Joseph Hall Quotes

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.

Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.

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

If I remember the suffering of my childhood and youth, it could make me sad. But if one thinks of the benefits, it is precisely because of these sufferings since I was small that I have become a man. I have become a person who thinks, who has feelings, because I have suffered.

There's challenges in life that present themselves unexpectedly, and if you rise to them, then those challenges will toughen you up.

Grace changes us and change is painful".

When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best.

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.

The beast that bears you fastest to perfection is suffering.

The important thing is to firmly fix our gaze on our own weaknesses, not run away from them, but to battle them head-on and establish a solid self that nothing can sway. Hardships forge and polish our lives, so that eventually they shine with brilliant fortune and benefit. If left in its raw, unpolished form, even the most magnificent gem will not sparkle. The same applies to our lives.

The scar will remain, but it is better for a man to lose both arms than his soul; and these hard years, instead of being lost, may be made the most precious of your lives, if they teach you to rule yourselves.

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

We all suffer. If a man's wise, he learns from it.

A life without problems would be a barren existence, without the opportunity for spiritual growth.

I don't see life as an opportunity to see how far you can go in the pursuit of pain, although I think I've challenged it a bit.

It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken

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

Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.

You have to temper the iron. Every hardship is an opportunity that you are given, an opportunity to grow. To grow is the sole purpose of existence on this planet Earth. You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.

We can take suffering to be an opportunity to learn and to grow. But if we are honest, we should remember that this is making the best of a bad job, and that minimising suffering takes priority over optimising its outcome.

To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.

Do not consider painful what is good for you.

Pain is the doorway to wisdom and to truth.

It's in the act of having to do things that you don't want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.

Adversity has a way of introducing a man to himself.