Prosperity has no power over adversity.

There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.

Fortitude is the disposition of soul which enables us to despise all inconveniences and the loss of things not in our power.

God delights in our temptations and yet hates them. He delights in them when they drive us to prayer; he hates them when they drive us to despair.

If you have shed a thousand tears, expect a thousand blessings.

Savor powerlessness, after power, in every phase that matches it precisely; replace every old triumph with the new defeat; strengthen yourself on your weakness; win yourself back when so very lost.

Most people thought that we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.

The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.

Are we so childish (I do not say childlike) as to think that a God who could scheme a Jesus-plan would lead poor pilgrims into situations they could not bear?

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then and 'be safe'?" That's the only alternative, really. But locking ourselves up and never facing another person won't fix what's really going on in our souls.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God did not protect His own Son. He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.

I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.