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.
- 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) - Curiosity vs. Judgment
When meeting someone new, especially someone who looks “different,” try leading with curiosity, instead of judgment.
—Buzz Beeman - 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 - Never Be Hopeless
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.
—Albert Einstein - Survival
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin - 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 - Root Structure
Make your root structure around real people.
—Arthur Brooks, Strength to Strength - I hate the word ‘resilient’
I hate the word ‘resilient’ because … it takes away from the effort and energy and choices someone makes to overcome an obstacle.
—Daniella Anderson, Broken Places - Impact of Hardship
Hardship often prepares ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
—C.S. Lewis - Carrying On
Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.
—Albert Camus, French philosopher, author, and journalist - Walking in the Garden
Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.
—Rumi - 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 - New Way of Seeing
A new way of seeing combined with a new way of acting is what we need.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - You’ve Got a Friend
There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.
—Bob Ross - Aligned Worlds
There is an objective “real world” as well as a subjective “inner world” and, if the two do not match, we live a lie.
—Peter Kreeft - Rightly Ordered Soul
If the soul is rightly ordered, it can handle anything.
—Bishop Robert Barron, How to Lose Your Soul (And How to Save It) - Talent and Effort
As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
—Angela Duckworth - What Matters
What lies behind us and what lies before us is nothing compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson - On the Inside
Isn’t it odd … We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside.
—The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse - Resilience and Compassion
Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.
—Sharon Salzberg
