"Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has."
- Billy Graham
"Adversity is the diamond dust heaven polishes its jewels with."
- Robert Leighton
"If we cannot believe God when circumstances seem to be against us, we do not believe Him at all."
- Charles Spurgeon
"Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of."
- Charles Spurgeon
"Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that launch us into periods of intense spiritual growth. Once we begin to understand this, and accept it as a spiritual fact of life, adversity becomes easier to bear."
- Charles Stanley
"You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm."
- Robert Murray McCheyne
"If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards."
- John Henry Newman
"Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complains."
- Alan Redpath
"12 Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD, and teachest him out of thy law;
13 That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked.
14 For the LORD will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance.
15 But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright in heart shall follow it."
- King David, Psalm 94
"27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.
29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?
30 If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.
31 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not."
- St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 11