You get to know who you really are in a crisis.

The question is not, 'Do you have a problem?' The question is, 'Does the problem have you?'

She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.

We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.

Yes, He could have. He could let us go through all of our life, bundlin' us and shelterin' us from anything and everything that would hurt us. I could do that with my petunias, Josh. I could build a box around them and keep them from the wind and the rain, the crawlers and the bees. What would happen iffen I did that, Josh?" I jest shrugged. The answer was too obvious. "They'd never bear flowers," said Auntie Lou.

In this world very few leaps of progress arrive exclusively as benefits

A problem is a chance for you to do your best

to be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?

Joy is not the opposite of depression. It is deeper than depression. Therefore, you can experience both. Depression is the relentless rain. Joy is the rock. Whether depression is present or not, you can stand on joy.

Put a dozen relatively like-minded people into the same crisis and you will see a dozen different responses. Some are heroes; others are cowards. Some are leaders; others are followers. Some are optimistic; others despair. Some shake their fist at God; others quietly submit. You don't really know who you are until you have gone through suffering. We can measure our spiritual growth by the way we behave under pressure.

Screwtape warns Wormwood] Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's [God's] will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Endurance in suffering doesn't grab our attention, but it is a response so important that it will have value that lasts beyond death.