Quotes on Resilience

Suicide is the means of men whose resilience has been eaten away by rust, the rust of the daily round. They were born for action, but they have delayed their action; so action turns back on them with the swing of a pendulum. Suicide is an act, the act of those who have not been able to accomplish others. It is an act of faith, like all acts. Faith in one’s neighbor, in the existence of one’s neighbor, in the reality of the self and the other selves.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

All Americans should take great pride in the men and women serving our nation in Iraq and in the courage, determination, resilience and initiative they demonstrate each and every day. It remains the greatest of honors to soldier with them.

I think there are things that we can all do to build resilience in ourselves, but also to build resilience in each other.

Human beings have enormous resilience.

Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness.

True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.

Joy, collected over time, fuels resilience - ensuring we'll have reservoirs of emotional strength when hard things do happen.

There is nothing about resilience that I can say that my father did not first utter silently in eighteen years of living inside a two-dimensional cutout of himself.

You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces - my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.

I'm not sure if resilience is ever achieved alone. Experience allows us to learn from example. But if we have someone who loves us-I don't mean who indulges us, but who loves us enough to be on our side-then it's easier to grow resilience, to grow belief in self, to grow self-esteem. And it's self-esteem that allows a person to stand up.

Resilience is a precious skill. People who have it tend to also have three underlying advantages: a believe that they can influence life events; a tendency to find meaningful purpose in life’s turmoil; and a conviction that they can learn from both positive and negative experiences.

Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times.

The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a rare gift. Those who possess it are ..said to have resilience or courage.

It's easy to become hopeless. So people must have hope: the human brain, the resilience of nature, the energy of young people and the sort of inspiration that you see from so many hundreds of people who tackle tasks that are impossible and never give up and succeed.

But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.

This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.

I still believe in the resilience of the human heart and the essential validity of love;I still believe that connections between people can be made and that the spirits which inhabit us sometimes touch. I still believe that the cost of these connections is horribly, outrageously high... and I still believe that the value received far outweighs the price which must be paid. (From introductory notes.)