Tough times never last, but tough people do.
– Robert H. Schuller

Keystone

Tough times are a part of life, but the resilience within us defines our lasting strength. Challenges may feel overwhelming, but they are extended painful moments in time, not permanent states. Tough people endure because they adapt, persevere, and find inner resolve to face adversity head-on. They learn, grow, and emerge stronger, using hardships as stepping stones toward greater achievements. Resilience is not about avoiding difficulty but embracing it with courage and determination. By focusing on solutions, staying hopeful, and believing in their ability to overcome, tough people prove that no matter how dark the storm, brighter days will surely follow. Strength outlasts struggle, and persistence prevails.

When we’re in the midst of chaos, it can feel as though the turbulence will never end. The weight of uncertainty and stress clouds our perspective, making time seem stagnant and challenges insurmountable. Emotions like fear and frustration amplify, creating the illusion that the struggle is permanent. Our focus narrows to the immediate pain, blinding us to the possibility of change. Yet, life is inherently fluid, and even the hardest times eventually pass. By grounding ourselves in hope and small steps forward, we can remind ourselves that chaos is temporary, and resilience will guide us toward brighter days.

Suffering, though painful, can be a powerful catalyst for growth if we choose to leverage it. It forces us to confront our vulnerabilities, revealing strengths we didn’t know we had. By reflecting on our struggles, we gain self-awareness and the opportunity to redefine our values and priorities. Suffering teaches resilience, showing us how to endure, adapt, and persevere. It can deepen empathy, allowing us to connect with others on a more meaningful level. Instead of resisting pain, we can embrace it as a teacher, learning lessons that shape our character and perspective. By focusing on what suffering can teach us—patience, gratitude, and inner strength—we transform hardship into a steppingstone for personal growth and greater fulfillment.

Trying to leverage suffering for growth is a transformative choice that empowers us to find meaning in hardship. Life’s challenges are inevitable, but how we respond defines our path forward. By embracing suffering as an opportunity to learn and evolve, we can turn pain into purpose. It helps us build up more resilience, develop greater self-awareness, and uncover strengths we didn’t even realize we had. This mindset fosters personal growth, deepens empathy, and equips us to carry on and face future challenges with confidence. Rather than being consumed by adversity, we take control, using it as a bridge toward a stronger, wiser, and more fulfilled version of ourselves.

Who was Robert H. Schuller?

Robert Harold Schuller (1926 to 2015) was an American Christian televangelist, pastor, and author. He founded the Crystal Cathedral congregation in Garden Grove, California, a community that grew from humble beginnings into one of the most watched religious television programs in the world through his weekly broadcast called The Hour of Power. At its peak the program reached millions of viewers in over 180 countries. Schuller was deeply influenced by Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking, and became one of the most prominent voices in what became known as the positive thinking and possibility thinking movements within American Christianity. He wrote over 30 books. The phrase comes from his 1983 book of the same title, Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do.

Context of the book

The 1983 book was written during a period when many Americans were living through economic recession, job loss, and widespread personal hardship. Schuller wrote it as a practical and spiritual guide for people who felt overwhelmed and defeated. It combined motivational principles with Christian faith and became a bestseller because it spoke directly to people who were suffering and needed both permission to hope and tools to act.

Deeper meaning

What Schuller was pointing at goes beyond simple optimism or cheerfulness in the face of difficulty. His argument was theological and psychological at the same time.

He believed that adversity is not the enemy of a meaningful life but one of its primary architects. The person who has never been tested has never discovered what they are made of. Difficulty, when met with faith and determination, does not diminish a person. It reveals and builds them.

He also believed strongly that attitude is a choice, that you cannot always control what happens to you but you can always choose how you respond to it. That choice, made consistently over time, is what builds a tough person.

Tough times and resilience playlist

This playlist can help us push through tough times encouraging us to keep going, stay focused, and embrace challenges as opportunities to grow.

