Quotes about Resilience

We determine how much we will allow something to make us unhappy. That we can determine our emotional response to events is hard for many people to acknowledge. Most people think that events make them unhappy, that their happiness level is essentially dictated by what happens to them. But this is untrue.

Raise children who are grateful in general, and grateful to be an American in particular, or grateful to be the citizen of any decent country, who don't complain much, who learn to handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.

In all my studies of happiness, one of the most significant conclusions I have drawn is that there is little correlation between the circumstances of people's lives and how happy they are. A moment's reflection should make this obvious to anyone. We know people who have a relatively easy life and who are essentially unhappy, and we know people who have suffered a great deal but maintained a relatively high level of happiness.

The only way to get what you ultimately want is to deny yourself short-term pleasures that interfere with your goal.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People and his lectures.

First, instead of allowing the world's evil to prevent me from being happy—which would only give evil another victory—I have chosen to fight it to the best of my abilities.

Everything that leads to happiness involves pain.

At your highest moment, be careful, that's when the devil comes for you.

Discovering more joy does not, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.

We are not responsible for what breaks us, but we can be responsible for what puts us back together again. Naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts.

We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.