The Rural Ethicist: Inspiring Quotes for Graduation

By Katharine Adams

June 2025

High school graduation is fast approaching. It’s an exciting time of transition and new beginnings. Anticipation builds at our house, as our son will soon join legions of other young Berkshire dwellers to walk the Tanglewood stage.

Beyond academics, the school years provide a controlled environment for practicing essential life skills. Persistence is one. The structure of a classroom lends an opportunity to push through setbacks, helping to foster resilience, especially when motivation wanes.

What does all this mean? It means the need for stick-to-it-ness is introduced early by design, helping young people learn to bushwhack a path through life. Persistence is key to staying on track to achieve our goals, despite moments of emotional ups and downs.

Our resolve is important, but so is recognizing the strengths of others’ ideas to weave in with our own; that’s how we build great things together. It takes trust and courage, two things that get tested a lot as we come up in life. Building that reservoir of gumption dovetails into other life skills, like being brave in learning to trust again after let-downs. Sowing and growing trust is an education in itself.

I’ve been a quote-collector for a long time. I could paper my walls with words to live by. I need to see them over and over to remind myself to reel in my impulses and wayward thoughts, like a mantra.

Some written expressions have come about in the popular culture as maxims that can’t be pinpointed to one originator, but are just as stirring. These idioms exist and evolve to inspire generations throughout time. Also referred to with a wink as “golden nuggets” or “pearls of wisdom,” such sayings endure, even as times change.

Here are some favorite quotes about building character through inner strength and resolve:

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

—Epictetus

“Discipline is nothing but self-respect at the highest level.”

—Anonymous

“If you must fall, then fall. The person you’ll become will catch you.”

—Baal Shem Tov

“The best way out is always through.”

—Robert Frost

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

—Louisa May Alcott

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

“Stick to the plan, not your mood.”

—Anonymous

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”

—Jim Rohn

What are the essential drivers of innovation? Creativity and collaboration. It’s where progress is born. When people work together with open communication and a shared purpose, they can solve problems better and come up with solutions that just wouldn’t be possible alone.

It takes a leap of faith to trust in the process. In the words of motivational fitness expert Tony Horton, “Do your best and forget the rest.” Jump in and give your best effort, without overly worrying about the outcome. Doing so can produce eye-openers that a favorite professor coined as “happy accidents” in art school.

Here are a few more reflections on the value of collaboration with others:

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

— Maya Angelou

“The most creative ideas often come from the collision of different perspectives and experiences.”

—Frans Johansson

“Collaboration allows us to know more than we are capable of knowing by ourselves.”

—Paul Solarz

“Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way.”

—Tom Freston

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

— Helen Keller

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

—Isaac Newton

Small dose, big boost: that is the efficient magic of inspiring quotes. Soon, graduates will switch their tassels and toss their caps in the air, symbolizing first steps into the great unknown (also known as adulthood). With a solid toolkit containing persistence, a touch of courage and the superpower of collaboration, they’ll be ready for the big group project called life.

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The Rural Ethicist is a column about the culture of the daily mundane. It tolerates an occasional spider, values the bull in horse sense and seeks the gleaming, stainless steel wisdom beneath a film of cooking grease. Above all, it cherishes the gem of our shared existence: family. ruralethicstudio.com