Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.

Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy.

No one could be more happy than a man who has never known affliction

Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.