Difficulty

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials. ~Chinese PROVERB

A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner. ~English PROVERB

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise. ~HENRY WARD BEECHER

“...although I've gotten there with great difficulty, yet I don't regret all the trouble I've had to deal with to arrive where I am.” ~JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim's Progress

“And as for all these troubles you tell me about--which I'm likely to meet with in the Way--they're so far off from being a discouragement to me that they show me I'm in the right.  The bitter must come before the sweet, and that will also make the sweet all the sweeter.”  ~JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim's Progress

...and then suddenly there flashed through my mind this thought:  "You must do something, but inasmuch as with your limited capacities it will be impossible to make anything easier that it has become, you must, with the same humanitarian enthusiasm as the others, undertake to make something harder. ~SOREN KIERKEGAARD, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

At the end of every hard day, people find some reason to believe. ~BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Bad is never good until worse happens. ~Danish PROVERB

“but it's not as bad going through here as it is to live here always.  And for all I know, one reason why we must go this way to the house prepared for us is so that our home might be made all the sweeter to us.”  ~JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim's Progress

Can I borrow your towel?  My car just hit a water buffalo. ~"FLETCH"

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. ~RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. ~JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Difficulties are things that show what men are. ~EPICTETUS

Don't ask for an easier life; ask to be a stronger person.  Sometimes you just have to take a leap, and build your wings on the way down. ~KOBI YAMADA

Don't curse the darkness--light a candle. ~Chinese PROVERB

Don't fall before you are pushed. ~English PROVERB

Don't fight forces; use them. ~BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to be where he was. ~R. L. EVANS

Double--no triple--our troubles and we'd still be better off than any other people on earth. ~RONALD REAGAN

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.  It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. ~CARL JUNG

Even from a dark night songs of beauty can be born. ~MARY RADMACHER-HERSHEY

Every day is amazing, even when it's awful, because everything is for a reason.  I know that this horrible thing that's happening today is going to bring me something so amazing. ~SANDRA BULLOCK

Every horse thinks its own pack heaviest. ~THOMAS FULLER

Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and repeat to yourself the most comforting words of all: this too shall pass. ~ANN LANDERS

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience.  Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health. ~MICHAEL de MONTAIGNE

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. ~ALDOUS HUXLEY

For although it is said that God allows the sun to shine upon the good and the wicked, and sends down rain upon the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world.  And so the die is cast--I cross the Rubicon!  This road certainly leads me to strife; but I shall not give up.  I will not grieve over the past--for why grieve?  I wil work on with energy and not waste time grieving, like the man caught in the quicksands who began by calculating how far down he had already sunk, forgetting that all the while he was sinking still deeper.  I will hurry along the path I have discovered, greeting those whom I meet on my way, not looking back as did Lot's wife, but remembering it is a hill up which we have to struggle. ~SOREN KIERKEGAARD, Gilleleie, August 1, 1835

Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you. ~HERBERT GASSER

From ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken:

The crown-less again shall be king. ~J. R. R. TOLKEIN

God gave burdens, also shoulders. ~Yiddish PROVERB

God gives no linen, but flax to spin. ~German PROVERB

He who limps still walks. ~STANISLAW J. LEC

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. ~LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge, that myth is more potent than history.  I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts, that hope always triumphs over experience, that laughter is the only cure for grief, and that love is stronger than death. ~ROBERT FULGHUM

I learned there are troubles of more than one kind.  Some come from ahead and some from behind. ~DR. SEUSS

I like living.  I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. ~AGATHA CHRISTIE

I will not lament the past--why lament?  I will work with vigour and not waste time on regrets like the man stuck in a bog who wanted first to calculate how far he had sunk without realizing that in the time spent on that he was sinking still deeper. ~SOREN KIERKEGAARD, Gilleleje, 1 August 1835

If I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting but I would have to decline, for life would no longer teach me anything. ~ALLYSON JONES

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. ~ANNE BRADSTREET

If you are building a house and a nail breaks, do you stop building, or do you change the nail? ~KWANDA BURUNDI

If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. ~DOLLY PARTON

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity. ~ALBERT EINSTEIN

In three words I can sum up everything that I have learned about life.  It goes on. ~ROBERT FROST

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these. ~PAUL HARVEY

Inspiration is born not in the size of the spoil but in the size of the battle.  (126) ~JEFF LEELAND, One Small Sparrow

