Quotes About Resilience

How he had suffered . . . . I saw then, for the first time, that it was the mixture of strength and weakness in Garth's nature which made him so vulnerable to suffering. A weaker man would have bowed his head before the storm; a stronger man could have ridden it out. Garth was so fashioned that the storm twisted him, tortured him beyond bearing, left him maimed but still upright, still rebellious.

everybody had to find their own way of bearing things

No one is forever occupied with sorrow, and there is a kind of gaiety that goes hand in hand with sorrow. Sorrow stands aside for a while to make room for mirth, and then steps forward to take her victim in a stronger grip. It was like that with me.

It's turned out all right after all," she said contentedly. "Things usually do, somehow. You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should, and then you find that the other way was best. I'm going to try not to worry about things anymore.

There is a little silence which I dare not break, and then my hostess continues, more as if she were speaking to herself than to me, 'It's a queer thing how your life can fall to pieces about your head in a few minutes. It happened to me like that – at one moment I was a happy wife, loved and cosseted, without a care in the world, and five minutes later I was – alone

If you had told me eighteen months ago that German aeroplanes would fly over this house, and that I would not take any notice of them but just go on as usual, I should have thought you were mad!" I ask her what has changed her outlook and she replies, "I think we have got beyond being frightened for ourselves. We don't matter, Hester. It is Britain that matters now. We are all soldiers now . .

The troubles of our proud and angry dust Are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Evidently it was an unusual and interesting virus for quite a number of doctors had come to look at her and sounded her heart and tapped her knees and done other curious and uncomfortable things. Barbie had lain supine and allowed them to do what they liked. Her body was not her own any more. If it had been her body, only, Barbie would not have minded so much, but 'the virus' had invaded her soul.

Arnold was very clever," she said at last. "He saw how unsettled the world was—everything slipping downhill. He was sure there was going to be another war. Sometimes I almost feel glad he didn't live to see it. He said things were going from bad to worse and he was quite right, of course . . . but it doesn't help to be miserable; it doesn't make things right to keep on grieving over them. It clouds the sun, that's all.

You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should – and then you find that the other way was best. I'm going to try not to worry about things any more.

Her eyes are full of tears and I realise that she must be comforted, so I proceed to explain my own particular method of "carrying on". None of us could bear the war if we allowed ourselves to brood upon the wickedness of it and the misery it has entailed, so the only thing to do is not to allow oneself to think about it seriously, but just to skitter about on the surface of life like a water beetle.

Sometimes she almost welcomed catastrophe as the concrete form of her fears—Here it is at last!—something seemed to say—you know now what it is, at any rate, and you can bear it.

Sister Ferguson's method of dealing with misfortunes was to "wash them out". You never got anywhere if you sat down and brooded and felt sorry for yourself. The thing to do was to pretend you didn't care . . . then, after a bit, you found the pretence was true.

was a good mother to her three children, but there was no vitality in her. She died — if not of a broken heart, of a bruised one — when her youngest child, a daughter, was eight years old.

You've got to accept the good and the bad in life and make the best of them. I don't mean you should knuckle down—anything but! I mean it's no good trying to row against the tide.

I had nothing to fall back on, so the smallest accident was a major disaster.

Often and often the slow difficult tears formed upon my lids and were brushed hastily aside lest they should fall upon my ledger and leave immortal trace of my weakness and misery. But that has passed, and now I am resigned to the life; I even find pleasure in it. The books—I have always loved books and I love them better now—are my greatest solace.

Bear them we can, and if we can we must.

It isn't what happens to you that matters, it's how you take it.

Nobody can laugh at you if you laugh first; the laugh with you.

People can't go on living without happiness—or at least without hope.

Barbie smiled. 'But that's business,' she declared. 'Sometimes people are nice and sometimes nasty. In business you have to take the rough with the smooth

Life has dealt her some hard blows; she has accepted them and made the best of things. She does not expect Fate to be kind.

Unfortunately Bel was unable to enjoy these days whole-heartedly. There was a cloud upon her spirits. She had agreed with Louise that the best thing to do was to forget all her troubles, but it is one thing to know what is the best thing to do and quite another thing to be able to do it.