Francis Quarles Quotes

Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop.

It takes suffering to widen the soul.

AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.

A good man is willing to know the worst of himself, and particularly under affliction, desires to be told wherefore God contends with him and what God designs in correcting him.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

I've cried my eyes out and wanted to end it all before. I hope everybody's gone that far, because it makes life rich.

Man's soul is strengthened by suffering.

The harrowing of the soul can be like the harrowing of the soil; to increase the yield, things are turned upside down.

Labour to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, lest God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror.

As the most generous vine, if it is not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems, and grows at last weak and fruitless; so dote the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions. If it be painful to bleed, it is worse to wither. Let me be pruned, that I may grow, rather than be cut up to burn.

I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

Saints spring and thrive most internally, when they are most externally afflicted. Afflictions are the mother of virtue.

God, give me a good humiliation every day. It's good for the soul and it's good for the ego.

Visit your soul; don't visit your past.

As an individual with my own hurts, I go into the Garden (Gethsemane) as often as I need to. There I identify with the pain in the other, with my part in that pain, my part in tempting someone to wound me. I experience the other's pain, and God's pain, and am devastated - because their pain becomes my own. Feeling such anguish, I can forgive, or deeply repent, either for myself or on behalf of the other.

Affliction is a sort of moral gymnasium in which the disciples of Christ are trained to robust exercise, hardy exertion, and severe conflict.

A lot of so-called Christian souls are not fine. People need to look inside themselves and look at the lives they're leading and fix themselves before they try to fix other people.

Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affliction or grief has humanized the soul.

Into every life there come the painful, despairing days of adversity and buffeting. There seems to be a full measure of anguish, sorrow, and often heartbreak for everyone, including those who earnestly seek to do right and be faithful. ... In this way the soul can become like soft clay in the hands of the Master.

The scar will remain, but it is better for a man to lose both arms than his soul; and these hard years, instead of being lost, may be made the most precious of your lives, if they teach you to rule yourselves.

I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.

Yes I was burned but I called it a lesson learned. Mistake overturned so I call it a lesson learned. My soul has returned so I call it a lesson learned...another lesson learned

Every problem is a character-building opportunity, and the more difficult it is, the greater the potential for building spiritual muscle and moral fiber.