ATTITUDE (RESILIENCE)

• It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome. — William James

• The diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor the person perfected without trials. — Chinese proverb

• You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. — Walt Disney

• The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. — Hemingway

• Great trials seem to be necessary preparation for great duties. — E. Thomson.

• Unto whomsoever much is given of him shall much be required. — The Bible (Luke)

• The harder you fall the higher you bounce. — American proverb

• We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses. — Alphonese Karr

• You think me a child of circumstances; I make my circumstances. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

• We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. — Kahlil Gibran

• All the events of our life are materials of which we can make what we will. — Novalis

• Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you. — Aldous Huxley

• The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing. — Andre Maurois

• When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. — Proverb

• Dung is no saint, but where it falls it works miracles. — Spanish proverb

• Well-washed and well-combed domestic pets grow dull; they miss the stimulus of fleas. — F Galton

• Rather than a handicap, my deafness has probably been beneficial. — Thomas Edison (His son clarified: “He believes it drove him early to reading, enabled him to concentrate, and shut him off from small talk.”)

• Charles Darwin admitted that he had a foggy memory and was an awkward and poor thinker without the gift of quick grasp or the ability to abstract very well. This self-assessment—perhaps self-knowledge—caused him to be very careful about collecting data, keeping notes and working through problems. It was just the kind of painstaking way of thinking that turn out to be well-suited to solving the evolutionary riddle. — John Briggs

• Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. —Kahlil Gibran

• A story must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself. My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how his teacher used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he began to hop and dance and show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness. That’s how to tell a story. — Martin Buber

• As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity conceals it. — Horace

• Sweet are the uses of adversity. — Shakespeare

• There are some people whom a staggering emotional shock, so far from making them mental invalids for life, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvanize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity of soul. — William McFee

• In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us…. Cling to what is difficult. — Rainer Maria Rilke

• Life begins on the other side of despair. — Jean-Paul Sartre

• The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. — Thomas Merton