Quotes About Resilience

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.' Marcus Aurelius

Life has played her like a cat weaving between her legs, pretending to be tame, friendly, before sinking its claws into soft, vulnerable flesh.

Life does not get better so long as we avoid the pain that spurs us to evolve. We do not develop emotionally, because we block out our feelings rather than bear them. We cannot become fluent in intimacy, because we keep ourselves hidden. We do not become confident, because we duck challenges rather than do the kind of work that instills self-worth. There are no shortcuts to life's bounty.

Failure is doing nothing about a problem that bothers us. If our efforts don't go as we hoped, we still learn and can take a new approach next time.

And she never has.

I've learned that if you wait long enough, you might get a second chance at something you gave up on. And sometimes you'll be the one to give the second chance to someone else.

How can you, of all people, say everything will be alright?" He has a point. I consider my answer. "Well, it's better than saying 'Keep on crying, I'm sure things will just get worse,' right?

Some days you control life; other days life controls you." Philip

What is my strength? Do I even have a strength? Maybe I have too many strengths, and that's why I can't think of just one.

He looks up at me with watery eyes and asks, "How can you, of all people, say everything will be all right?" He has a point. I consider my answer. "Well, it's better than saying 'Keep on crying, I'm sure things will just get worse,' right?

At the end of the world will be bacteria, cockroaches, and Peeps.

So maybe it's not sad that Gran lives alone. Maybe it's a choice. "But what if it never rains again here?" I ask her. She makes a quick face—like a face she might make if I were blowing that whistle right in her ear. Then she says, "I guess I'll have to take that question one day at a time.

I reach under Mongo, and my hand lands on something squishy. I grab hold of it, and pull out an orange bunny Peep from a long ago Easter. Even I wouldn't eat it now. The scary thing is, it still looks perfectly fine. Dusty, but fine. I think Dr. Grady was wrong. At the end of the world will be bacteria, cockroaches, and Peeps.

Fiddler on the Roof, to

he never gave his scars

if the world had helped us from the beginning, we never would have reached this point. Some think that we're religious fundamentalists. But nobody forces me to fast during Ramadan.

But we haven't come looking for safety. We're not afraid of death." And it's true. We don't have a problem with death. Our problem is life without dignity.

Hama today is nearly without men. There are only women and old people. My sister calls it "the Widow City.

Many people aren't happy with the refugees coming to their country. Maybe we came illegally, but every other door was shut in our faces. What do they expect us to do?

For many Syrians, the start of a new life in Europe was the third in a succession of traumas. The trauma of war was followed by the trauma of a death-defying journey, only to be eclipsed by the trauma of disappointed expectations upon arriving in the West.

There was one child from the camp with polio. He used to come and say to me, "When I was a little kid . . ." And he was only ten years old.

I lived through rockets that would explode children into a million pieces. Sometimes we'd clean up body parts with our own hands. There wouldn't be a whole body to pick up. Just a hand or a leg or a head.

Sometimes I joke to Munir that someone should gather all of us Syrians in one place and kill us so we can be done with this whole thing already. Then we'll all go to heaven and leave Bashar al-Assad to rule over an empty country.

At the interrogation center, they made us take off all our clothes. They mocked us and spat on us, but it was actually more dignifying than humiliating. You didn't do anything but say, "Freedom," and that was enough to rattle the entire regime and make them panic. For me, that was victory.