We offer the following quotations as potential sources of inspiration and food-for-thought. If you have a quote on some aspect of resilience that you would like to share with others, please let us know via our Contact Us form.
- Determining Your Life Story
It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself, that determines how your life’s story will develop.
—Dieter Friedrich Uchtdorf - Flexibility Like Bamboo
The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.
—Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper - Flexible Strength
The bamboo that bends in stronger than the oak that resists.
—Japanese Proverb - Trees Preach
Trees do not preach learning and precepts. They preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
—Hermann Hesse - Invest in Tools
If we accept the wisdom … and the evidence … that our relationships are among our most valuable tools for sustaining health and happiness, then choosing to invest time and energy in them today becomes vitally important.
—Robert Waldinger, Marc Schultz, The Good Life (2022) - Forest Canopy
To really feel a forest canopy one must use different senses, and often the most useful one is the sense of imagination.
—Joan Maloof - Rock Bottom
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
—J.K. Rowling - Art of Living x ½
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
—Alain de Boston - Resilient Teams
Resilient teams are just as important to businesses as resilient individuals, but while individual resilience is built independently, team resiliency must be carefully cultivated by leadership.
–Harvard Business Review (July 2019) - Rain Dance
Life is not about waiting for the rain to stop. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.
—Deborah Fishman, Life is in the Transitions - The Inner Core
The “soul” is that still point at the heart of every person, that deepest center, that point of encounter with the transcendent yet incarnate mystery of God. When the soul is healthy, it is in a living relationship with God; it is firmly rooted in the soil of meaning and is the deepest center of the person.
—Bishop Robert Barron, Lenten Gospel Reflection (3/24/2020) - New Way of Seeing
A new way of seeing combined with a new way of acting is what we need.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Curiosity vs. Judgment
When meeting someone new, especially someone who looks “different,” try leading with curiosity, instead of judgment.
—Buzz Beeman - Forests & Families
Forests are just like human families.
—Suzanne Simard, The Networked Beauty of Forests (TEDEd, 11/2013) - Talent and Effort
As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
—Angela Duckworth - Inventing hope …
Hope is invented every day.
—James Baldwin - The Heart is your Center …
The heart is your center. It’s as central to your soul as your nose is to your face. Yet even though “it’s as plain as the nose on your face” this most obvious thing is often the easiest to ignore.
—Peter Kreeft - Founts of Hope
What gives me hope? Young people, the resilience of nature, and the human brain.
—Jane Goodall, ‘The Beat’ Interview (December 2022) - What Matters
What lies behind us and what lies before us is nothing compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson - Our protectors …
Trees are, and always have been, dear to us. We see in them our protectors. We sense in them the continuity of life. And we find in their steadfastness, our own steadfastness … Trees hold us fast in their embrace.
—Jill Neimark, The Hugging Tree
