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.
- Never Be Hopeless
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.
—Albert Einstein - 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) - Within Our Grasp
Resilience is not something that”s just a matter of grit and determination, and it’s not a matter of writing a prescription. It’s hard work! But the answer – the promised land – is within our grasp.
—Jack Shonkoff MD, Resilience (KPJR Films) - What’s possible
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
—Saint Francis of Assisi - Art of Living x ½
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
—Alain de Boston - 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 - Trees Preach
Trees do not preach learning and precepts. They preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
—Hermann Hesse - Talent and Effort
As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
—Angela Duckworth - Trim your sails!
She stood in the storm and, when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.
—Elizabeth Edwards, Attorney and Author - 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 - You’ve Got a Friend
There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.
—Bob Ross - Resilience and Adversity
Resilience is overcoming adversity, whilst also potentially changing, or even dramatically transforming, (aspects of) that adversity.
—Angie Hart - Resilience, Humanity, and Strength
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 - Rock Bottom
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
—J.K. Rowling - That which does not kill us …
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche - 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 - Impact of Hardship
Hardship often prepares ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
—C.S. Lewis - 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 - Walking in the Garden
Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.
—Rumi
