Quotes About Resilience

have been sailing with almost bare poles

It pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyards which hung overboard and ran out at length. Yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again and his life saved.

The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it. Faith, family, friends, and fortitude - with these four pillars, you can and will survive. -Kevin Reilly

There was a mattress in the small front yard and the smell of rotting food. The house looked like it needed some work, even in the forgiving glow of the streetlights. He'd done business over the years with the people-smuggling rackets and he couldn't believe this was what the immigrants were all so desperate to reach.

consoling himself with the thought that one day

He couldn't die by degrees in a life like that, didn't think he could do it even for a few days, a revulsion that probably sprang from the same part of his character as the violence he'd come to live by.

Things are bad and crazy and chaotic. But you ride it out and you don't let it hurt you, and then there's this stretch of time that is so calm and perfect. And that's what was always worth waiting for.

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.

All good things in life are fragile and easily lost

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.

Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads).

yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism

Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that's all she can do. That and hope.

They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will know what was in my heart as I went under.

Kabul is... a thousand tragedies per square mile.

That's how children deal with terror, they fall asleep.

Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.

And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.

The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.

It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names.

Was there happiness at the end [of the movie], they wanted to know. If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab, and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say. Does anybody's? After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, undmindful of beginning, en, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.

She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.

Zindagi migzara (life goes on)

People learned to live with the most unimaginable things.