Quotes About Strength

1

J.R.R. Tolkien

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

2

Friedrich Nietzsche

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

3

Lao Tzu

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ― Lao Tzu

4

Mahatma Gandhi

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ― Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

5

J.K. Rowling

“We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

6

Louise Erdrich

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

7

Albert Camus

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ― Albert Camus

8

Maya Angelou

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” ― Maya Angelou

9

Mahatma Gandhi

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

10

Veronica Roth

“A brave man acknowledges the strength of others.” ― Veronica Roth, Divergent

11

Vincent Van Gogh

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” ― Vincent Van Gogh

12

Corrie Ten Boom

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” ― Corrie Ten Boom, Clippings from My Notebook

13

C. JoyBell C.

“Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. They’re there to let you know that something is worth it.” ― C. JoyBell C.

14

Jane Austen

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” ― Jane Austen, Persuasion

15

C. JoyBell C.

“If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.” ― C. JoyBell C.

16

August Wilson

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.” ― August Wilson

17

Jane Austen

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

18

Coco Chanel

“It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I’ve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.” ― Coco Chanel

19

Marcus Aurelius

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

20

Lilith Saintcrow

“Better to be strong than pretty and useless.” ― Lilith Saintcrow, Strange Angels

21

José N. Harris

“Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.” ― José N. Harris, MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love

22

Jon Krakauer

“It’s not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.” ― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

23

Sarah Dessen

“Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that’s what makes you strong.” ― Sarah Dessen

24

Emilie Autumn

“It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill.” ― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

25

Mahatma Gandhi

“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

26

Napoleon Bonaparte

“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte

27

Dalai Lama XIV

“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.” ― Dalai Lama XIV

28

Judith Viorst

“Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of the pieces.” ― Judith Viorst, Love & Guilt & The Meaning Of Life, Etc

29

Sena Jeter Naslund

“If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead.” ― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer

30

Steve Maraboli

“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

31

William Wordsworth

“Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor 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…” ― William Wordsworth

32

Betty Friedan

“It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question ‘who am I’ except the voice inside herself.” ― Betty Friedan

33

Jim Morrison

“You feel your strength in the experience of pain.” ― Jim Morrison

34

Maya Angelou

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” ― Maya Angelou

35

Anne Frank

“A quiet conscience makes one strong!” ― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

36

J.D. Stroube

“Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it.” ― J.D. Stroube, Caged by Damnation

37

Tana French

“I’ve always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you’re over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he’s not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he’s into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags.” ― Tana French, Faithful Place

38

Ariana Dancu

“She made broken look beautiful
and strong look invincible.
She walked with the Universe
on her shoulders and made it
look like a pair of wings.” ― Ariana Dancu

39

Leonardo da Vinci

“If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

40

Hermann Hesse

“Love must not entreat,’ she added, ‘or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.” ― Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

41

Stephen W. Hawking

“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”

[The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]” ― Stephen W. Hawking

42

Katherine Mansfield

“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others … Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”

(Journal entry, 14 October 1922)” ― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

43

Rupi Kaur

“i am water

soft enough
to offer life
tough enough
to drown it away” ― Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

44

Rainer Maria Rilke

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

45

Taylor Swift

“Be that strong girl that everyone knew would make it through the worst, be that fearless girl, the one who would dare to do anything, be that independent girl who didn’t need a man; be that girl who never backed down.” ― Taylor Swift

46

Mandy Hale

“If you learn to really sit with loneliness and embrace it for the gift that it is…an opportunity to get to know YOU, to learn how strong you really are, to depend on no one but YOU for your happiness…you will realize that a little loneliness goes a LONG way in creating a richer, deeper, more vibrant and colorful YOU.” ― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

47

Anaïs Nin

“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, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

48

Ally Condie

“Cassia.
I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.
I love you. (Ky Markham)” ― Ally Condie, Matched

49

Bertrand Russell

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” ― Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight

50

Paulo Coelho

“And one has to understand that braveness is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear.” ― Paulo Coelho

51

Dan Brown

“God, grant me strength to accept those things I cannot change.” ― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

52

Joyce Meyer

“Spending time with God is the key to our strength and success in all areas of life. Be sure that you never try to work God into your schedule, but always work your schedule around Him.” ― Joyce Meyer

53

Criss Jami

“If you build the guts to do something, anything, then you better save enough to face the consequences.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

54

Bob Marley

“Don’t give up the fight,
Stand up for your rights.” ― Bob Marley

55

Anonymous

“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song. (Psalm 28:7 NIV)” ― Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version

56

Kahlil Gibran

“You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth.
You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean
by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

57

Richelle Mead

“The center will hold.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we are the center.” ― Richelle Mead, The Fiery Heart

