Trials are adverse circumstances that God introduces or allows in order to identify where we are spiritually and to prepare us for where He wants us to go.

Trials are designed to help us determine who our master will be, whom we will trust, who our Lord will be and which kingdom we will put our faith in.

We should not try to "get rid" of a neurosis, but rather to experience what it means, what it has to teach, what its purpose is.

Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.

Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

If there were no tribulation, there would be no rest; if there were no winter, there would be no summer.

I think that there are these moments of a crisis that give us the courage and encouragement to try something that actually may be better than how we were doing it before.

That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.

Therapy is to make one happy. What is the point of that? Happy people are not interesting. Better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to turn it into something worthwhile, poetry or music or painting: that is what he been believes.

I'm not going to have the TV personality and be like, 'There's no bitterness. There's no ugliness.' There's bitterness. There's ugliness. There's pain. There's greed. There's malice, and there's hurt. That's all good stuff for any kind of art. I'm not necessarily feeding that side of myself, and I try not to encourage it too much.

Surviving Is the only war we can afford.