Love sweetens pains; and when one loves GOD, one suffers for His sake with joy and courage. Do you so, I beseech you; comfort yourself with Him, who is the only Physician of all our maladies. He is the FATHER of the afflicted, always ready to help us. He loves us infinitely more than we imagine: love Him then, and seek not consolation elsewhere

The spirit is strengthened in sorrow. — Happiness is good for the body, but sorrow strengthens the spirit.

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one

The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.

But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!

It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.

The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust - not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God.

Sometimes you're gonna jump off a cliff and land flat on your face. Then you just get up and go again. But sometimes you dive off the cliff and start soaring with the eagles, and that's when you find new music, places that you've never been before.

We all get where we're going by circuitous journeys, and some of the setbacks are warranted.

My biggest lesson I've learned about love is to keep on loving. Love is love it's amazing. It's fine. It hurts. It's probably one of the best experiences in life.

Failure is man-made circumstance. It is never real until accepted by man as permanent.

Failure always is a blessing when it forces one to acquire knowledge or to build habits that lead to the achievement of one's major purpose in life.