58

Douglas Coupland

“We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.” ― Douglas Coupland

59

Ashley Rice

“There are women who make things better… simply by showing up. There are women who make things happen. There are women who make their way. There are women who make a difference. And women who make us smile. There are women of wit and wisdom who- through strength and courage- make it through. There are women who change the world everyday… Women like you.” ― Ashley Rice

60

Criss Jami

“Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

61

Masashi Kishimoto

“The weaker you are the louder you bark.
-Tenten” ― Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto, Band 11

62

Eric Roth

“I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” ― Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

63

May Sarton

“Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.” ― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

64

Thomas Hardy

“Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?” ― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

65

Ken Kesey

“You can’t really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.” ― Ken Kesey

66

Niall Horan

“Being single doesn’t mean you’re weak, it means that you’re strong enough to wait for the right person.” ― Niall Horan

67

Salman Rushdie

“Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things–childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves–that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.” ― Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991

68

Alexandre Dumas

“Women are never so strong as after their defeat.” ― Alexandre Dumas, Queen Margot, or Marguerite de Valois

69

Thomas Paine

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.” ― Thomas Paine

70

Kristin Cashore

“Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and something else too, as if he were standing with her, as if he’d taken her within himself, letting her rest her entire body for a moment on his backbone, her mind in his mind, her heart in the fire of his.
The fire of Brigan’s heart was astounding. Fire understood, and almost could not believe, that the feeling he was sending her was love.” ― Kristin Cashore, Fire

71

Criss Jami.

“The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

72

Samuel Johnson

“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” ― Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

73

Betty Smith

“Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It’s growing out of sour earth. And it’s strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.” ― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

74

Robert Jordan

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” ― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven

75

Criss Jami

“It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

76

Steve Goodier

“My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.” ― Steve Goodier

77

Chris Bradford

“Anyone can give up; it is the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone would expect you to fall apart, now that is true strength.” ― Chris Bradford, The Way of the Sword

78

David Hume

“No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.” ― David Hume, Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul

79

Ashly Lorenzana

“People accuse me of falling in love easily. It just means that I’m able to see the beauty in most of the people who cross paths with me and I appreciate it for what it is and also for what it isn’t. Love is imperfect. Falling for someone’s flaws is just as necessary as falling for their strengths. And people like myself, who fall into love easily, are sometimes the loneliest souls around at the end of the day.” ― Ashly Lorenzana

80

Brigid Gorry-Hines

“Life has a way of going in circles. Ideally, it would be a straight path forward––we’d always know where we were going, we’d always be able to move on and leave everything else behind. There would be nothing but the present and the future. Instead, we always find ourselves where we started. When we try to move ahead, we end up taking a step back. We carry everything with us, the weight exhausting us until we want to collapse and give up.
We forget things we try to remember. We remember things we’d rather forget. The most frightening thing about memory is that it leaves no choice. It has mastered an incomprehensible art of forgetting. It erases, it smudges, it fills in blank spaces with details that don’t exist.
But however we remember it––or choose to remember it––the past is the foundation that holds our lives in place. Without its support, we’d have nothing for guidance. We spend so much time focused on what lies ahead, when what has fallen behind is just as important. What defines us isn’t where we’re going, but where we’ve been. Although there are places and people we will never see again, and although we move on and let them go, they remain a part of who we are.
There are things that will never change, things we will carry along with us always. But as we venture into the murky future, we must find our strength by learning to leave things behind.” ― Brigid Gorry-Hines

81

Sigmund Freud

“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.” ― Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

82

Jane Austen

“She was stronger alone…” ― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

83

Ursula K. Le Guin

“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!’ ‘Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical…There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”― Ursula K. Le Guin

84

John F. Kennedy

“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

[Quoting Reverend Phillips Brooks, during Remarks at Presidential Prayer Breakfast, February 7 1963]” ― John F. Kennedy

85

Ntozake Shange

“one thing I don’t need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my front door
you can keep yrs
i don’t know what to do wit em
they don’t open doors
or bring the sun back
they don’t make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars
cuz a sorry.” ― Ntozake Shange, For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

86

Ally Condie

“I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.” ― Ally Condie, Matched

87

Lev Grossman

“Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.” ― Lev Grossman

88

Robert Thier

“Life is not about living the safer option. Life is about living a life worth living.” ― Robert Thier, Storm and Silence

89

J.R.R. Tolkien

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

90

Friedrich Nietzsche

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

91

Lao Tzu

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ― Lao Tzu

92

Mahatma Gandhi

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ― Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

93

J.K. Rowling

“We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

94

Christian D. Larson

“Promise Yourself

To be so strong that nothing
can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel
that there is something in them
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.

To think only the best, to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others
as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past
and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.” ― Christian D. Larson, Your Forces and How to Use Them

95

Louise Erdrich

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

96

Quotes About Strength

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