Source identified151
Read & copy
“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
Meaning & context
Adversity is presented as capable of yielding insight or value even when the experience itself is unwelcome.
Source details
As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1, Duke Senior; 1919 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Jack R. Crawford, printed page 24 / Wikisource scan leaf 36. “Sweet are the uses of adversity” occurs in Duke Senior’s Forest of Arden reflection on exile, winter and the lessons he claims to find outside court life. It remains fictional dramatic speech rather than Shakespeare’s autobiographical advice or a modern psychological claim about hardship.
