This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. To trample it down under hope in the Cross. To wage war against despair unceasingly.

The truth that many people never understand is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more your suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things start to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

But true faith must be able to go on even when everything else is taken away from us.

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. Merton, Thomas. Thoughts In Solitude (p. 8). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

You pray and suffer and hang on and give things up and hope and sweat, and the varying contours of the struggle work out the shape of your liberty. When it ends, and when you have a good habit to work with, do not forget the moments of the battle when you were wounded and disarmed and helpless. Do not forget that, for all your efforts, you only won because of God, Who did the fighting in you.

All suffering has an end.

Faith is not faith until it is tested!

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure 9 will go in the ditch and you have only one to battle with.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.