Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain…. [A]ccept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields…. – Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

When life takes the wind out of your sails, it is to test you at the oars. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. – Norman Vincent Peale