Life often tests us with moments that feel insurmountable. These challenges can come in many forms: personal setbacks, health problems, professional hurdles, or unexpected crises. What defines us in these moments is not the challenge itself, but our response to it — whether or not we give up when the going gets tough.
It’s these moments that require us to summon our inner strength. Endurance is like a quiet force that keeps us pushing forward when every fiber of our being wants to stop — much like a marathon runner pushing through impossible exhaustion for those last few miles. This endurance goes hand in hand with resilience, the art of weathering storms and emerging even stronger than before.
Reminding ourselves that setbacks are temporary and failure is just a detour on the larger path of our life is easier said than done, but giving up is not the answer. Endurance and resilience make for an indomitable spirit, one that will empower us to persevere, adapt, and never, ever give up.
Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.Winston Churchill
The best way out is always through.Robert Frost
No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That's the only way to keep the roads clear.Greg Kincaid
When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You haven’t!Robert Schuller
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.Thomas Edison
Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.Eleanor Roosevelt
Humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.Ralph Ellison
I will either find a way, or make one.Hannibal Barca
A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.Christopher Reeve
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.Maya Angelou
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.Elizabeth Edwards
The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.Barack Obama
The human capacity for burden is like bamboo — far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glanceJodi Picoult
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.Ernest Hemingway
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 must be attained.Marie Curie
When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn't hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that's just the place and time that the tide'll turn.Harriet Beecher Stowe
Featured image credit: Ben Martin/ Archive Photos via Getty Images
