Strength

Strength is the ability to produce or withstand great force; to be determined or unyielding.

• When strength is yoked with justice, where is a mightier pair than they?
  • Aeschylus, fragment, quoted by Steven Stavropoulos, The Beginning of All Wisdom: Timeless Advice from the Ancient Greeks (2003), p. 33

• Resistance can breed resilience.
  • Hilton Als on Alice Neel, "Alice Neel’s Portraits of Difference", The New Yorker (19 April 2021)

• The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
  • Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), ch. 29

• The strength of my god completes my own.
  • Anonymous, Sumerian proverb, Collection IX at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE

• His strength is my strength, and my strength is his strength.
  • Anonymous, Hymn to Ra, Papyrus of Ani (c. 1250 BCE), from the Book of the Dead, as translated by E. A. Wallis Budge (1913)

• Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
  • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 19, as translated by Gerald H. Rendall, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself (1901), p. 66

• Strength, instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.
  • J. M. Barrie, The Little Minister (1891), ch. 23

• Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, quoted in Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher (1858), ed. Edna Dean Proctor, p. 52

• The Miller was a stout carl, for the nones,
  Ful big he was of braun, and eek of bones;
  * * * * * * *
  He was short-sholdred, brood, a thikke knarre,
  Ther nas no dore that he nolde heve of harre,
  Or breke it, at a renning, with his heed.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, "General Prologue", line 546 (ed. W. W. Skeat)

• Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress (January 9, 1958). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1958), p. 5

• The hand of the aggressor is stayed by strength — and strength alone.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech at an English Speaking Union Dinner (3 July 1951). It is currently on display on the wall of Eisenhower Hall at the USMA at West Point in New York. Eisenhower Memorial Commission

• If there are sound reasons or bases for the points you demand, then there is no need for violence. On the other hand, when there is no sound reason that concessions should be made to you but mainly your own desire, then reason cannot work and you have to rely on force. Thus using force is not a sign of strength but rather a sign of weakness.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, in "The Nobel Evening Address" in The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990), p. 115

• Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, as quoted in Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, ed. Margaret Gee (2001), p. 71

• The strong are sometimes wrong but the weak are never free.
  • Heaven 17, "Come Live With Me", The Luxury Gap (1973)

• Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair.
  • Homer, Iliad, Book XV, line 853, tr. Alexander Pope (1715–20)

• A mass enormous! which, in modern days
  No two of earth's degenerate sons could raise.
  • Homer, Iliad, Book XX, line 338, tr. Alexander Pope (1715–20)
  • Also in, Book V, line 371

• Strong are her sons, though rocky are her shores.
  • Homer, Odyssey, Book IX, line 28, tr. Alexander Pope (1725–6)

• The strong rules and the weak are their slaves — and no one is stronger than me.
  • Infamous (2009 video game), protagonist Cole MacGrath

• For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
  • Rudyard Kipling, "The Law of the Jungle", st. 2; The Second Jungle Book (1895)

• But strong in your good cause.
  Oh, ye are strong, If ye would know your strength!
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Catruccio Castrucani (1841), Act I, scene 1

• When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success; and when we have well surveyed the powers of our own minds, and made some estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still, and not set our thoughts on work at all, in despair of knowing anything; nor on the other side, question everything, and declaim all knowledge, because some things are not to be understood.
  • John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Introduction, sec. 6

• I'm not weak — I'm too strong. The bracelets bound my strength to good purposes — Now I'm completely uncontrolled! I'm free to destroy like a man!
  • William Moulton Marston, "The Unbound Amazon", Sensation Comics #19 (July 1943), Wonder Woman

• Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
  • Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851), ch. 86

• And, weaponless himself,
  Made arms ridiculous.
  • John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671), line 130

• To ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a will to dominate, a will to subjugate, a will to become master, a thirst for enemies and obstacles and triumphant celebrations, is just as absurd as to ask weakness to express itself as strength.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, "First Essay", On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), section 13; quoted by C. Edward Good, The Vocabulary of Success (2008), p. 219

• Minimæ vires frangere quassa valent.
  • The least strength suffices to break what is bruised.
  • Ovid, Tristia, Book III, 11, 22; quoted by W. Gurney Benham, A Book of Quotations, Proverbs and Household Words (1907), p. 589

• Plus potest qui plus valet.
  • The stronger always succeeds.
  • Plautus, Truculentus, IV, 3, 30; quoted by J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. Ward, The Cyclopaedia of Practical Quotations, 4th ed. (1882), p. 565

• Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui.
  • We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales (1655), no. 19 (1678). There are several English translations, including that above from Selected Maxims and Reflections, trans. Edward M. Stack (1956), p. 26

• I feel like a Bull Moose.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, on landing from Cuba with his Rough Riders, after the Spanish War. Quoted in The Literary Digest (28 September 1912), p. 544

• Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.
  • Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Introduction, Canto I

• O, it is excellent
  To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
  To use it like a giant.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act 2, sc. 2

• In that day's feats,
  * * * * * *
  He prov'd best man i' the field, and for his meed
  Was brow-bound with the oak.
  • William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607–8), Act II, scene 2, line 99

• What strength!! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world.
  • Street Fighter (1987 video game)

• The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), "The Sage, the Weak, and the Magnificent", p. 94.

• My strength is as the strength of ten,
  Because my heart is pure.
  • Alfred Tennyson, "Sir Galahad" (1842), st. 1

• When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.
  • Donald Trump, interview with Playboy (March 1990); quoted in "News to America: Bury Trump in a Landslide", New York Daily News (October 20, 2016)

• So let it be in God's own might
  We gird us for the coming fight,
  And, strong in Him whose cause is ours
  In conflict with unholy powers,
  We grasp the weapons he has given,—
  The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Moral Warfare"; Anti-Slavery Poems: Songs of Labor and Reform (1888)

• It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.
  • Wendell Willkie, speech accepting nomination as Republican candidate for U.S. President, at Elwood, Indiana (August 17, 1940), This Is Wendell Willkie (1940), pp. 273–74

• The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him.
  • Exodus 15:2 (NRSV)

• As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
  • Deuteronomy 33:25 (KJV)

• They go from strength to strength.
  • Psalm 84:7 (KJV)

• A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
  • Ecclesiastes 4:12 (KJV)

• Their strength is to sit still.
  • Isaiah 30:7 (KJV)

• And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
  • 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NKJV).

• Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 756