Quotes About Strength

Chi più ama è il più debole e deve soffrire.

Our receptivity to praise stands in no relationship to our vulnerability to mean disdain and spiteful abuse. No matter how stupid such abuse is, no matter how plainly impelled by private rancors, as an expression of hostility it occupies us far more deeply and lastingly than praise. Which is very foolish, since enemies are, of course, the necessary concomitant of any robust life, the very proof of its strength.

Casi todo lo grande que existe, existe como «a pesar de», y adquiere forma pese a la aflicción y a los tormentos, pese a la miseria, al abandono y a la debilidad física, pese al vicio, a la pasión y a mil impedimentos más.

Perhaps I am stronger than I think.

People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.

A letter arrives stamped with the slogan "The U. S. Army, key to peace." No army is the key to peace, neither the U. S. Army nor the Soviet Army nor any other. No "great" nation has the key to anything but war. Power has nothing to do with peace. The more men build up military power, the more they violate peace and destroy it.

Indeed, too often the weakest thing about our faith is the illusion that our faith is strong, when the "strength" we feel is only the intensity of emotion or of sentiment, which have nothing to do with real faith.

But true faith must be able to go on even when everything else is taken away from us.

If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us. He will certainly give us the grace we need.

2. If, instead of trusting in God, I trust only in my own intelligence, my own strength, and my own prudence, the means that God has given to me to find my way to Him will all fail me. Nothing created is of any ultimate use without hope. To place your trust in visible things is to live in despair.

Humility is the surest sign of strength.

Our weakness should not terrify us: it is the source of our strength. Libenter gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis ut inhabitet in me virtus Christi. Power is made perfect in infirmity, and our very helplessness is all the more potent a claim on that Divine Mercy Who calls to Himself the poor, the little ones, the heavily burdened.

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. Merton, Thomas. Thoughts In Solitude (p. 8). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

We must return from the desert like Jesus or St. John, with our capacity for feeling expanded and deepened, strengthened against the appeals of falsity, warned against temptation, great, noble and pure.

It takes heroic charity and humility to let others sustain us when we are absolutely incapable of sustaining ourselves.

genuine strength arises only in a condition of vulnerability. The flagrant display and self-serving use of power are an admission of deep incapacity.

The opposite of sloth is not 'activity' or industriousness in a business sense. It is fortitude - including patience and long-suffering.

I think there are certain unimpeded passages, that this is registering in my brain somewhere where the drugs and the bugs don't reach. There's a core of myself I can feel, a hidden center of my identity that won't be sedated or confused or overcome.

These are the times that try men's souls.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.

Just be advised, boys,' she said, 'you'll want to watch your step, 'cause what I am is, is like a small-diameter pearl of the Orient rolling around on the floor of late capitalism-- lowlifes of all income levels may step on me now and then but if they do it'll be them who slip and fall and on a good day break their ass, while the ol' pearl herself just goes a-rollin' on.

Never mind. Just be advised, boys," she said, "you'll want to watch your step, 'cause what I am is, is like a small-diameter pearl of the Orient rolling around on the floor of late capitalism—lowlifes of all income levels may step on me now and then but if they do it'll be them who slip and fall and on a good day break their ass, while the ol' pearl herself just goes a-rollin on.