Quotes About Resilience

He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us.

Special units would then disinter the corpses and burn them. Thus, for the first time in history, Jews were not only killed twice but denied burial in a cemetery.

All right, I told myself. I'll also have to learn to eat. And to love. You can learn anything.

For us, this was the true equality: Nakedness. Shivering with the cold.

Was it she who saved me from the silent death that characterizes resignation to solitude?

I belong to a traumatized generation that often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe that one must not estrange oneself from either God or man.

Despite overwhelmingly favorable reviews, the book sold poorly. The subject was considered morbid and interested no one. If a rabbi happened to mention the book in his sermon, there were always people ready to complain that it was senseless to "burden our children with the tragedies of the Jewish past.

At the gate, the sign proclaimed that work meant freedom.

Auschwitz." Nobody had ever heard that name.

Ormai non mi interessavo ad altro che alla mia scodella quotidiana di zuppa, al mio pezzo di pane raffermo. Il pane, la zuppa: tutta la mia vita. Ero un corpo. Forse ancora meno: uno stomaco affamato. Soltanto lo stomaco sentiva il tempo passare.

We were the masters of nature, the masters of the world. We had transcended everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs. We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth.

The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing; we were entirely among ourselves. A

We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.

Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread.

Suffering confers no privileges; it is what one does with suffering that matters.

One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

That's how it was on Irving Circle and how I was raised: You made the best out of what was within reach, which meant friendships engineered by parents and by the happenstance of housing. I stayed with it because we both had queenly older sisters who rarely condescended to play with us, because Shelley was adopted and I was not, because Shelley had Clue and Life, and I did not

Selling the Lite of Heaven by Suzanne Strempek Shea

When we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias.

Emotions have their effects even after you try to bully them out of existence.

Luckily Rollan was more unflappable. He stepped forward, bravely brandishing his long dagger, however pathetic it looked compared to the teeth of Cabaro.

You have to learn when to ignore suffering so that you're strong enough to fight it when the time is right.

the seasickness. And so, Captain Smith