Quotes about Resilience

The hardest test I ever faced in my life was praying.

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound.

I simply refused to believe.

We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters—Plymouth Rock landed on us!

It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared.

A few days later, however, he wrote in one of his memo books this, which he let me read, "Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe,' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.

How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life

Though you break your heart, men will go on as before.

If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.

Our actions may be impeded... But there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impeding to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don't try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, "Why is this so unbearable? Why can't I endure it?" You'll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits.

Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.