Quotes About Resilience

Explore the world with an open mind, a sturdy carry-on, and clothes that don't wrinkle!

Let us recall the boys and girls who had the nerve to write poetry and create works of art, and the adults who cared enough about life to debate philosophy, treat the ill and share their meager belongings all in a prison expressly designed to crush their spirit.

Good guys don't always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries

Madeleine K. Albright

Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Gandhi, King, Havel, Mandela, and many other memorable leaders have found in righteous indignation the psychological edge they needed to endure years of doubt and trial. However, such an emotion is not something everyone can control, and it has, when unleashed, enough destructive energy to turn grand potential to failure.

feather by feather, the chicken is plucked.

What that something might be is for each of us to decide in accordance with our opportunities and talents, but it begins by pushing back harder against the debilitating cancer of cynicism.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

If you're trapped in a room, and nobody is coming to save you, what can you do? You have to bang on the walls and break the windows. You have to climb out and save yourself. It's obvious, Li-ling, that crying doesn't help a person live.

If they want to come for you, they will come, and it doesn't matter what you read or what you failed to read. The books on your shelves, the music you cherish, the past lives you've lived, all these details are just an excuse.

What shook Ling the most was that she wasn't even angry. Anger, too, could dissipate, but this emptiness that took its place might never be released.

Her mother, she thought, had all the attributes of the famous proverb: one who thrives in calamity but perishes in soft living.

Five years of hard labour, Sparrow always reminded her, watching people who had done no wrong disappear, could not be wiped away so quickly, yet still Zhuli wanted to shake her mother, drag her mind back from the camps and make her present. What mattered was the here and now and not the life before, what mattered were the changeable things of today and tomorrow and not the ever, infinitely, unbearably unchanging yesterday.

IN THOSE DAYS, your village might change hands every few weeks, one day to the Communists, the next to the Nationalists, the next to the Japanese. How easy it was to mistake your brother for a traitor or your beloved for an enemy, to fear that you yourself were born in the wrong moment of history. But in the teahouses, anyone could share a few songs, anyone could lift their wine cup and toast the validity and the continuity of love.

Evidently it was very easy to fall if one had already fallen.

Those who see errors as opportunities to learn and try again are the people who will most quickly find new solutions. (This is how our children become resilient.) Those who freeze and panic when they make mistakes will find it much harder to adapt.

The best way we can help our children welcome challenges is to encourage them to work just outside their comfort zone, stand by to lend a hand when needed, and model enthusiasm for challenging tasks.

Kids who learn early in life that they're capable of mastering activities that at first feel a little stressful grow up better able to handle stress of all kinds.

All of us have days when all our emotional resources are at our disposal and days when we feel depleted; we are all people in addition to being parents. Perfect is not something parents are, nor something they should strive to be. Striving for perfection is bound to end in disappointment and often in depression. We do, however, want to be the best parent we can be and we don't want to have our histories necessarily dictate our parenting skills or choices.

Powersnoop," as one of my wry young patients calls it,

I also know two steps forward and one step back is the rule, not the exception, as people work on change.

Being human means being vulnerable but it also means having the capacity to modify our responses and to make different choices.

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.