Selected resilience quotes

1. We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.

2. I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

3. Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

4. In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

5. Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.

6. The more ugly, older, more cantankerous, more ill and poorer I become, the more I try to make amends by making my colours more vibrant, more balanced and beaming.

7. When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

8. Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!

9. If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

10. Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

11. The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

12. For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.

13. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

14. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

15. Grow into your ideals so that life cannot rob you of them.

16. One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

17. Serious illness doesn't bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.

18. The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

19. Adaptation to one's environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much hardier stuff than the rest that no power on earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

20. Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player.

21. In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world.

22. It is to hope, though hope were lost.

23. No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

24. Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

25. The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

26. Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been, things remain.

27. Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.

28. I try to take life as it comes, and just hope it keeps coming.

29. I too have known joy and sadness, and, on the whole, I prefer joy.

30. Aren't I lucky, to have survived so much bad luck.

31. If I can survive death, I can probably survive anything.

32. They laughed at Edison and Einstein, but somehow I still feel uncomfortable when they laugh at me.

33. Take heart! Many great things have been done by people in poor mental health.

34. I recently had my problems on the run, but now they've re-grouped, and are making another attack.

35. I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

36. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.

37. Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

38. The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go... It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

39. The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

40. I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

41. You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.

42. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress..

43. People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

44. I never thought of losing, but now that it's happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

45. To be resign'd when ills betide, Patient when favours are deni'd, And pleas'd with favours given,- Dear Chloe, this is wisdom's part; This is that incense of the heart Whose fragrance smells to heaven.

46. Before seeing Truffaut's Small Change, I was afraid it was going to be one of those simple, natural films about childhood which I generally try to avoid - I'm just not good enough to go to them. But this series of sketches on the general theme of the resilience of children turns out to be that rarity - a poetic comedy that's really funny.

47. The most important lesson that man can learn from his life is not that there is pain in this world, but that it depends upon him to turn it into good account, that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy... Man's freedom is never in being saved troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make the trouble an element in his joy... that in pain is symbolised the infinite possibility of perfection, the eternal unfolding of joy.

48. People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

49. A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.

50. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty.

51. The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.

52. There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

53. I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'

54. I would say laughter is the best medicine. But it's more than that. It's an entire regime of antibiotics and steroids. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche, and then applies an antibiotic cream... Obviously, it's a challenge to make light of the darkness but, um, it's better than crying about it.

55. Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow -- never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.

56. There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.

57. Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.

58. Well I won't back down, no I won't back down. You could stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down.

59. What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came. It is true that I have forfeited the trust of various people, it is true that my financial affairs are in a sorry state, it is true that the future looks rather bleak, it is true that I might have done better, it is true that I have wasted time when it comes to earning a living, it is true that my studies are in a fairly lamentable and appalling state, and that my needs are greater, infinitely greater than my resources. But does that mean going downhill and doing nothing?

60. Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end. He popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner. Born of necessity, the little fellow literally freed us of immediate worry. He provided the means for expanding our organization to its present dimensions and for extending the medium of cartoon animation toward new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us.

61. History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.

62. There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.

63. Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau. Mock on, mock on-'tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again.

64. Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbours' eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.

65. Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

66. Thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind.

67. Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts today Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.

68. Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

69. If you are going through hell, keep going.

70. Don't give up. Don't lose hope. Don't sell out.

71. Disappointments are to the soul what a thunderstorm is to the air.

72. Each work has to pass through these stages-ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

73. Victory; a matter of staying power

74. ... loss either teaches you to persist in the face of suffering, or hardens you into a bitter cynic. Sometimes, it does a little of both.

75. ...self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.

76. ...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.

77. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

78. When I Asked God for Strength He Gave Me Difficult Situations to Face

79. From the dark end of the street To the bright side of the road We'll be lovers once again on the Bright side of the road

80. Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone:- Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in our own.

81. 'I wish to become a teacher of the Truth.' 'Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?' 'I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?' 'You will have grown accustomed to it.'

82. 'T is now the summer of your youth. Time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.

83. When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curved point,--what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented?

84. I had a hat. It was not all a hat,- Part of the brim was gone: Yet still I wore it on.

85. Freedom is from within.

86. I have had many troubles, but the worst of them never came.

87. You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone; close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. If you analyse it as you're moving forward, you'll never fall in the same trap twice, which I can't say that I haven't been guilty of doing. But my advice is, if they're going to break your legs once when you go in that place, stay out of there.

88. 'Everyting negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise.' - Kobe Bryant[4]

89. It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they're not intelligent enough. It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry - or laugh.

90. The good face pain. But the great--they embrace it.

91. Defeat-I do not recognise the meaning of the word!

92. I might have preferred iron, but bronze will do. It won't rust. And, this time I hope, the head will stay on.

93. But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

94. I'm hurting you to make you a better solider in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what's going to happen next, so you always have to be ready for anything, ready to improvise, determined to win no matter what. I'm also making you miserable. That's why they brought you to me... So you could be just like me... But I'll be watching you, more compassionately that you know, and when the time is right you'll find that I'm your friend, and you are the solider you want to be.

95. In times like these, it's helpful to remember that there have always been times like these.

96. To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night; To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change nor falter nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

97. He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.

98. When it is darkest, men see the stars.

99. Keep a stiff upper chin.

100. 'India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again. India is for ever, and India is forever being made.' [16]