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.
- Meaning & Purpose
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
—Viktor Frankl - 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 - Change Orientation
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
—Rumi - Success
Success isn’t about conquering something. It’s being happy with who you are.
—Britney Spears - Rootedness
The soul wants to keep us rooted in the ground of our own being, resisting the tendency of other faculties, like the intellect and the ego, to uproot us from who we [truly] are.
—Parker J. Parker - Flexible Strength
The bamboo that bends in stronger than the oak that resists.
—Japanese Proverb - Lifestyle Choice
Resilience … is a lifestyle choice.
—Don Grossnickle, Unbreakable Resilience - You’ve Got a Friend
There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.
—Bob Ross - Yours in Abundance
May mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance.
—Jude 1:2 - Resilience and Compassion
Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.
—Sharon Salzberg - Broken places
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
—Ernest Hemingway - No two leaves …
In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike.
And no two journeys along the same path are alike.
—Paulo Coelho - Mighty trees will fall …
Mighty trees will fall, their trunks becoming fertile ground for new growth and life yet unseen. So it would be with our elders and all of the generations to come after them.
—Barbara Becker, Heartwood - 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) - 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 - Positive thoughts yield ….
Once you replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, you’ll start having positive results.
—Willie Nelson - Inventing hope …
Hope is invented every day.
—James Baldwin - New Way of Seeing
A new way of seeing combined with a new way of acting is what we need.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Forgiveness
A resilient person tends to rely more on forgiveness than blame.
—Buzz Beeman - Carrying On
Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.
—Albert Camus, French philosopher, author, and journalist
