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) - 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 - 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 - Lifestyle Choice
Resilience … is a lifestyle choice.
—Don Grossnickle, Unbreakable Resilience - 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) - 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 - Rock Bottom
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
—J.K. Rowling - Finding the Way Back Home
If the light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
—Rumi - Positive thoughts yield ….
Once you replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, you’ll start having positive results.
—Willie Nelson - 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 - 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) - 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) - Talent and Effort
As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
—Angela Duckworth - Forgiveness
A resilient person tends to rely more on forgiveness than blame.
—Buzz Beeman - Meaning & Purpose
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
—Viktor Frankl - 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 - That which does not kill us …
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche - 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 - Change Orientation
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
—Rumi - Yours in Abundance
May mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance.
—Jude 1:2
