The heart has a resiliency. Strained to breaking, it can contract again. Even the waiting women, Iseult and Penelope, learned, as they sat sorrowing and watching, to sing to the swing of the sea.

Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.

I’m tough but my heart is very soft.

The heart can do anything.

The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labor. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency.

We are adhering to life now with our last muscle — the heart.

what does it help me to know that the heart is a muscle, just a blood-pumping muscle, if my heart still goes out to him, and the bloody muscle still yearns and swells? (p38)

We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.

Your heart is the most powerful muscle in your body. Do what it says.

A heart that hurts is a heart that works.

Marathon actually is life. Sport is life. Resilience is one of the recipes for success. If you are not resilient then you cannot go anywhere. So it’s good to be resilient. ... That’s what’s required.

Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity — and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.

I strengthen the muscles around my heart, but I can’t harden it.

You’ve got to be tough as nails with your tender heart