Home › Glossary › Letter A

ad astra per aspera

Latin Phrases
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To the stars through difficulties; greatness is achieved only through hardship and perseverance.

Detailed Definition
Ad astra per aspera is one of the most celebrated Latin mottoes, expressing the Stoic and heroic conviction that suffering ennobles and elevates. In poetry, it underpins the narrative arc of trial and transcendence found in epics, odes, and elegies. The image of ascending to the stars despite earthly hardship gives the phrase a cosmic grandeur, making it a natural touchstone for any poem exploring struggle, ambition, loss, and ultimate redemption.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Kansas state motto ad astra per aspera has inspired numerous American poets to use the image of star-reaching through suffering as a metaphor for artistic and personal perseverance; Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." is one of the great ad astra per aspera poems in English — 133 cantos of grief gradually ascending toward hard-won consolation and faith; Keats's letters articulate an ad astra per aspera poetics, arguing that the world is a "vale of Soul-making" where suffering is the means by which the soul achieves its identity; A student poet writing about recovery from illness or grief might structure their poem as an ad astra per aspera journey — the difficulty of each stanza gradually giving way to hard-earned clarity; Gerard Manley Hopkins's sonnets enact ad astra per aspera in their very form — the sprung rhythm strains and struggles before arriving at moments of spiritual resolution
Additional Notes
Ad astra per aspera is one of the most widely used Latin mottoes in the English-speaking world, adopted by Kansas, the Royal Air Force, and many other institutions. Its ubiquity means that poets who invoke it must either work with its familiar resonance or consciously defamiliarize it. Students should note the difference between the aspirational trajectory of ad astra per aspera — moving upward through difficulty — and the more resigned acceptance of phrases like diis aliter visum or fatum. The phrase is essentially Stoic in its underlying philosophy: suffering is not meaningless but is the necessary condition of genuine achievement. Related Latin phrases include per ardua ad astra (through adversity to the stars, the RAF motto), forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit (suffering that becomes joy in retrospect), and ad augusta per angusta (a narrower, more constricted version of the same aspiration).
Also Known As
to the stars through hardship per aspera ad astra through hardship to the stars ad astra
Skip to main content