There's nothing like suffering to reveal how small and needy you are. Pain has the remarkable capacity to reveal the weakness of the things you're leaning on to make life worth living.

Who has not seen a frail, clinging-vine type of woman, who upon the death of her husband strainghtens up and becomes an oak, around which the growing children twine their lives, and are forever greatful for such a mother? But this strength would never have come out and developed had it not been for the tears that watered the vine and made it into an oak.

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

If we don't face and overcome unsettling events in life, we are ruled by them.

Feed him [Micajah] with bread of affliction, and with water of affliction, until I come in peace.

Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

Now therefore keep thy sorrow to thyself, and bear with a good courage that which hath befallen thee.

The spirits of just men made perfect.

Sometimes the littlest things in life are the hardest to take. You can sit on a mountain more comfortably than on a tack.

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.

Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.

God permits suffering. He permits injustice. I know your father can be cruel and selfish at times. But there were tender moments in the beginning. He lives with bitter disappointment. He's never learned to count his blessings. If you are to rise above your circumstances.