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.
- Walking in the Garden
Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.
—Rumi - Curiosity vs. Judgment
When meeting someone new, especially someone who looks “different,” try leading with curiosity, instead of judgment.
—Buzz Beeman - 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 - 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 - Rock Bottom
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
—J.K. Rowling - Our protectors …
Trees are, and always have been, dear to us. We see in them our protectors. We sense in them the continuity of life. And we find in their steadfastness, our own steadfastness … Trees hold us fast in their embrace.
—Jill Neimark, The Hugging Tree - Meaning & Purpose
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
—Viktor Frankl - Impact of Hardship
Hardship often prepares ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
—C.S. Lewis - 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) - 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 - Founts of Hope
What gives me hope? Young people, the resilience of nature, and the human brain.
—Jane Goodall, ‘The Beat’ Interview (December 2022) - 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) - Positive thoughts yield ….
Once you replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, you’ll start having positive results.
—Willie Nelson - 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 - Finding the Way Back Home
If the light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
—Rumi - 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 - 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) - What’s possible
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
—Saint Francis of Assisi - Wisdom’s Root
Wisdom has its root in Goodness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
