The phrase appears in a national crisis argument: old methods are described as exhausted, so survival requires learning a different way of organizing collective life.
Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. IV “The New Downing Street”; Project Gutenberg #1140. Carlyle is discussing England amid nineteenth-century political and social crisis, not giving a context-free personal wellness instruction.
“If we look back to the history of efforts which have made great changes, it is astonishing how many of them seemed hopeless to those who looked on in the beginning.”
Deronda argues that later historical success can obscure how improbable reform movements looked at their beginning, making apparent hopelessness a poor measure of eventual consequence.
Daniel Deronda; Deronda speaks in a discussion of political and national efforts, with historical reform as the immediate context.
“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
The seasonal image turns hardship into a temporary phase: decline can contain the possibility of renewal even when that renewal is not yet visible.
Final line of Ode to the West Wind; the changing seasons become a metaphor for historical and personal renewal.
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
Difficulty becomes part of learning rather than proof that progress is impossible; skill grows while the storm is being navigated.
Little Women, Chapter 44, “My Lord and Lady,” Project Gutenberg #514. Amy March Laurence says the represented storm/sailing thought while discussing married life with Laurie. The frozen catalog wording expands the source contraction to “I am not afraid of storms,” while the represented #514 text reads “I’m not afraid of storms”; this is a legacy wording variant of the same passage represented by the separate contracted record, not a second independent locus.
“It is not a lost year, but one that may prove the most helpful of any you ever know.”
A painful or disappointing period can still become useful experience when it changes judgment, humility, resolve, and the way a person begins again.
Jo's Boys; the reassurance follows a setback and reframes a difficult year as experience that may later prove unusually helpful rather than simply wasted time.
“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
Adversity is presented as capable of yielding insight or value even when the experience itself is unwelcome.
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.
“You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.”
A failed plan need not govern the remainder of the day; Bennett frames each hour as another practical opportunity to restart deliberate action.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, discussion of beginning a programme of self-directed use of spare time. The sentence is practical encouragement within Bennett’s period self-improvement argument.
