Quotes About Fortitude

On n'est pas courageux si on ne connaît pas la peur.

It's been my experience that those with the toughest shells have the softest hearts

Tell me we'll never get used to it.

Already today I hit you twice. Once I knocked the wind out of you, once I knocked the consciousness out of you. Here you are back the third time. You call that smart?

Courage is not the absence of fear, he taught me. It's learning to overcome it.

Richard Townshend Bickers

It takes backbone to lead the life you want.

I used to think you were weak and just didn't fight back ... but now, honestly, I think you're actually pretty tough. It takes a hell of a lot of strength to not complain and lash out.

She might be unarmed, but Rose Hathaway was in possession of many weapons.

This is how we must always be—strong and resilient, no matter what's around us.

I realized then that I was taking the first approach to this "bad thing" with Lionel: I was letting it crush me. And so, I decided then and there that I would choose the nobler, unflinching approach. I would endure the pain.

You've done your worst, but you haven't seen what I can do yet.

The venerable cypress clings doggedly to its rocky perch, its branches spreading wide and high into the sky. 'See how it stands proudly, even in such inhospitable conditions?' our father used to say. 'This is how we must always be - strong and resilient, no matter what's around us.

Patience is all.

Some people when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up.

She seemed to know that neither crying nor sulking ever got anyone anywhere. The only sensible thing to do when you're attacked is, as Napoleon once said, to counter-attack.

perfectly calm. "We'll soon get rid of

Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She's a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more pay check. She's a twelve-year-old trying to mother her brothers and sisters because mama had to go to Heaven. She's a switchboard operator sticking to her post while smoke chokes her and fire cuts off her escape. She's all the unsung heroes who couldn't make it but never quit.

I've been afraid so many times that I am no longer scared to be afraid again. What can't be cured must be endured.

Not bleedin' likely, Aunt Nanny Goat. I toughened my feet for karate—I can break a four-by-nine with my feet and get nary a bruise. Or run on sharp gravel.

Tough is what you do, more than it is how you feel about it before or after," I said. "You're tough enough.

Being tough means looking straight at something ugly, and saying, That's ugly; I'll have to find a way to deal with it. And doing so.

Perhaps the one absolute essential to growing up well is being tough enough," Susan said. "Like us," I said.

novel True Grit by Charles Portis