Louisa May Alcott Quotes

There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

The best helps to growth in grace are the ill usage, the affronts, and the losses which befall us. We should receive them with all thankfulness, as preferable to all others, were it only on this account, that our will has no part therein.

Discipline is something we despise for the moment.... We all look for a place to run, an excuse with which to stall. No one enjoys it. Yet those of us who have endured it know that the fruit it produces and the pain from which it ultimately spares us makes it worth the agony.

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.

Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering and self-mastery.

Character isn't developed when we get what we want. Character is developed when we don't get what we want.

Everybody has difficult years, but a lot of times the difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole entire life, if you survive them.

Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.

You choose to go voluntarily into the fire. The blaze might well destroy you. But if you survive, every blow of the hammer will serve to shape your being. Every drop of water wrung from you will temper and strengthen your soul.

Hard times and funky living can season the soul, true enough, but joy is the yeast that makes it rise.

Every tribulation which ever comes our way either is sent to be medicinal, if we will take it as such, or may become medicinal, if we will make it such, or is better than medicinal, unless we forsake it.

Do not desire crosses, unless you have borne those already laid upon you well — it is an abuse to long after martyrdom while unable to bear an insult patiently.

When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.

Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

I am determined to go through the horror of this world.

Knowing that you have something you have to deal with, rising to the occasion, builds character.

I don't think one ever stops struggling.

Man's soul is strengthened by suffering.

How many years of fatigue and punishment it takes to learn the simple truth that work, that disagreeable thing, is the only way of not suffering in life, or at all events, of suffering less.

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

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