Circumstances don't shape us, so much as they reveal us.

Circumstance does not make the person, it reveals the person to himself or herself.

I'm just telling you, God permits things in our lives sometimes for reasons that we do not understand yet because of the spiritual level that we're on. We can't have any understanding of it, because we're not at a place of spiritual growth yet where we understand the deeper things of God.

Pain helps the body grow.Riddles help the mind grow.Loss helps the heart grow.Temptations help the soul grow.

Circumstances do not make the man or woman, they merely reveal them.

It is difficulties that show what men are.

Troubles are usually the brooms and shovels that smooth the road to a good man's fortune.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.

Most of us pass our lives away eating the husks of life. Within them, beneath the rind, is a sweeter fruit than ever we have tasted. How shall we find it unless the rind is peeled away by Wisdom greater than our own, by a Love whose ways are strange and bewildering to us.

Nothing whatsoever but the love of Jesus could have made me face these difficulties and others which followed, for I had to purchase my happiness by heavy trials.

For those who fight for it life has a flavor the sheltered will never know

Write, read, sing, weep, be silent, pray, endure adversities manfully; eternal life is worthy of all these conflicts, yea, and of greater.