Quotes About Resilience

Shell shock, they said in the First World War. Battle fatigue, in the Second. It's what happens when you live through things you shouldn't have been able to live through and can't reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did.

But war has a long fuse, and a slow match.

Calmar el dolor y el miedo a la muerte servía para atenuar los propios temores.

Nadie se muere por eso. Ni tu, ni yo»

There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle. Past that certain point, you lose all fear of pain or injury. Life becomes very simple at that point; you will do what you are trying to do, or die in the attempt, and it does not really matter much which.

But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.

There's always a prayer, a nighean, even if it's only A Dhia, cuidich mi." Oh, God—help me.

The body forms internal scars as well as surface scars when a wound heals—and so does the mind.

Being in a state of grace is all very well, but I imagine even Joan of Arc had qualms when they lit the first brand.

I had realized many years before why "patients" are called that; it's because a sick person is generally incapacitated, and thus obliged to put up with any amount of harassment and annoyance from persons who are not sick.

Pointless to spend too much time in planning, anyway, given the propensity of life to make sudden left-hand turns without warning.

I'd known that, consciously-and yet I had done it anyway, gone right on with my plans, pursuing my routines, as though life were still settled and predictable, as though nothing whatever might threaten the tenor of my days, As though acting might make it true.

I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday; not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I'd be strong enough to send ye away. I said, Lord, if I've ever had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough and not fall to my knees and beg her to stay.

Roger wondered if this was the sort of way you felt after a battle; the sheer relief of finding yourself alive and unwounded made you want to laugh and arse about, just to prove you still could.

He still didn't know why the frog hadn't killed him.

Gave me terrible cramps, and I had wind for days.

He wiped the sweat from his face on his sleeve, squared his shoulders, and strode back into the fray. All there was to do was his duty.

He seized my free hand, hard, and looked down at me. "You may have it," he said. His voice was very low, but he met my eyes straight on. "All of it. Anything that was ever done to me. If ye wish it, if it helps ye, I will live it through again.

I have lived through a fucking world war," I said, my voice low and venomous. "I have lost a child. I have lost two husbands. I have starved with an army, been beaten and wounded, been patronized, betrayed, imprisoned, and attacked. And I have fucking survived!" My voice was rising, but I was helpless to stop it. "And now should I be shattered because some wretched, pathetic excuses for men stuck their nasty little appendages between my legs and wiggled them?!

Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach. Ye canna say more than ye know, but tell me it all, just once more.

All over the clearing, the same thing was happening; the women gave not an inch, but their men stepped out before them. Anyone coming into the clearing would think that the women had melted into invisibility, leaving an implacable phalanx of Scotsmen staring down the glen.

I was in the heart of chaos, and no power of mind or body was of use against it.

thought that was perhaps how some ghosts were made; where a will and a purpose had survived, heedless of the frail flesh that fell by the wayside, unable to sustain life long enough.

He wasn't going to pretend it hadn't hurt to hear it, but he wouldn't let himself be angry; that would help neither of them.