• And it’s often in those battles that we are most alive: it’s on the frontlines of our lives that we earn wisdom, create joy, forge friendships, discover happiness, find love, and do purposeful work. If you want to win any meaningful kind of victory, you’ll have to fight for it.

• Math is a subject that allows for precision. If I ask you “What’s seven times seven?” you know the exact answer: forty-nine. But what if I ask you “How do you deal with fear?” Life—and the subject of resilience—rarely allows for perfect precision. Real life is messy. Attacking your fear can lead to courage, but there is no equation for courage, no recipe for courage. It gets mixed up with anger and anxiety, with love and panic.

• truly new and original book would be one which made people love old truths.   —MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES (1715–1747)

• If a piece of wisdom has survived for generations—if it has helped make sense of lives separated by vast distances of time and space—that’s a sign that it works. The new has no special claim on the true. As you read through these letters, you’ll find that I haven’t “uncovered” a secret formula or “revealed” a hidden way. Instead, I’m just trying to direct your attention to the wisdom about resilience that is already all around us.

• Today we think of philosophy as something that happens in a classroom and nowhere else. We think of philosophy as a discipline of sitting and thinking, reading and arguing. But there was a time when philosophy was more than just talk. During the Golden Age of Greece, philosophers were less interested in sitting and thinking. They were more interested in thinking and living. As a practical matter, the Greeks usually did not “read” philosophy in the way that you are reading this letter—silently and to yourself. Reading philosophy meant reading aloud to others; practicing philosophy meant living in a community.

• The test of a philosophy is simple: does it lead people to live better lives?

• We all need something to struggle against and to struggle for. The aim in life is not to avoid struggles, but to have the right ones; not to avoid worry, but to care about the right things; not to live without fear, but to confront worthy fears with force and passion.

• One of the reasons you are suffering right now is precisely because the purpose of your struggle is unclear. What are you working toward? What are you fighting for? Who are you going to be? These are big questions, and you can’t answer them quickly or glibly. But if you want to live a flourishing life, you will have to answer them. That’s where philosophy can help.

• There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.   —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

• The problem is that most of life just isn’t as black and white as Newtonian physics. And trying to treat human beings like variables in an equation leads to some bad thinking.

• Fortunately, to be resilient we don’t need to go back in time. What happens to us becomes part of us. Resilient people do not bounce back from hard experiences; they find healthy ways to integrate them into their lives.

• Being resilient starts with a choice. Philoctetes must choose either to let his pain consume him or to find strength in his pain and serve a purpose larger than himself. On all of our different frontlines, we will be faced with choices like this. We can choose the path of excuses. On this easy path, we soon find ourselves surrounded by the vultures that feed on excuses: blame, self-pity, whining, wallowing. It’s a direction that leads to weakness, cowardice, and a miserly spirit. Excuses are incompatible with excellence.

• Is she a bad runner? Of course not. She had a bad race. The Greeks recognized that great people could fail terribly and still be great.

• We become what we do if we do it often enough. We act with courage, and we become courageous. We act with compassion, and we become compassionate. If we make resilient choices, we become resilient.

• First, you can develop resilience. Anyone can do it. No one can do it for you. You and you alone have to do the work. Second, you can develop resilience. It’s possible to build virtues. It’s possible to change your character. It’s possible, therefore, to change the direction of your life. Third, you can develop resilience. Resilience cannot be purchased or given to you; you have to do the hard work of building excellence in your life.