1. “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. – A comforting reminder that everyone experiences pain, and it’s okay to lean on others during tough times.
2. “Fix You” by Coldplay – A heartfelt song about enduring hardship and finding healing through love and support.
3. “The Show Must Go On” by Queen – A powerful anthem of perseverance and pushing forward despite immense suffering.
4. “Praying” by Kesha – A song about overcoming pain, finding strength, and rising above adversity with grace.
5. “Grits” by Brantley Gilbert – A country-rock tribute to hardworking, tough-minded men who never give up.
6. “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” by Kelly Clarkson – An empowering anthem about resilience and emerging stronger from challenges.
7. “Keep Holding On” by Avril Lavigne – A heartfelt song about perseverance and staying strong through difficult times.
8. Rise Up” by Andra Day – A soulful and inspiring ballad about pushing through adversity with strength and hope.
9. “The Fighter” by Gym Class Heroes (ft. Ryan Tedder) – An uplifting anthem about perseverance and fighting through life’s obstacles.
10. “Hold On” by Alabama Shakes – A raw and emotional song encouraging patience and strength during tough times.
11. “Shake It Out” by Florence + The Machine – A cathartic track about letting go of past struggles and moving forward stronger.
12. “Stand” by Rascal Flatts – A heartfelt country song about finding the courage to stand tall after being knocked down.
13. “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten – A motivational track about reclaiming your power and fighting through tough moments.
14. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel – A timeless song offering comfort and hope during life’s hardest struggles.
15. “Just a Girl” by No Doubt – A rebellious anthem about challenging stereotypes and embracing independence as a strong woman.
16. Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba – An upbeat song about getting knocked down but always getting back up again.
17. “My Way” by Frank Sinatra – A classic about living life on your own terms and facing challenges with dignity and strength.
18. “Hurt” by Johnny Cash (cover of Nine Inch Nails) – A raw and emotional reflection on pain, regret, and the human experience of suffering.
19. “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi – A declaration of taking control of your life and making a strong comeback.
20. “Not Afraid” by Eminem – A deeply personal song about overcoming struggles and making a confident return to form.
21. “Run the World (Girls)” by Beyoncé – A fierce anthem celebrating the strength, power, and resilience of women.
22. “ReawakeR” by LISA (ft Felix of Stray Kids) – An empowering anthem of rebirth and resilience that listeners to rise above challenges and rediscover their inner strength. With its dynamic energy and heartfelt lyrics, the song serves as a reminder that every setback is an opportunity for a powerful comeback.
23. “Respect” by Aretha Franklin – A timeless classic about demanding respect and standing strong as a woman.
24. “The Man” by Aloe Blacc – A confident anthem about perseverance, self-belief, and standing tall through challenges.
25. “Fight Like a Girl” by Zolita – A bold and unapologetic song about embracing feminine strength and fighting back.
26. “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd – A reflective song about staying strong, humble, and true to yourself.
27. “Till I Collapse” by Eminem (ft. Nate Dogg) – A powerful track about pushing through obstacles and staying resilient no matter what.

Concept novels

These are works by international or women authors where the central philosophical or conceptual core is the endurance of the human spirit through hardship, and where the person who survives is fundamentally shaped and strengthened by what they passed through.

