What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.

We have suffered lightly, if we have suffered what we should weep for. [Lat., Levia perpessi sumus Si flenda patimur.]

Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

The epitome of our life force turns on the seam where our tempered idealistic expectations meet the annealed exigencies fueling the cataclysm of a pressing personal crisis. Many of us do not decipher who we are and what we truly cherish until we experience the terror of an inconsolable loss. Failure and suffering lead to self-scrutiny.