It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures. - William Hazlitt, Characteristics, 1823

Better bread with water than cake with trouble. - Russian Proverb

Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them. - Hugh Miller, Snow on the Wind

The darkest hour has only sixty minutes. - Morris Mandel

The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials. - Confucius

God gave burdens, also shoulders. - Yiddish Proverb

But ah! disasters have their use;

And life might e'en be too sun-shiny.

- Charles Stuart Calverley, Disaster, after Moore, stanza 5

There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with. - Harry Crews

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything. - William Faulkner