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary. ~HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

It is a good thing to follow the First Law of Holes:  if you are in one, stop digging. ~DENIS HEALY

It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. ~LENA HORNE

It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up. ~VINCENT T. LOMBARDI

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from. ~ELIZABETH KUBLER-ROSS

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come. ~JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit. ~PETER SELLER

Life is like an ice-cream cone:  You have to learn to lick it!  ~Charlie Brown, Peanuts by CHARLES SCHULZ

Life is mostly froth and bubble

Two things stand like stone:

Kindness in another's trouble

Courage in thy own. ~ADAM L. GORDON

Life is not the way it is supposed to be.  It is the way it is.  The way you cope with it is what makes the difference. ~VIRGINIA SATIR

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will--his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals. ~ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. ~CARL JUNG

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains. ~EMILIE CADY

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldy through them. ~ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. ~F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Never let your head hang down.  Never give up and sit down and grieve.  Find another way.  And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines. ~SATCHEL PAIGE

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties. ~AESOP

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it. ~ELLEN GLASGOW

No matter how hopeless things have often seemed, I scrape together the most blessed thoughts I can muster of what a loving person is and say to myself:  that is how God is every instant. ~SOREN KIERKEGAARD, 2 August 1847

None of us can help the things life has done to us.  They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you have lost your true self forever. ~EUGENE O'NEILL

Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. ~MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS

Nothing is more beautiful than the love

that has weathered the storms of life. ~JEROME K. JEROME

Obstacles are like wild animals.  They are cowards, but they will bluff you if they can.  If they see you are afraid of them...they are liable to spring upon you; But if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. ~ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. ~RICHARD NIXON

Only with winter-patience can we bring

The deep-desired, long-awaited spring. ~ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shapes of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience, and we soon shall see them in their proper figures. ~JOSEPH ADDISON

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.  I don't believe in circumstances.  The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, they make them. ~GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Per aspera ad astra.  [To the stars through hardship.] ~LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA

Sheer faith and confidence; God does not try people beyond their powers. ~SOREN KIERKEGAARD, 1849

Should you yield the canyons from the windstorms, you would not see the beauty of their carvings. ~ELIZABETH KUBLER-ROSS

Somedays even wearing my lucky rocketship underwear doesn't help. (Calvin) ~BILL WATTERSON, Calvin and Hobbes

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. ~GEORGE S. PATTON, JR.

Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. ~ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats. ~AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. ~THOMAS PAINE

The basic difference between an ordinary person and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary person takes everything as a blessing or a curse. ~CARLOS CASTENEDA

The best way out is always through. ~ROBERT FROST

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire. ~RICHARD NIXON

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it. ~MOLIERE (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)

The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over. ~AESOP

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome.  The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse. ~HELEN KELLER

The proof of gold is fire... ~BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

The shortest distance between two points is under construction. ~NOELIE ALTITO

The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear the burden. ~PHILLIPS BROOKS

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ~MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. ~WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.  But those that will not break it kills.  It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.  If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. ~ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.  ~J. R. R. TOLKEIN, Fellowship of the Ring

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. ~IVY BAKER PRIEST

Things are not as bad as they seem.  They are worse. ~BILL PRESS

Things turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out. ~JOHN WOODEN

This is courage in a man:

to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends. ~EURIPIDES

Tough times never last, but tough people do. ~ROBERT H. SCHULLER

Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes. ~HENRY J. KAISER

We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within. ~EARL NIGHTINGALE

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them. ~CARL JUNG

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest.  We must learn to sail in high winds. ~HANMER PARSONS GRANT

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. ~FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

What happens to a man is less significant that what happens within him. ~LOUIS L. MANN

What is to give light must endure the burning. ~VIKTOR FRANKL

When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching. ~EDWARD G. BULWER-LYTTON

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?' ~SYDNEY J. HARRIS

When it is dark enough you can see the stars. ~RALPH WALDO EMERSON

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~CHARLES BEARD

When walking through the "valley of shadows," remember, a shadow is cast by a Light. ~H. K. BARCLAY

When you come to a roadblock, take a detour. ~MARY KAY ASH

When you get in a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. ~HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. ~FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees. ~KENNETH KAUNDA

Who has never tasted what is bitter does not know what is sweet. ~German PROVERB

You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand? ~ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON