It's a hard life if you don't weaken.

My best advice is this - by the time you meet your Maker, and may it be a long, long time from now, I hope you can close your eyes on a life where you did your damn best and tried your damn hardest. It's not winning that's really winning. It's never giving up.

It turns out the mark of a happy life isn't staying just one step ahead of the grim reaper. It's knowing you're strong.

It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.

Tears are handy for washing away troubling and sad feelings. But when you grow up, you'll learn that there are things so sad, they can never be washed away by tears. That there are painful memories that should never be washed away. So people who are truly strong laugh when they want to cry. They endure all of the pain and sorrow while laughing with everybody else.

Being strong doesn't mean that you never break! Being strong means that even if you break into a million pieces, you still have the courage to pick those pieces up, put them back together, and keep going on.

Anyone can fail at something they really don’t want. What really takes courage is going after something you want and then failing. There is more fulfillment in life knowing that you tried, rather than settled without a fight.

Reality is a dream that someone was brave enough to conquer.

True strength is knowing that you don't have to be strong every single second of the day.

I am asked what strength is. Strength is the ability to not do to others only the things that were done to you. It is said, that you should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, but strength takes that even further and says, “I can give more than what I received in life, I can be more than those who gave me little, I can do more for others than what was done for me.” Strength, though well aware of the pain that is aroused by drawing from a well that is not naturally replenished by others, continues to replenish that well so that it may draw from those beautiful innate waters, so that it may give to others even those things that were not given unto it.

We grow in part by confessing our faults and weaknesses to each other (James 5:16; Eccl. 4:10). If we are always being strong and without needs, we are not growing, and we are setting ourselves up for a very dangerous fall.

It's sweet and everything, but it's like you're not even there sometimes. It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things." "Like what?" I asked. My mouth was dry. "I don't know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want.

Rather blessings, after counting my misfortunes, I realized how the more blessed I am.

In talking with people that have experienced it, I learned that PTSD is something that a person in a position of authority sometimes thinks they’re not supposed to have. They don’t always have an avenue to personally address it or even discuss it.

Gabril’s voice was strong and sure. “I believe in you, and I’ve fought for you, because in a world full of people who crumble before an evil too terrifying to comprehend, you put up your fists and fight.

Because you see, when you’re a strong person, people often look to you to take care of them. People look to you for help. People look to you for strength.And when your life spins out of control, it’s as if their lives are tied to your own and will come crashing down with yours.