Endurance

Endurance (also related to sufferance and resilience) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fatigue. A person is able to accomplish or withstand a higher amount of effort than their original capabilities means their endurance is increasing expressing improvement. Endurance may also refer to an ability to keep going through a tough situation involving hardship, stress, etc,.

Marcus Aurelius: Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini, Basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.

Alphabetized by author or source:

A • B • C • D • E • F • G • H • I • J • K • L • M • N • O • P -Q • R • S • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z • External links

A

• Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear. The same things happen to another, and either because he does not see that they have happened, or because he would show a great spirit, he is firm and remains unharmed. It is a shame then that ignorance and conceit should be stronger than wisdom.
  • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (source), Book V, #18, translated by Gregory Long

• Let nothing disturb thee,
  Nothing affright thee;
  All things are passing;
  God never changeth;
  Patience endurance
  Who God possesseth
  In nothing is wanting;
  Alone God sufficeth.
  • Teresa of Avila appealing for patience to allow intimacy with God to replace fear and anxiety quoted in The Wounding and Healing of Desire: Weaving Heaven and Earth p. 157

B

• I am something of a stoic, both by nature and inheritance. I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.
  • Francis Bacon in Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War p. 370

C

• Endurance is patience concentrated.
  • Thomas Carlyle quoted in One More Step the 638 Best Quotes for the Runner: Motivation for the Next Step p. 81

• Endurance is the queen of all virtues...Bible truth behind the quote “We are exhorted to run with endurance (Hebrews 12:1), especially during times of testing (James:1.12)
  • John Chrysostom, in 1001 Unforgettable Quotes about God, Faith, and the Bible p. 69

G

• In NASCAR, you don't have to be as physically strong as in some other forms of racing. You've just got to be able to endure the heat and endurance of it.
  • Jeff Gordon in Time, Volume 171 p. 160

H

• The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
  • Alfred Hitchcock quoted by Dana Ullman in The One-minute (or So) Healer: 500 Simple Ways to Heal Yourself Naturally p. 43

• Every man, like every dog, has his own individual limit of endurance. Most men reach their limit after about thirty days of more or less continuous stress under the conditions of modern combat. The more than averagely susceptible succumb in only fifteen days. The more than averagely tough can resist for forty-five or even fifty days. Strong or weak, in the long run all of them break down. All, that is to say, of those who are initially sane. For, ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), Chapter 7: "Brainwashing", p. 88 [1]

J

• ...when I was younger I used to wrestle, and I feel that it contributed to my athletic ability because as a wrestler you have to be an all-encompassed athlete. You need stamina, strength, endurance and mental capacity. You also have to learn how to adapt in any situation. In the book, that's how all the sports helped me in my strategies for football and life.
  • Dhani Jones, in an interview by Micheal Fabiano in Bengals LB Jones proves to be a true Renaissance man

• Winning isn't about finishing in first place. It isn't about beating the others. It is about overcoming yourself. Overcoming your body, your limitations, and your fears. Winning means surpassing yourself and turning your dreams into reality.
  • Kilian Jornet in Run or Die: The Kilian Jornet Way - Page 3

K

John F. Kennedy: A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.

• Endurance running was my passion , my ride. So here, I was in the driver’s seat, running for two days straight pushing the mental and physical limits striving to be better, to go farther, to give more.
  • Dean Karnazes in Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner

• A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.
  • John F. Kennedy quoted by Larry Chang in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing], p. 380

• To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another, - that is surely the base instinct. Baser than even hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty. If the whole world of the living has no turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers.
  • Barbara Kingsolver, in “Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing”, p. 282

L

• The endurance athlete is the ultimate realist.
  • Marty Liquori quoted in "One More Step the 638 Best Quotes for the Runner: Motivation for the Next Step" p. 160

N

Friedrich Nietzsche: To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.

• To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, in Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals p. 153

Q

• Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.
  • Matthew Quick in a review of the film based on the book The Silver Linings Playbook (novel), as seen in a movie poster

R

• Endurance is nobler than strength and patience than beauty.
  • John Ruskin quoted in Bullied Beautiful p. 156 (this link doesn’t work)

S

• Success rests with having the courage and endurance and above all the will to become the person you are, however, peculiar that may be. The you will be able to say, “ I have found my hero and he is me”.
  • George Sheehan, in “Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing”, p. 425

• A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.
  • Sensei Soji quoted in Tales of a Teenage Ninja - Book One p. 150

• At the end of the day it's about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.
  • Tara Suzuma, in Forbidden] p. 2

T

• There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope and endurance.
  • Paul of Torsus in “Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing”, p. 483

V

• Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.
  • Endure the hardships of your present state,
    Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate.
  • Virgil, Aeneid, Book I, l. 207 (trans. John Dryden).

W

• No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.
  • Orson F. Whitney quoted by Elder Spencer W. Kimball]], in We Believe: Doctrines and Principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter ..., p. 10

Z

• Human life suffers steep inclines on the way through the world. If you don’t keep “endurance” as your watchword as go along, how will you tolerate the thorny undergrowth and the pits and ditches.
  • Hong Zicheng in “Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing”, p. 224