christian living on Toughness

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

During the interview, Simon mentions that only 10% of Navy Seals make it through the initial training process and he gives some insights as to who gets through. It’s not the big, muscle-bound guys. T...

During the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto broke his right knee while competing in the floor exercise. At the time, Japan and the Soviet Union fielded the world's ...

These disciples turned the world upside down because they saw a dead man come back to life by the power of God. And whatever that “knowing” and “seeing” did in them, it did it at a deep level because ...

Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with thei...

Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”

The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.

I suspect that this is the most important thing I’ve said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It’s a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is importa...

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Life can often feel like a bully, throwing punches at us we didn’t see coming. We get taken out, for a moment. But how we jump back in becomes our decision.

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.

To learn strong faith is to endure great trials. I have learned my faith by standing firm amid severe testings.

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

The word [patience] never means the spirit which sits with folded hands and simply bears things. It is victorious endurance (and) constancy under trial. It is Christian steadfastness, the brave and co...

Trials come to prove and improve us.

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.

There is great force hidden in a gentle command.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.

James Stockdale and what is now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his experience as a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam War. The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’...

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are the...

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without co...

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wo...

The final thing leaders will need is courage … the willingness to tell the truth, to say what is not politely or politically acceptable. … The most common expression of the courage to tell the truth i...

Forgiving the unforgivable is hard. So was the cross: hard words, hard wood, hard nails.