Quotes About Resilience

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

I feel just like the boy who stubbed his toe–too damned badly hurt to laugh and too damned proud to cry!

[I feel] somewhat like the boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.

I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.

No matter how much cats fight there always seem to be plenty of Kittens.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up.

What are you gonna do? Kill me? Everybody dies.

That's the funny thing about America--the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others. I've had my share of angels.

This is my life, I thought...I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

I have been bent and broken but I hope into better shape.

He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him...

Surgery was the most difficult thing I could imagine. And so I became a surgeon.

The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.

As a child I'd longed for Thomas Stone or at least the idea of him. So many mornings I waited for him at the gates of Missing. I saw that vigil now as necessary, a prerequisite for my insides to harden and cure just like the willow of a cricket bat must cure to be ready for a lifetime of knocks. That was the lesson at Missing's gates: the world does not owe you and neither does your father.

This is my life, I thought...I have exised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mudstained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

I welcomed my slavish existence as a surgical resident, the never-ending work, the cries that kept me in the present, the immersion in blood, pus, and tears -- the fluids in which one dissolved all traces of self. In working myself ragged, I felt integrated...

I saw that vigil now as necessary, a prerequisite for my insides to harden and cure just like the willow of a cricket bat must cure to be ready for a lifetime of knocks.