Quotes About Resilience

No matter what the outer appearance of things may be, let me think of the "bookmark prayer" of Saint Teresa of Avila: Let nothing upset you, Let nothing afright you. Everything is changing; God alone is changeless. Patience attains the goal. Who has God lacks nothing; God alone fills all her needs.

When you have a plan in mind and have tried honestly and diligently to make it happen, pay attention when nothing happens or when roadblocks constantly pop up.

young physician obviously didn't give a damn anymore. Her cynicism

We emerge into the light not by denying our pain, but by walking through it.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Everywhere I looked, hope existed - but only as some kind of green shoot in the midst of struggle. It was a theological concept, not a spiritual practice. Hope, I began to realize, was not a state of life. It was at best a gift of life.

Hope is a flicker, a candle flame kept burning by the simple act of breathing.

I learned that the Italians are right. It isn't what happens to us that counts. It's what we do with what happens to us that makes all the difference

Bloom where you are planted,' the poster reads. But the poster does not tell the whole story. ' plant yourself where you know you can bloom' may well be the poster we all need to see. Or better yet, "Work the arid soil however long it takes until something that fulfills the rest of you finally makes the desert in you bloom.

As Albert Camus put it: "In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Everything new is not the end of the world. Instead, it is the beginning of a new way of being alive that is based on the past but has already grown beyond it.

We cannot expect life to be perfect. But we can expect to see life come from death. We can expect to see morning after night. We can expect that acceptance of the struggle will give rise to the victory over self.

To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.

Learn to be - gentle with them. Learn that... that gentleness isn't... weakness.

Go, now, and tell those who wait for you that I have spoken. Do not lose courage. The Mother will be with you for many years to come. And when the time of violence is over, She will return to the minds of all the people. Because you and all those who bear your name have held Her safely in your hearts, the world of the Goddess, the Mother of all life, will one day be reborn.

Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going through it.

Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.

I feel as though I can only hold it together if I don't worry too much about its falling apart. (288)

I was just thinking that I started off OK," Jo said. "There wasn't anything different or wrong with me when I was born. I wasn't inherently bad or freakish." That's right, Jo," Lynn said. "Other people—my mother and father—did things to me that made me feel all wrong about myself," Jo said, another warm wave of new, sure knowledge washing over her.

hurt inside her hardened. She

Some of us are drawn to mountains the way the moon draws the tide. Both the great forests and the mountains live in my bones. They have taught me, humbled me, purified me and changed me.

Life-threatening illness calls us to a place—metaphorically a desert or mountain peak—where, as we sit, the hard wind of reality strips away all the trappings of life, like so much clothing, makeup, and accessories.

the way out of the storm and mud of suffering, the way back to freedom on the high edge of strength and courage, is through the power of compassion.

Most of us are shrinking in the face of psycho-social and physical poisons, of the toxins of our world. But compassion actually mobilizes our immunity.