Affliction

From Wikiquote

Jump to: navigation, search

Affliction is suffering, perceived by some as a test or lesson from a higher power.

[edit] Sourced

  • The love of these things that are outside visible Christianity keeps me outside the Church... But it also seems to me that when one speaks to you of unbelievers who are in affliction and accept their affliction as a part of the order of the world, it does not impress you in the same way as if it were a question of Christians and of submission to the will of God. Yet it is the same thing.
    • Simone Weil, Last letter to Father Joseph-Marie Perrin, from a refugee camp in Casablanca (26 May 1942), as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 111.
  • 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.
  • Cum in omni fere litterarum studio dulce laboris lenimen et summum doloris solamen dum uiuitur insitum considerem, tum delectabilius et maioris praerogatiua claritatis historiarum splendorem amplectendum crediderim.
    • It is my considered opinion that the sweetest relief from suffering and the best comfort in affliction that this world affords are to be found almost entirely in the study of literature, and so I believe that the splendour of historical writing is to be cherished with the greatest delight and given the pre-eminent and most glorious position.
    • Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People), in Diana Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), Prologue, pp. 2-3. ISBN 0198222246.

[edit] Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.
  • Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.
  • The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.
  • God sometimes washes the eyes of His children with tears in order that they may read aright His providence and His commandments.
  • Be still, sad heart, and cease repining,
    Rehind the clouds the sun is shining;
    Thy fate is the common fate of all;
    Into each life some rain must fall, —
    Some days must be dark and dreary.
  • Affliction of itself does not sanctify any body, but the reverse. I believe in sanctified afflictions, but not in sanctifying afflictions.
  • Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene; Resumes them, to prepare us for the next.
  • Afflictions are but as a dark entry into our Father's house.
  • Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us by the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them.
  • Every man will have his own criterion in forming his judgment of others. I depend very much on the effect of affliction. I consider how a man comes out of the furnace; gold will lie for a month in the furnace without losing a grain.
  • The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.
  • Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.
  • If you would not have affliction visit you twice, listen at once, and attentively, to what it teaches.
  • Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree.
  • We should be more anxious that our afflictions should benefit us than that they should be speedily removed from us.
  • Seek holiness rather than consolation.
  • The cup which my Saviour giveth me, can it be any thing but a cup of salvation?
  • The truly great and good, in affliction, bear a countenance more princely than they are wont; for it is the temper of the highest hearts, like the palm tree, to strive most upward when they are most burdened.
  • What He tells thee in the darkness,
    Weary watcher for the day,
    Grateful lip and heart should utter
    When the shadows flee away.
  • As sure as God ever puts His children into the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them.
  • The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best strength, that he may be able to bear the burden.
  • Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed; and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength in the remembrance of Him as " in all points tempted like as we are," bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.
  • Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than He went through before.
  • However bitter the cup we have to drink, we are sure it contains nothing unnecessary or unkind; and we should take it from His hand with as much meekness as we accept of eternal life with thankfulness.
  • In the dark and cloudy day,
    When earth's riches flee away,
    And the last hope will not stay,
    Saviour, comfort me.
    • Unidentified, p. 11.

[edit] External links

Wiktionary has an entry about affliction.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Affliction"