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.
- Carrying On
Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.
—Albert Camus, French philosopher, author, and journalist - 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 - Change Orientation
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
—Rumi - When life goes “right” …
One doesn’t learn much resilience when life goes “right” most of the time.
—Barbara Becker, Heartwood - 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 - What Matters
What lies behind us and what lies before us is nothing compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson - What am I looking for?
Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.
—Rumi - 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 - Resilience and Compassion
Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.
—Sharon Salzberg - All Our Wisdom
All our wisdom is stored in the trees.
—Santosh Kalwar - 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) - Positive thoughts yield ….
Once you replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, you’ll start having positive results.
—Willie Nelson - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Finding the Way Back Home
If the light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
—Rumi - Rock Bottom
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
—J.K. Rowling - 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
