It’s just a regular day.
Maybe things are going great. Or at least OK. And you feel pretty good.
Then something happens.
You make a mistake. A setback slips out from around a corner and hits you between the eyes.
Or you fall into a rough patch, a crisis or feel that you’re too far away from achieving your dream and you just want to pack up and go home.
This week’s article is about those times. And about motivating you, recharging you and staying strong when you need to.
Here’s 74 of the most though-provoking, encouraging and helpful quotes on strength and making it through hard times from the last 2500 years.
- “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
– Dale Carnegie - “Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.”
– Susan Gale - “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
– Robert H. Schuller - “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
– Hermann Hesse - “When written in Chinese the word “crisis” is composed of two characters – one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”
– John F. Kennedy - “Love does not dominate; it cultivates.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - “He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.”
– Louisa May Alcott - “I like criticism. It makes you strong.”
– LeBron James - “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”
– George Bernard Shaw - “Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.”
– Unknown - “Don’t brood. Get on with living and loving. You don’t have forever.”
– Leo Buscaglia - “Make up your mind that no matter what comes your way, no matter how difficult, no matter how unfair, you will do more than simply survive. You will thrive in spite of it.”
– Joel Osteen - “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
– Lao Tzu - “Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope”
– Hal Lindsey - “We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.”
– J.K. Rowling - “Concentration is the secret of strength.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement – and we will make the goal.”
– Jerome Fleishman - “If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.”
– Flavia Weedn - “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
– Albert Camus - “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie - “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe - “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
– Maya Angelou - “Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt - “The more one judges, the less one loves.”
– Honore de Balzac - “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
– Mary Anne Radmacher - “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
– Mahatma Gandhi - “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
– Marie Curie - “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
– Marcus Aurelius - “A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.”
– Vernon Howard - “Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.”
– Wayne Dyer - “A man may fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
– John Burroughs - “Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”
– William Ellery Channing - “Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that’s what makes you strong.”
– Sarah Dessen - “The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”
– R. G. Ingersoll - “People living deeply have no fear of death.”
– Anais Nin - “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill - “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
– Kahlil Gibran - “We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.”
– Napoléon Bonaparte - “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
– Helen Keller - “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt - “Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.”
– Michael Jordan - “It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more ‘manhood’ to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.”
– Alex Karras - “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt - “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”
– Maya Angelou - “If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”
– Bruce Lee - “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”
– Ann Landers - “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”
– Soren Kierkegaard - “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
– Mahatma Gandhi - “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
– Theodore Roosevelt - “I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits.”
– Anaïs Nin - “Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
– Chinese Proverb - “Life is very interesting. In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.”
– Drew Barrymore - “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”
– Christopher Reeve - “Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.”
– Arthur Golden - “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
– Catherine Ponder - “You can’t really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.”
– Ken Kesey - “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”
– Og Mandino - “Where there is no struggle, there is no strength”
– Oprah - “I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”
– Frank Herbert - “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
– Samuel Beckett - “When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.”
– Barbara Bloom - “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 - “Our strength grows out of our weaknesses”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson - “When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint on the clouds of doubt,
And you can never tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar.
So, stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things go wrong that you mustn’t quit.”
– Edgar A. Guest - “Strength is the ability to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of those pieces.”
– Judith Viorst - “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche - “I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
– Thomas Paine - “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'”
– Eleanor Roosevelt - “All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… 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 - “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of a greater or equal benefit.”
– Napoleon Hill - “Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me, for every man is a mirror. We see only ourselves reflected in those around us.
Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own.
The whole world and its condition has its counter parts within us all.
Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”
– Kristen Zambucka
What is your favorite quote on strength and making it through hard times? Feel free to share the best one(s) you have found in this article or in your life in the comments section below.
Self Help Gurus etc
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