Quotes About Resilience

How much more of this? Merrily sat down in a chair at the end of the back row, feeling as though she'd been mugged. Fragments of faith scattered like credit cards in the gutter.

All the things that might have been. Everything changing before you were ready, like pages of a favourite book ripped out to reveal a different story and new characters you were supposed to relate to instantly, the old ones suddenly gone for ever.

Get knocked down seven times. Get up eight times. —JAPANESE PROVERB

And like all the people who lost no one, the tourists, who go to New York to cry over the rubble. I want to tell them to go home and hold their children or their lovers or their parents. I want to tell them that they are using that place as an excuse to be sad and afraid when there will be reason enough for that in their own lives if they just wait.

Ti sentì meglio?" Meglio? Quello che volevo chiederle, quello che le avrei chiesto se avessi pensato che lei potesse darmi una risposta utile era "Perché la perdita di qualcuno che ami non dovrebbe distruggerti?

I think the reason grown-ups think regular therapy works is because time passes while they're in it. They're not really getting better because they're talking about it. They're getting better because time is passing and they're learning to live their lives again because they have to. We have to.

The essence of the Marine Corps experience, I decided, was pain.

We had survived, but in war, a man does not have to be killed or wounded to become a casualty. His life, his sight, or limbs are not the only things he stands to lose.

We left Vietnam peculiar creatures, with young shoulders that bore rather old heads.

Robert still lives in Morenci, Arizona, working in its mines. He is divorced now and sees his two daughters on weekends. When he can, he drives to El Paso to see his mother and his siblings. He has stopped using drugs and avoids trouble at all costs.

Soon after their marriage, Julian got a job as a laborer in a Juarez clothing factory. Mercedes continued working in El Paso as a domestic. The poverty and crime in Juarez in the 1940s was extreme and Mercedes was unhappy living there. Because she'd been born in the States, she could, if she chose, live in El Paso. Julian was not an American citizen and could not move to El Paso until he was approved by the U.S. government.

That night she again slept in the back of her brother's car, hidden under her raincoat, afraid of the rats, of the police, and of men who got their kicks from hurting women. Ruth knew it was a cruel world filled with people who were capable of terrible things.

Joseph had graduated from high school, but did not want to go to school anymore. He had met Sofia, and he wanted to work and save so he could settle down with her. He, like his brothers, had had enough of living under Julian's tyrannical rule. Joseph lived with Robert until Robert secured a job in Morinze, Arizona, a four-hour drive from El Paso. Joseph then began living with Sofia, his childhood sweetheart.

then you go through a long life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest."23

The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.

Alexander refused to drink when his army could not. He took the helmet of precious water and poured it on the ground in full view of his army. To the parched men, for their king to share in their suffering in this way meant more than the water soaking into the sand. They were so heartened, says Arrian, it was as if they had each drunk every drop that he poured on the ground.

Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;They took the spear—but left the shield.

Jerry-5486: "The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that's why they broke down—just couldn't stand the pressure—they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. – Frederick Douglass, African-American social reformer and a leader of the abolitionist movement

That very day I resolved not to save all of my change until I turned forty. I resolved to have what I termed a little midlife crisis each day of my life in the hope of avoiding a larger one once I reached forty.

Pappas was so affected by this sudden horror that he never again took off his flak jacket. It was reported to me that he always wore his jacket and hard helmet even while showering.

Worry is like a kettle full of water, it felt as if my mind was on the boil at a ferocious intensity with no opportunity to let off steam. There is nothing you can do but get through it as best you can.

No one tells you how precious and powerful moments of happiness and connection are when you are living through a nightmare.

From all this historical evidence, it ought to be clear that depression is often the central mood characteristic of adults whose bodies were assaulted, whose wills were broken in childhood, and whose anger was forcibly suppressed. The rage and resentment never disappear; they just take more covert and dangerous forms, dangerous to the self and, potentially, to others.