Neal A. Maxwell Quotes

Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us.

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.

I think everybody has their pain. For me, the time that I really had to grow up was when I was 15 and I had my best friend die of leukemia. Watching somebody so strong go through that is definitely something that will give you a little bit of depth. There have been a lot of things that have happened in my life that has forced me to grow up.

I am afraid that all the grace that I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable … Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library.

There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks the opportunity is lost. He comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But, if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning hour of his life.

Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

Misery is, by her own nature, a passing phase of sorrow, one that does not linger uninvited. Her sojourns seem to be part of life's required curriculum, perhaps because Misery endows us with compassion and empathy.

As in nature, as in the arts, so in grace; it is rough treatment that gives souls as well as stones their lustre; the more the diamond is cut the brighter it sparkles; and in what seems hard dealing, their God has no end in view but to perfect His people's graces. Our Father, and and kindest of fathers, He afflicts not willingly; He sends tribulations, but hear St Paul tell their purpose, - "Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope."

There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

Give thanks for sorrow that teaches you pity; for pain that teaches you courage.

What hurts us is what heals us.

Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.

Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.

Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow!.

You have to have faith that there is a reason you go through certain things. I can't say I'm glad to go through pain, but in a way one must, in order to gain courage and really feel joy.

Dealing with adversity is like preparing for surgery. By putting our faith in what the doctor has said, we believe we will be better off if we have the surgery. But that does not make it any less painful. By submitting to the hand of a surgeon, we are saying that our ultimate goal is health, even at the cost of pain. Adversity is the same way. It is a means to an end. It is God's tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives.

Life is very hard, isn't it? It does kill you, after all.

If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?

Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.

Life is about surviving loss.

There's many, many people who have been through a lot worse things than I went through. I lost my dad when I was 14 and to violence.

A fundamental and unfortunate part of being alive is to suffer loss and to suffer grief.

A loss is something tough.