Pain

• But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar 1991

• Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

• The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.
  • Native American proverb

• We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
  • Kenji Miyazawa

Attitude

• I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.
  • Max Lerner

• A positive attitude might not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. --Herm Albright

• Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.
  • Alphonse Karr

• We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.
  • Frederick Keonig

• I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.
  • Frida Kahlo

Perseverance

• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
  • James Baldwin

• Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.
  • Henry Ford

• Riker: You're outmanned, you're outgunned, you're outequipped — what else have you got?
  Worf: Guile.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation

• If you can't do what you want, do what you can.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory, 1996

• There is no try. Do or do not.
  • Yoda, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

• Do not follow where the path may lead — go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson

• If you're going through hell, keep going.
  • Winston Churchill

• Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.
  • Dan Rather

• Man is harder than rock and more fragile than an egg.
  • Yugoslav proverb

• If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

• Failure is not an option!
  • Gene Kranz

• “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”
  • Mary Anne Radmacher

• “It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.”

• “The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he’s got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.”

Achievement

• The greatest achievements are those that benefit others.
  • Denis Waitley

• I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance, 1994

• What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson

Identity

• Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar, 1991

• Dawn: I'm not even human. Not originally.
  Spike: Yeah, well originally I was. I got over it. Doesn't seem to me it matters very much how you start out.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer

• I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose…though not always what I pleased.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory, 1996

• Fallen sick on a journey,
  In dreams I run wildly
  Over a withered moor.
  • Matsuo Bashō

• We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
  • Joseph Campbell

• Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.
  • Practical Magic

• What you are is a question only you can answer.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice, 1986

• Luminous beings are we; not this crude matter.
  • Yoda

• “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
  • Harvey Fierstein

• It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.
  • Clarence Darrow, as quoted in Improving the Quality of Life for the Black Elderly: Challenges and Opportunities : Hearing before the Select Committee on Aging, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, first session, September 25, 1987 (1988). This and a slight variant of it ("...rather the one most responsive to change") have also become attributed to Charles Darwin since at least 1997, but without any citation of an original source.

Disability as a Concept

• “Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”

• Not only do physically disabled people have experiences which are not available to the able-bodied, they are in a better position to transcend cultural mythologies about the body, because they cannot do things the able-bodied feel they must do in order to be happy, ‘normal,’ and sane….If disabled people were truly heard, an explosion of knowledge of the human body and psyche would take place.

• “Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you’re needed by someone.”