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.
- 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 - Great Artwork
Any great artwork … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
—Leonard Bernstein - Talent and Effort
As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
—Angela Duckworth - 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) - Courage, Serenity, Insight
Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.
—The Serenity Prayer (attribution uncertain) - What’s possible
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
—Saint Francis of Assisi - Learning to become resilient
When we learn how to become resilient, we learn how to embrace the beautifully broad spectrum of the human experience.
—Jaeda Dewalt - 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 - Resilience and Humanity
To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength.
—Hannah Gadsby - Making Time
I spent my young adult years postponing many of the small things that I knew would make me happy … I was fortunate enough to realize that I would never have the time unless I made the time. And then the rest of my life began.
—Christopher Peterson, Positive Psychologist - Forgiveness
A resilient person tends to rely more on forgiveness than blame.
—Buzz Beeman - 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 - 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) - Encapsulation of Faith
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.
—Hebrews 11:1 - Positive thoughts yield ….
Once you replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, you’ll start having positive results.
—Willie Nelson - Change
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
―Viktor Frankl - Carrying On
Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.
—Albert Camus, French philosopher, author, and journalist - Heartstrings
Heartstrings hold tighter than the roots of a live oak tree holdin’ through tornado winds …
—Alison Krauss, Heartstrings - Meaning & Purpose
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
—Viktor Frankl
