Quotes About Resilience

It is a flower that sprouts and grows when others pour water upon it. I think sometimes that I spent so much time worrying about how to protect and strengthen the flower—even going so far as to graft in a new stem and root system—that I forgot to simply water it.

That old man's guitar had lost its voice. It was played out. So was he. But while his mind might have forgotten more music than most would ever know, his fingers had not. Where most folks saw an itinerant drunk, I tasted the residue of musical genius. At one time, this guy had been somebody.

If your knuckles are bloodier than your knees, then you're fighting the wrong battle.

Don't get axle-wrapped 'bout what you can't control. You'll get your chance. Your job is to make the most of it when you do.

Brothers and sisters, a demon's job is to kill you. To beat you to death. To rob you of anything that is not painful. This railing is where you give more than you take. Where you steal back. Where you kill what's killing you. Then, having chased and slain, you return"—Pastor John pointed to the pews and folding chairs—"bloody but unharmed, different but the same, changed but unchanged, moved but unmoved. A living battleground.

Story is the bandage of the broken. Sutures of the shattered. The tapestry upon which we write our lives. Upon which we lay the bodies of the dying and the about-to-come-to-life. And if it's honest, true, hiding nothing, revealing all, then it is a raging river and those who ride it find they have something to give—that they are not yet empty. Critics

Memories surfaced and flashed before my mind's eye—the hospital, tear stained nights, never-ending days, loneliness so deep I thought I would drown—and maybe sometimes I wanted to. I flung open the doors of my mind, dug them out of their holes where I'd hidden them from Maggie, and pretty soon ten pads turned into twenty, and all the beauty and wonder—and yes, even ugliness—of my life stared back at me. The mirror told no lies.

My life has been real different than I thought. Ain't turned out how I hoped . . . nor dreamt. But I'm not the only man in the world to get screwed by life. Lots are worse off than me. That's life. You take the bad with the good. Rise up through it. Live in the midst of it. It's the bad that lets you know how good the good really is. Don't let the bad leave you thinking like there ain't no good. There is, and lots of it, too." "You

not. And before you start

the magnetic hope that bubbled forth from each, a hope that no power in hell or on earth could ever extinguish.

That's life. You take the bad with the good. Rise up through it. Live in the midst of it. It's the bad that lets you know how good the good really is. Don't let the bad leave you thinking like there ain't no good. There is, and lots of it, too." "You

No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it.

By spending resources and designing cities in a way that values everyone's experience, life can get easier and more pleasant for everyone. We can make cities that are more generous and less cruel. We can make cities that help us all get stronger, more resilient, more connected, more active and more free. We just have to decide who our cities are for. And we have to believe that they can change.

The sustainable city has got to promise more happiness than the status quo. It has got to be healthier, higher in status, more fun, and more resilient than the dispersed city.

All enchantments die; only cowards die with them.

No one should be allowed to work in the West Wing of the White House who has not suffered a major disappointment in life... the responsibility of working there was too great... to be entrusted to people who weren't painfully aware of how badly things can go wrong.

What does not change / is the will to change.

Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.

With that, Quincy brought the bowie knife down on Moon's cuffed hand and chopped off four fingers which flew up before my eyes like chips from a log. Moon screamed and a rifle ball shattered the lantern in front of me and struck Quincy in the neck, causing hot blood to spurt on my face. My thought was: I am better out of this.

He said, "You are lucky to be traveling in a place where a spring is so handy. In my country you can ride for days and see no ground water. I have lapped filthy water from a hoofprint and was glad to have it. You don't know what discomfort is until you have nearly perished for water." Rooster said, "If I ever meet one of you Texas waddies that says he never drank from a horse track I think I will shake his hand and give him a Daniel Webster cigar.

We must each of us bear our own misfortunes.

He had spent three hardscrabble years performing on the Chitlin' Circuit—a route of juke joints, icehouses, and barrooms where rhythm-and-blues music was played primarily to African American audiences. Just to get to those gigs, traveling black musicians had to plan carefully in advance such things as finding food and using a toilet, simple services that were denied blacks in parts of white America.

The Christian perceives in suffering a temptation of Satan to separate him from God." —TEMPTATION

Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitudes toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.