C. S. Lewis Quotes

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.

There are those who suffer and grow strong; there are those who suffer and grow weak. This mystery of pain is still for me the saddest of earth's disabilities.

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.

Suffering is a good teacher. It keeps you in its grip until you've learned your lesson.

Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you

Suffering brings your heart to bear. It gets you where you are!

Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think ofhimself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

You're not going to live your life unscathed.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

When you have adversity and you have pain, you never feel more alone than you do at that moment. And you can be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people.

My truth is that what doesn't kill you makes you weaker rather than stronger, although it makes you wiser.

I get why we don't want to be in pain, but there's something very essential about what happens when we're in pain and some of the growth that can come from it if we stare at it straight in the face.

I don't think one ever stops struggling.

The fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength

The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.

"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."

Tribulation first makes one realize what one is.

You can't avoid pain, but you can choose to overcome it.

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

The world brought me to my knees, what have you brung you?

Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain.