Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.
I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the value of inner strength and resilience, which are often not visible to others.
In this quote, Amy Tan reflects on a lesson from her mother about the importance of inner strength, suggesting that true power and resilience do not need to be outwardly displayed. The metaphor of the 'strongest wind' not being seen serves to illustrate how some of the most profound forces in life, such as courage and determination, operate beneath the surface, ultimately guiding us through challenges even if they are not immediately apparent to others.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of unseen perseverance.
More from Amy Tan
All quotes →Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?
I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.
Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?
And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?
Similar quotes
Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it
George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: "The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." So don't bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking-and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best.
One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a capacity for surprise. It’s easy to become so mired in our likes or dislikes that we can no longer recall that person who once responded to poems—and to people—without any preconceived notions of what we wanted them to be.
Work on your stony qualities and become resplendent like the ruby. Practice self-denial and accept difficulty. Always see infinite life in letting the self die. Your stoniness will decrease; your ruby nature will grow. The signs of self-existence will leave your body, and ecstasy will take you over.
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
There you go, Harry!” Ron shouted over the noise. “You weren’t being thick after all — you were showing moral fiber!