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.
- What am I looking for?
Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.
—Rumi - Forgiveness
A resilient person tends to rely more on forgiveness than blame.
—Buzz Beeman - Turning Misfortunes
There are few misfortunes in the world that you cannot turn into a personal triumph if you have the iron will and the necessary skill.
—Nelson Mandela - Rock Bottom
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
—J.K. Rowling - 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 - Dare to fail …
Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
—Robert F. Kennedy - Joy in the Spirit of Creating
In a lot of ways, art is a demonstration of resilience. Art in the spirit of making, in the spirit of creating — it’s like the closest thing to joy. They always say laughter is the best medicine. Well, so is joy.
—Nehemiah Dixon III, Phillips Collection - Returning to First Principles
It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to the first principles of hope and enjoyment.
—Bram Stoker, Dracula - Forests & Families
Forests are just like human families.
—Suzanne Simard, The Networked Beauty of Forests (TEDEd, 11/2013) - Resilience and Adversity
Resilience is overcoming adversity, whilst also potentially changing, or even dramatically transforming, (aspects of) that adversity.
—Angie Hart - Grief and Resilience
Grief and resilience live together.
—Michelle Obama - Root Structure
Make your root structure around real people.
—Arthur Brooks, Strength to Strength - Trees Preach
Trees do not preach learning and precepts. They preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
—Hermann Hesse - 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 - Change Orientation
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
—Rumi - 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 - Success
Success isn’t about conquering something. It’s being happy with who you are.
—Britney Spears - Having a Backbone
Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity – and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.
—Sheryl Sandberg - When life goes “right” …
One doesn’t learn much resilience when life goes “right” most of the time.
—Barbara Becker, Heartwood - New Way of Seeing
A new way of seeing combined with a new way of acting is what we need.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
