Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.

The one who cares the most wins. ... That's how I knew I'd end up with everyone else waving the white flags and not me. That's how I knew I'd be the last person standing when it was all over. ... I cared the most.

An hour of pain is as long as a day of pleasure.

There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.

No man better knows what good is than he who has endured evil.

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

Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.

On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?

I'm right there, swimming the river of hardships but I know how to swim...

Nothing else in the world matters but the kindness of grace, God's gift to suffering mortals

I was going to rise, do some typing and coffee drinking in the kitchen all day since at that time work, work was my dominant thought, not love- not the pain which impels me to write this even while I don't want to, the pain which won't be eased by writing of this but heightened, but which will be redeemed, and if only it were a dignified pain and could be placed somewhere other than this black gutter of shame and loss and noisemaking folly in the night... /The Subterraneans

Occasional setbacks are probably unavoidable - part of the struggle of living in a fallen world. Other setbacks are due to our own sin and failures, or circumstances outside our control.