Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) was a Lebanese-American poet and painter. He moved to Boston with his family as a child and wrote in both Arabic and English. The Prophet, a collection of poetic essays published in 1923, has never been out of print and has been translated into more than a hundred languages.
About this theme: Resilience
Resilience has travelled a long way in twenty years, from a term in psychology to a word on posters. It originally described something measurable: a system's capacity to return to equilibrium after a shock. Applied to people it never meant being unaffected — it meant recovering, and that distinction is the first casualty of popular use.
More by Kahlil Gibran
More on Resilience
- Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.— Publilius Syrus
- The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.— Confucius
- Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.— Ovid
- I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.— Louisa May Alcott
- Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.— Leonardo da Vinci