Quotes About Strength

Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.

The black unicorn was mistaken for a shadow or symbol and taken through a cold country where mist painted mockeries of my fury.

But I loved her, because she moved like she felt she was somebody special, like she was somebody I'd like to know someday. She moved like how I thought god's mother must have moved, and my mother, once upon a time, and someday maybe me.

It is within our differences that we are both most powerful and most vulnerable, and some of the most difficult tasks of our lives are the claiming of differences and learning to use those differences for bridges rather than as barriers between us.

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance.

Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.

But it is also true that sometimes we cannot heal ourselves close to the very people from whom we draw strength and light, because they are also closest to the places and tastes and smells that go along with a pattern of living we are trying to rearrange.

I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a ouija board, cryptic comments from the other side. When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less important whether or not I am unafraid.

If I can look directly at my life and my death without flinching I know there is nothing they can ever do to me again.

Simone de Beauvoir's words echo in my head: "It is in the recognition of the genuine conditions of our lives that we gain the strength to act and our motivation for change.

One never really forgets the primary lessons of survival, if one continues to survive.

I seek no favor untouched by blood.

Il tuo silenzio non ti proteggerà.

I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire when there was no fire, no food, no sisters, no quarter. We are not goddesses or matriarchs or edifices of forgiveness; we are not fiery fingers of judgement or instruments of flagellation; we are women forced back always upon our woman's power.

I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me - to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks.

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

But the strength of women lies in recognizing differences between us as creative, and in standing to those distortions which we inherited without blame, but which are now ours to alter. The angers of women can transform difference through insight into power.

I write for those women who do not speak, who do not have a voice b/c they were so terrified, because we were taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

Just because you're strong doesn't mean you can let other people depend on you too much. It's not fair to them, because when you can't be what they want they're disappointed, and you feel bad.

Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, It feels right to me, acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding...The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.

Part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters.

My silences had not protected me. your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.

There are so many roots to the tree of anger / that sometimes the branches shatter / before they bear.-Audre Lorde Happy Bornday Blessings Audre Lorde