85 Top Motivational Quotes About Struggle In Life

Life is full of challenges, and it’s natural to face struggles that test your strength in unexpected ways. I’ve been through many difficult times myself, and while it wasn’t easy, those experiences helped shape me into a stronger, wiser, and more compassionate person.

When you’re in the midst of a tough situation, it’s hard to see the opportunity for growth. It’s only when you’ve overcome those obstacles that you realize how much you’ve gained from the experience.

That’s why I’ve put together a collection of motivational quotes about struggle—to help you acknowledge your pain, navigate through it, and look toward the personal growth waiting for you on the other side.

How to Use These Quotes

One of the most effective ways to work through life’s challenges is by journaling. Writing down your thoughts and feelings in a journal not only gives you a safe space to be honest with yourself, but also helps you clarify your path forward. It’s a tool I’ve found helpful in my own life, and I hope it supports you as well.

Take some time to reflect on these quotes, and allow them to guide you through whatever you’re facing.

Overcoming Life’s Challenges

1. “The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow.” — Robert Tew
2. “You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” — Edwin Louis Cole
3. “Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” — Napoleon Hill
4. “Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.” — Susan Gale
5. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” — Napoleon Hill
6. “Struggles are required in order to survive in life, because in order to stand up, you’ve got to know what falling down is like.” — Anonymous
7. “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein

The Power of Resilience

8. “The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” — Molière
9. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. “The harder the struggle, the more glorious the triumph.” — Thomas Paine
11. “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” — Edmund Hillary
12. “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” — Margaret Thatcher
13. “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” — Bernice Johnson Reagon
14. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” — Bruce Lee

Finding Strength in Struggle

15. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” — Maya Angelou
16. “The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it.” — Epicurus
17. “Hard times may have held you down, but they will not last forever.” — Charles F. Glassman
18. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius
19. “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger
20. “There is no success without hardship.” — Sophocles
21. “Through perseverance, many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.” — Benjamin Disraeli

Embracing Adversity

22. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” — Oprah Winfrey
23. “It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life’s story will develop.” — Dieter F. Uchtdorf
24. “Adversity introduces a man to himself.” — Albert Einstein
25. “The broken will always be able to love harder than most.” — Anonymous
26. “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” — Ernest Hemingway
27. “Difficulties in life are intended to make us better, not bitter.” — Dan Reeves
28. “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” — Epictetus

Learning and Growing from Struggles

29. “Sometimes the darkest challenges, the most difficult lessons, hold the greatest gems of light.” — Barbara Marciniak
30. “The more you’re in the game, the more opportunities you’ll have to struggle and grow.” — Mel Robbins
31. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” — Nelson Mandela
32. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” — Frederick Douglass
33. “Growth is often disguised as struggle.” — Anonymous
34. “Without rain, nothing grows. Learn to embrace the storms of your life.” — Anonymous
35. “The struggle you’re facing is a sign of growth, not failure.” — Anonymous

Overcoming Failure

36. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill
37. “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford
38. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” — Michael Jordan
39. “I think it’s the mistakes and failures that make you stronger.” — Rebecca Minkoff
40. “Mistakes are proof that you are trying.” — Anonymous
41. “Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.” — Michael Jordan
42. “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” — Coco Chanel

Facing Life’s Storms

43. “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” — Robert Jordan
44. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” — Henry Ford
45. “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” — Seneca
46. “You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself.” — Timber Hawkeye
47. “The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us but those who win battles we know nothing about.” — Anonymous
48. “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” — Kenji Miyazawa
49. “Storms make trees take deeper roots.” — Dolly Parton

Finding Hope in the Struggle

50. “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.” — Haruki Murakami
51. “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
52. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” — Robert H. Schuller
53. “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” — Muhammad Ali
54. “The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible.” — Charles Kingsleigh
55. “Hard times are sometimes blessings in disguise. Let go and let life strengthen you.” — Anonymous
56. “The pain you feel today is the strength you’ll feel tomorrow.” — Anonymous

Wisdom Through Experience

57. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” — Joshua J. Marine
58. “You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” — Bob Marley
59. “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” — Booker T. Washington
60. “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
61. “Out of difficulties grow miracles.” — Jean de La Bruyère
62. “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” — Bernice Johnson Reagon
63. “Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them.” — Oprah Winfrey

The Journey to Success

64. “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” — Will Rogers
65. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert F. Kennedy
66. “Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.” — Napoleon Hill
67. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
68. “Don’t be discouraged. It’s often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.” — Anonymous
69. “Success is sweet, but the secret is sweat.” — Norman Schwarzkopf
70. “Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.” — Marilyn vos Savant

Finding Inner Strength

71. “What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” — Oscar Wilde
72. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt
73. “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
74. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
75. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
76. “It’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” — Rocky Balboa
77. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” — Japanese Proverb

Embracing Life’s Difficulties

78. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” — Louisa May Alcott
79. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
80. “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.” — George S. Patton
81. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Nelson Mandela
82. “The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” — Jodi Picoult
83. “The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost
84. “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” — Seneca
85. “The struggle you’re in today is giving you the strength you need for tomorrow.” — Robert Tew

This structure should balance the content, with each heading addressing different aspects of struggle and motivation, enhancing readability and organization.