When life knocks you down, what do you do? Do you give up, or do you stand back up and keep going? You stand back up! You keep going because you are a resilient human being. To bolster your spirit and boost your inner strength, give these resilience quotes a read—and then carry on.
Flexibility and adaptability
- “The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” —Jodi Picoult
- “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” —Robert Jordan
- “Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass but learning to dance in the rain.” —Vivian Greene
- “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” —Albert Einstein
- “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” —Marcus Aurelius
Strength in adversity
- “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” —Kahlil Gibran
- “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” —Albert Camus
- “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” —Robert H. Schuller
- “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” —Ernest Hemingway
- “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” —J.K. Rowling
- “It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.” —Bram Stoker
- “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” —Maya Angelou
- “The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.” —C.C. Scott
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” —Winston Churchill
- “Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up.” —Mary Holloway
- “When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.” —A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
- “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” —Margaret Thatcher
- “The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.” —Neal Shusterman
- “Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.” —Susan Gale
- “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” —Lou Holtz
- “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” —Henry Ford
- “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” —Maya Angelou
- “You are not born with resilience, you are shaped by it.” —Aniket Ambasta
- “Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” —Nelson Mandela
- “Hard times may have held you down, but they will not last forever. When all is said and done, you will be increased.” —Joel Osteen
- “The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us, but those who win battles we know nothing about.” —Jonathan Harnisch
- “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” —Arnold Schwarzenegger
Overcoming challenges
- “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” —Nelson Mandela
- “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” —Maya Angelou
- “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” —J.K. Rowling
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” —Winston Churchill
- “The only way around is through.” —Robert Frost
- “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
- “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” —Winston Churchill
- “Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” —Winston Churchill
- “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” —Confucius
Personal growth and change
- “Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” —Steve Maraboli
- “The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open.” —C. JoyBell C.
- “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.” —Carl Jung
- “When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.” —A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
- “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” —Michael Jordan
- “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” —Theodore Roosevelt
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” —Steve Jobs
- “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” —Sam Levenson
- “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before.” —Elizabeth Edwards
- “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” —Stephen R. Covey
Perspective and attitude
- “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” —Charles R. Swindoll
- “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” —Dieter F. Uchtdorf
- “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.” —Charles R. Swindoll
- “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” —Robert Frost
- “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” —Henry Ford
- “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” —Charles Darwin
Determination and perseverance
- “Resilience is the ability to attack while running away.” —Wes Fesler
- “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” —Vince Lombardi
- “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” —Bernice Johnson Reagon
- “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.” —Helen Keller
- “The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.” —Chinese Proverb
- “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.” —Haruki Murakami
This article was updated May 2024. Photo by PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock.com
