Failure is not a prerequisite for success.

If you can't fly, then run, if you can't walk run, then walk, if you can't walk, then crawl, but by all means keep moving.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best

Sometimes the only difference between those who attain and those who don't is perseverance.

Sometimes life seems like a match between oneself and one's gaolors. The gaolers, of course, are one's mistakes; and the question is, who'll hold out longest? When I think of that, life instead of being too long, seems as short as a winter day....

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

Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their burden on others.

She still did and was all that Undine had so sedulously learned not to be and to do; but to dwell on these obstacles to her success was to be more deeply impressed by the fact that she had nevertheless succeeded.

ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

Joy is not the opposite of suffering. If it were, a person practiced in joy could crowd out pain because one couldn't exist with the other. Instead, joy can actually be a companion to suffering.

We can think that God is good, and we are pleased with him, though we might be pleased less with him than we are with the ease of our lives. Then, when life is hard—especially when life remains hard—the allegiances of our hearts.

James intentionally enlarges the scope of suffering when he writes, "trials of many kinds." By doing this, he invites those who experience depression to learn that, whatever the cause, depression will test our faith and serve as a catalyst for growth rather than a reason for despair. Yes, depression is spiritual in the same way that all suffering brings us face-to-face with critical spiritual realities.