This life is not about our comfort. We have an eternity for that. I really think this is about training and testing. We will have work to do in Heaven, work that is fulfilling and perfect for us. God needs to develop certain skill sets in us before that time. That may be what this life is about.

So could it be that good can come out of suffering? That God uses it to build things into us? Things we might need?

Offer to God the sacrifice of never gathering any fruit. If He will that throughout your whole life you should feel a repugnance to suffering and humiliation—if He permit that all the flowers of your desires and of your good will should fall to the ground without any fruit appearing, do not worry. At the hour of death, in the twinkling of an eye, He will cause fair fruits to ripen on the tree of your soul.

When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on

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

Greatness comes only to those who seek not how to avoid obstacles, but how to overcome them.

When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

The longer I live the more I think of the quality of fortitude... men who fall, pick themselves up and stumble on, fall again, and are trying to get back up when they die.

Carry the cross patiently, and with perfect submission and in the end it shall carry you.

Hence we must support one another, console one another, mutually help, counsel, and advise, for the measure of every man's virtue is best revealed in time of adversity — adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.

He is not truly patient who will only suffer as far as seems right to him and from whom he pleases. The truly patient man considers not by whom he is tried, one above him, or by an equal, or by an inferior, whether by a good and holy man or by a perverse and unworthy, but from every creature. He gratefully accepts all from the hand of God and counts it gain.