Whoever survives a test,
whatever it may be, must tell the story.
That is his duty.

Elie Wiesel

Helen Keller

Do you know what happens to scar tissue?
It's the strongest part of the skin.

Michael R. Mantell

Edwin H. Chapin

I'm a little wounded, but I am not slain;
I will lay me down to bleed a while.
Then I'll rise and fight again.

John Dryden

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experiences of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared,
ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Keller

French proverb

When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope?
We have two options, medically and emotionally: Give up or fight like hell.

Lance Armstrong

Cancer makes a woman out of you.
After that you become a warrior.
Survival is not so much about the body,
but rather it is about the triumph of the human spirit.

Danita Vance

It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world
while the world that you live in dissolves beneath your feet,
and that your survival depends on completing this construction
at least one second before the old habitation collapses.

Tennessee Williams

Joan Walsh Anglund

Arnold Schwarzenegger

A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them,
since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind,
and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart.

Pietro Aretino

Huey Newton

Les Brown

Jean de La Fontaine

Ernest Hemingway

The turning point in the process of growing up
is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.

Max Lerner

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

There remain times when one can only endure.
One lives on, one doesn't die,
and the only thing that one can do is to fill one's mind
and time as far as possible with the concerns of other people.
It doesn't bring immediate peace, but it brings the dawn nearer.

Arthur Christopher Benson

Mendel Le Sueur

The real glory is being knocked to your knees
and then coming back.
That's real glory.
That's the essence of it.

Vince Lombardi

Our greatest glory consists not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't believe I've ever met a person who hasn't been
challenged or wounded by something.
Difficulties present choices
We can either waste away from our wounds
or use them to grow our souls.

Joan Borysenko

Life isn't meant to be easy.
It's hard to take being on the top—or on the bottom.
I guess I'm something of a fatalist.
You have to have a sense of history,
I think, to survive some of these things...
Life is one crisis after another.

Richard M. Nixon

Out of every crisis comes the chance to be reborn,
to reconceive ourselves as individuals,
to choose the kind of change that will help us to grow
and to fulfill ourselves more completely.

Nena O'Neill

People are never helped in their suffering
by what they think for themselves,
but only by revelation of a wisdom greater than their own.
It is this which lifts them out of their distress.

C.G. Jung

If you will call your troubles experiences,
and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you,
you will grow vigorous and happy,
however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.

John R. Miller

Henry Ward Beecher

The most beautiful people we have known
are those who have known defeat,
known suffering, known struggle, known loss,
and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation,
a sensitivity and an understanding standing of life
that fills them with compassion, gentleness
and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

William Saroyan

Some minds seem almost to create themselves,
springing up under every disadvantage
and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.

Washington Irving

• Quotes - from loss through transition to healing
• Transition
• Transformation
• Surviving

I have often been adrift,
but I have always stayed afloat.