Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart.
All our afflictions, all our temptations are to make heaven more desirable, and earth more loathsome.
Money, when considered as the fruit of many years' industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow's dowry and children's portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.
It is difficult to look at any newborn baby and accept that he or she will necessarily encounter pain, challenges, disappointments, and hardships in life. Yet even the Savior needed to "go forth, suffering pains and afflictions. . . of every kind" (Alma 7:11), the only difference being that Jesus, though tempted, did not sin (Hebrews 4:15; see also D&C 45:4). Even harder to comprehend, however, was how that precious Babe of Bethlehem, whose birth we celebrate each Christmas, would one day bear the weight not only of our sins but also all our infirmities.
Afflictions clarify the soul.
A wise Providence consoles our present afflictions by joys borrowed from the future.
The soul will never become pious and purified except through undergoing afflictions. It is the same as gold that can never be pure except after removing all the base metals in it.
One drop of the sweetness of heaven is enough to take away all the sourness and bitterness of all the afflictions in the world.
Steadfast benevolence, sustained by the wisdom that anything other than benevolence is painful, protects the mind from all afflictions.
Afflictions sent by providence melt the constancy of the noble minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile, as the same furnace that liquefies the gold, hardens the clay Charles Caleb Colton.
Facts do not find their way into the world in which our beliefs reside; they did not produce our beliefs, they do not destroy them; they may inflict on them the most constant refutations without weakening them, and an avalanche of afflictions or ailments succeeding one another without interruption in a family will not make it doubt the goodness of its God or the talent of its doctor.
Afflictions tend to wean us from the world - and to fix our affections on things above.
Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his.
It is impossible to draw near to God without sorrows, without which human righteousness cannot remain unchanged. . . If you desire virtue, than give yourself to every affliction, for afflictions produce humility. If someone abides in virtue without afflictions, the door of pride is opened to him.
The Lord does not measure out our afflictions according to our faults, but according to our strength, and looks not what we have deserved, but what we are able to bear.
Meekness is an unchanging state of mind, which both in honor and dishonor remains the same. Meekness consists in praying sincerely and undisturbedly in the face of afflictions from one's neighbor. Meekness is a cliff rising from the sea of irritability, against which all the that waves that strive against it break, but which is itself never broken.
