Affliction Quotes

Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor.

St. Augustine of Hippo

Fear is the greatest enemy; the father of all suffering, and love is the only cure for humanitys great afflictions.

Bryant McGill

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.

Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm

Now let us thank the Eternal Power: convinced That Heaven but tries our virtue by affliction, That oft the cloud which wraps the present hour Serves but to brighten all our future days.

John Brown
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