International authors spotlight

• The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Korean) – A woman’s quiet, devastating act of refusal against the world around her becomes a form of radical inner resistance. Han Kang does not offer easy resilience. She offers something harder and more honest, the cost of holding your inner self intact when the world demands you surrender it. Her Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 2024.
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson (French) – A self-educated concierge in a Paris apartment building hides her extraordinary inner life from the wealthy residents she serves. Her resilience is intellectual and spiritual, a refusal to be diminished by circumstance or class. Quiet, witty, and philosophically rich.
• Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith (French) – Written while Nemirovsky was in hiding from the Nazis, she was later killed at Auschwitz. The manuscript survived in a suitcase for decades before being published. The novel itself follows ordinary French people surviving the German occupation. The story of the book’s existence is as powerful as the story inside it.
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, translated by Lucia Graves (Spanish) – Set in post-Civil War Barcelona, a boy discovers a forgotten novel and becomes entangled in its author’s tragic history. The novel is a meditation on how stories and the people who love them survive even the most brutal attempts at erasure. Beautifully written and deeply atmospheric.
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Korean American, written in English) – Four generations of a Korean family navigate discrimination, poverty, war, and displacement in Japan. Each generation is broken by circumstances and rebuilt by will, love, and stubborn endurance. One of the most complete novelistic expressions of the quote’s meaning available in contemporary fiction.
• A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson (Spanish) – Two survivors of the Spanish Civil War flee to Chile and rebuild their lives from nothing. Allende writes about endurance with warmth, specificity, and deep humanity. The tough times span decades. The people outlast all of them.
• Human Acts by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Korean) – Set in the aftermath of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising in South Korea, this novel follows survivors, witnesses, and the dead across decades. It is one of the most serious literary examinations of what it means to survive atrocity and carry that survival forward with dignity. Devastating and essential.
• The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, translated by Breon Mitchell (German) – A boy decides to stop growing at age three in protest against the adult world around him in Nazi-era Germany. His refusal is bizarre, darkly comic, and philosophically radical. Resilience here takes the form of a ferocious inner refusal to be consumed by history.
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigerian, written in English) – A Nigerian woman navigates immigration, racism, identity, and reinvention across two continents. Her toughness is not loud. It is the quiet, persistent work of building and rebuilding a self in a world that keeps redefining who she is allowed to be.
• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigerian, written in English) – A teenage girl survives a violently religious and controlling father and slowly, painfully finds her own voice. The novel is about the interior process of becoming tough, not as hardness but as the courage to grow toward your own life.
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, translated by Magda Bogin (Spanish) – A multigenerational Chilean family saga spanning political upheaval, violence, and loss. The women of the Trueba family carry the novel’s soul. They are broken repeatedly and they endure repeatedly. Allende’s most celebrated work and one of the great novels of Latin American literature.
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, translated by Mattias Ripa (French/Persian, graphic novel) – A memoir in graphic novel form about growing up during the Iranian Revolution. Satrapi’s voice is defiant, funny, heartbroken, and undefeated. The form is unconventional but the philosophical weight is entirely serious. One of the most important memoirs of the last 25 years.
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghan American, written in English) – A man spends his adult life attempting to redeem a childhood act of cowardice. The novel is about whether a person can be rebuilt after moral failure as much as circumstantial hardship. Guilt, love, and the will to make things right are the engines of survival here.
• And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (Afghan American, written in English) – A brother and sister are separated in childhood and the ripple effects of that separation travel across generations, continents, and decades. The novel asks what endurance looks like when the wound never fully closes. Quietly devastating.
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (British, written in English) – A woman on the edge of ending her life discovers a library between life and death where every book contains a life she could have lived. The novel is a philosophical argument for the value of continuing, for choosing to remain, and for the lives that become possible only because you survived the worst moment. Accessible, warm, and genuinely moving.

Women authors spotlight

• Beloved by Toni Morrison – A formerly enslaved woman is haunted by the ghost of the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Morrison does not flinch from the full weight of what survival costs. This is the most serious American literary examination of what it means to endure the unendurable and still choose to live.
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker – Celie survives abuse, poverty, and erasure and slowly, letter by letter, builds a self and a life. The transformation from victim to sovereign human being is one of the most complete arcs of resilience in American literature. The quote lives in every chapter.
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Ghanaian American, written in English) – Two half-sisters in 18th century Ghana begin separate lineages, one in Africa and one in America through slavery. Each chapter follows a descendant across 300 years of history. The novel is a sustained meditation on what survives across generations of trauma and what it costs to carry it forward.
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver – A missionary takes his family to the Congo in 1959 and the consequences unfold across decades. The women of the Price family each survive differently. The novel is about the divergent forms resilience takes and what it demands of each person who must find it.
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini – Two Afghan women bound together by circumstance find in each other the strength neither could find alone. The novel is an explicit and deeply felt argument that human endurance, particularly in women, is one of the most powerful forces in existence.
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Ethiopian American, written in English) – Twin brothers born in an Ethiopian mission hospital carry the weight of their origins, their country’s upheaval, and their own complicated love across two continents. Medicine, devotion, and the will to heal others become the forms that survival takes.
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – A female chemist in the 1960s is repeatedly dismissed, diminished, and derailed by a world that refuses to take her seriously. Her response is to keep working, keep thinking, and eventually reach millions of women through a cooking show that is really a science class. Resilience delivered with wit and precision.
• The Women by Kristin Hannah – Women who served in Vietnam as nurses are erased from the public memory of the war and must find ways to survive not only what they witnessed but the silence that followed them home. Hannah writes about endurance with directness and emotional honesty.

What distinguishes these novels from simple survival stories is that in every one of them the character who endures is changed by the endurance. They do not simply outlast the hard time. They are built by it into something they could not have become any other way. That is the full meaning of the Schuller quote, and these novels live inside it completely.

Keepsakes

The quote has outlasted its book and its author because it captures something universally true about the human experience. Every person, regardless of faith, background, or circumstance, eventually faces a season that feels unsurvivable. The quote does not minimize that. It simply reminds you that you have already survived everything that has come before this moment, and that the capacity to survive is already inside you. It is less a comfort and more a call to recognize your own resilience before you feel it.

Updated and republished since March 29, 2025.

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