Quotes About Resilience

Churchill had said, "When you're going through hell, keep going,

Fairy tales do not tell children that monsters exist. Children already know that monsters exist. Fairy tales tell children that monsters can be killed." —G.K. Chesterton,

cling to these cherished beliefs with superhuman tenacity. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that we're wrong.

Extraordinary breakthroughs require extraordinary perseverance.

A famous poem I had quoted in a novel came to mind: "And how can a man die better, Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods?" How, indeed?

The great martial artist Bruce Lee had once commented, "If someone comes at you with a sword, run if you can. Kung Fu doesn't always work.

but with a man whose entire body was paralyzed. Well, all except for his penis, which enabled them to have three children, although the thought picture of how this was accomplished wasn't something on which she liked to dwell.

Die? That is the last thing I shall do!

from Booker T. Washington himself: "You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half- way to meet it.

There are two kinds of courage: the courage that holds things together and the courage that throws them away. The first is more common; it is the cement of civilization; it is Lucy's. The second is the courage of drunks and suicides and mystics.

Douglas Johnson

Most of us proceed with good intentions. We try our best. Yet so often we fail ourselves and others. What else can we do but try again? It's the only option open to us. Trying is the way we get through the day.

there are certain tragedies from which we never recover. We may eventually adjust to the sense of loss that pervades every waking hour of the day. We may accept the desperate sadness that colors all perception. We may even learn to live with the loss. But it doesn't mean we will ever fully cauterize the wound or shut away the pain in some steel-tight box and consider it vanquished.

We can never change the story that made us what we are. It's a story accumulated by the manifold complexities-its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what happened to us. And we carry everywhere all that has shaped us-all that we lacked, all that we wanted but never got; all that we got but never wanted; all that was found and lost.

There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony ...

biggest roadblocks you encounter in life are the ones you construct for yourself.

But can you ever excise a bad parent? Though you might come to terms with all that they have psychologically bequeathed you, they can never really be expunged. They're the stubborn, permanent stain that will never entirely vanish in the wash.

I could hear him swallowing hard, trying not to cry. Why is it that we always try to be brave at moments when bravery is futile?

Worry, doubt, fear and despair are the enemies which slowly bring us down to the ground and turn us to dust before we die.

I see that the old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.

They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

Last, but by no means least, courage -- moral courage, the courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle -- the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.