Quotes about Resilience

Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, Now I am rid of all that, find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to head together, to summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy.

Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself-Oh, yes!-in every other way.

We insist, it seems, on living.

And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, nonsense.

I am not going to lie down and weep away a life of care.

The body after long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it.

When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words.

The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded. The brain must wake now. The body must contract now, entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open, where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending: the soul must brave itself to endure. He opened the big blade of his pocket-knife.

Though the wind is rough and blowing in their faces, those girls there, striding hand in hand, shouting out a song, seem to feel neither cold nor shame. They are hatless. They triumph.

He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with gulls screaming over him. He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea. Or he was hearing music… But "Lovely!" he used to cry and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. And he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames!

I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

What she said in To the Lighthouse of Lily Briscoe's art she might have said of her own: that the pen was 'the one dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos . . .',73 and the godlike power she felt as a writer is perfectly embodied in a passage from that novel.