you . At such times, you will be in pain and might think that you don’t have the strength to go on. You almost always do, however; your ultimate success will depend on you realizing that fact, even though it might not seem that way at the moment.

This is why many people who have endured setbacks that seems devastating at the time ended up happy as (or even happier than) they originally were after they successfully adapted to them. The quality of your life will depend on the choices you make at those painful moments. The faster one appropriately adapts, the better. No matter what you want out of life, your ability to adapt and move quickly and efficiently through the process of personal evolution will determine your success and your happiness. If you do it well, you can cahnge your psychological reaction to it so that what was painful can become something you crave.

Extraordinary individuals fail often and sometimes dramatically. Rather than giving up, however, they are challenged to learn from their setbacks and to convert defeats into opportunities.

The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.

Life is that which must overcome itself again and again

At the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can.

Our hopes of avoiding the fate which threatens must...[be to make]adjustments that will be needed if we are to recover and surpass our former standards...and only if every one of us is ready to individually obey the necessities of readjustment shall we be able to get through a difficult period as free men who can choose their own way of life. Let a uniform minimum be secured to everybody by all means; but let us admit at the same time that with this assurance of a basic minimum all claims for a privileged security for particular classes must lapse....

You can encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” — MAYA ANGELOU