Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Adversity introduces a man to himself. – Author Unknown

Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us. – Henry Ward Beecher

Human suffering, while it is asleep, is shapeless. If it is wakened it takes the form of the waker. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin