His Majesty [the Lord] . . . rewards great services with trials, and there can be no better reward, for out of trials springs love for God.

The only way love punishes in by suffering.

Suffering can become a means to greater love and greater generosity.

Love never comes without wounds; faith never comes without failure.

The sufferings endured for God are the greatest proof of our love for Him.

The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love."

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

The gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength and throw out into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.

Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace.—2 Corinthians 4:16

The exile was the "crucible of Israel's faith". They were pushed to the edge of existence where they thought they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they found that in fact they had been pushed to the center, where God was.

Ziklag: for me this became the premier biblical site for realizing that when we get serious about the Christian life, we eventually end up in a place and among people decidedly uncongenial to what we expected. At least uncongenial to what I expected. That place and people is often called a church. It is hard to get over the disappointment that God, having made an exception in my case, didn't seem to call nice, accomplished, courteous, alert people to worship.

Audacious quip of Teresa of Avila when she was energetically engaged in reforming the Carmelite monasteries, traveling all over Spain by oxcart on bad roads. One day she was thrown from her cart into a muddy stream. She shook her fist at God, "God, if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you don't have many.