Difficulty

“ The very greatest things—great thoughts, discoveries, inventions—have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty. ”

“ A mental crisis, by its very difficulty, is likely to call up the thought of some person we have been used to look to as a guide, and the confronting of the two ideas, that of the person and that of the problem, compels us to answer the question What would he have thought of it? ”

“ The real stress and strain in life arises from the difficulty of applying principles to special cases in hand, and it is just this difficulty that is experienced amid the shock of the conflict by many souls, even those who are illuminated by the Holy Ghost. ”

“ That is rather difficult, but the merit in all things consists in the difficulty. ”

“ My dear friend, are mental perplexity and despondency, moral difficulty, spiritual apathy, and a general bitter internal struggle with existence, less real trials, less positive troubles, than the most afflicting circumstances generally so classed? ”

“ How should we struggle against difficulties?
It is difficulties that show what men are. Consequently, when a difficulty befalls, remember that God, like a physical trainer, has matched you with a rugged young man. ”

“ The difficulty and the great abstruseness of the objects treated, the importance, the transcendency of the consequences to which they lead, according to the road followed, demand that no labor whatever should be spared to penetrate these matters. ”

“ A difficulty grounded on the fact of temporal and outward privations and sufferings, is solved by being infinitely increased, that is, by the assertion of the same principle on the determination of our inward and everlasting weal and woe. ”

“ Had no lunch.’ But he is only stunned by the unvanquishable difficulty of his existence. ”

“ So he with difficulty and labour hard Moved on, with difficulty and labour he; ”

“ Or hide year face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it, And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how did you take it? You are beaten to earth? ”

“ Then compare with all this the duties, difficulties, and dangers of the state of life upon which you purpose to enter. If you feel compelled to say to yourself: "When I remember the weakness of my will and the force of the temptations which assail me, I do not think that I am capable of fulfilling the duties of that state, or of overcoming the difficulties which it presents," it becomes plain that this road to heaven is too steep for you. ”

“ By the consequences I do not mean what the world will think of you, but, rather, the personal results of your action—what you must suffer while you are in the world, and what you must suffer when far beyond the world. ”

“ You can comprehend how one becomes tired of the very stones of a place,—the odours, the colours, the shapes of Shadows, and the tint of its sky;—and how small irritations become colossal and crushing by years of repetition;—yet perhaps you will not comprehend that one can become weary of a whole system of life, of civilization, even with very limited experience. ”

“ You say you are chained by circumstances; you cry out for better opportunities, for a wider scope, for improved physical conditions, and perhaps you inwardly curse the fate that binds you hand and foot. ”

“ I do not repent that I roused you from your dream, though your present position is painful. I have done nothing more than hasten a crisis, which every soul like yours has sooner or later to pass through, and where the essential thing is, at what time of life it is endured. ”

“ Wherefore, it is incumbent on you to face the facts; call to your aid the rare philosophy of common sense; struggle manfully against this dreadful, appalling, yet perfectly natural catastrophe; accept the situation; hush the throbbings of your tortured heart; ask God for strength to bear the heavy burden, and be wise. ”

“ The question which is said to be beset with difficulties is in fact very easy—that is, its difficulties arise from conflicting interests and passions, and not from the uncertainty of its operation and end. ”

“ Would you not rather wrap your garment about you, and meet the present inconvenience for the sake of a future good? You inhabit a world where difficulties, vexations, and disappointments spring up in the paths of knowledge, duty, and enjoyment. ”

“ I, too, ‘find myself facing as stoutly as I can a hard, combative existence, full of doubts, difficulties, and disappointments, quite a hard enough life without dark countenances at my elbow.’ Give me pleasant company. ”

“ You, doubtless, must lament with me, the narrowness of our minds, in receiving the most blessed things, with the intrusion of necessary business—the cares of life—the heavy conflicts we have also to experience, with many painful visits from the enemy of our souls—the native reluctant of the body, and the pressure of many trying thoughts. ”

“ But in view of the bigger things of life, the tremendous struggle going on so near, the agony of the sick and wounded, the suffering of the women and children, my own little qualms get lost in the shuffle, and my one consuming desire is to help in any way I can. ”

“ There comes to every one at times the inquiring thought, of what use is life? What will be the result of all this seemingly useless toil, these states of unrest, these earnest efforts of the soul unappreciated, these best endeavors misunderstood? Such questions flood the reason at times, and we are ready to lay down our life weapons, scarce caring how the busy scene goes on. ”

“ Poverty, care, anger, coldness, and indifference, the rage of passion, the obstinate retention of narrow purposes, indications of change and division in the spiritual world, entire dependence on that of Nature—in one word all that is implied in the transitory condition of human life—leaves its indelible, if quite incalculable, expression on the varied surface of the faces of mankind. ”

“ Forgotten little units in our disdainful world, we pass them scornfully by. Other lives, and perhaps better, do you think? For them the struggle never came which holds us in a fist of brass, and thrashes us up and down the pavement of life. ”

“ The common burden of life we have, indeed, all to bear—and they are not very gracious or lovely souls who seek to put it off on others—but for this additional burden, this burden of "being consistent" and having a "strong character," does it seem very wise, in so brief an interval, to put the stress just there? ”

“ Would I could foresee a term to our misery!—Who but yourself shall find a remedy for our misfortunes? Shall we delay, until time brings to light that which is now a secret, and the affront we have received entail on us a shame more intolerable than death itself? ”

“ What a hallowed and important crisis is that, when a glimpse of the intellectual or moral world breaks in upon the mind—what complicated reflections of regret and astonishment arise, while it strives to arrange and disclose its conceptions and ideas! ”

“ The now unclogged mind grasps with vigor any subject presented to it, the spirits are exuberant and the physical frame buoyant. But, is the trouble cured, is it permanently eradicated from the system? ”

“ In the midst of thy afflictions, nature lends thee no support, no comfort except the advice that thou shouldst yield to them. Obey her dictates, and thou shalt sink into the dust; but listen to thyself, and even in the heart of suffering, thou shalt rise up into higher action. ”

“ See from hence what weaknesses human nature is capable of, and make allowances for such in all your plans and reasonings. Study the characters of the people you have to do with, and know what they are, instead of thinking them what they should be; address yourself generally to the senses, to the heart, and to the weaknesses of mankind, but very rarely to their reason. ”

“ Thus, in the ordinary affairs of life, difficulties which threaten to impede our progress when viewed in long perspective, and from which the faint-hearted turn back in despair, when fairly encountered and grappled with, may often be overcome with half the labour and pain we contemplated. ”

“ I will ask you, therefore, to raise your mind above your personal sorrow and to conceive in the mass the thousands of beings who suffer from similar causes. Thousands, mark you, from every rank of society. ”

“ Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in every way. ”

“ Royce, Studies of Good and Evil, 14, in discussing the Problem of Job, suggests the following solution: “When you suffer, your sufferings are God's sufferings, not his external work, not his external penalty, not the fruit of his neglect, but identically his own personal woe. ”

“ To unknown seas?
Must I drift on? and are my struggles vain?
The hand I lift all powerless to control?
To fight and fail still be my maddening lot,
And lose my soul?
Why have a soul, if that its fate is fixed? ”

“ And when you come to man, what a chaos of hungers and impulses keep thrusting him through his cycle of quaint tasks! And in every human heart you find some sorrow, some frustration, some lurking pang. ”

“ Of most of us affrighted and diseased,
But rather by the common snarls of life
That come to test us and to strengthen us
In this the prentice-age of discontent,
Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame. ”

“ Oh, how they seem to strain each nerve! How desperate their all but Herculean efforts to try and save themselves! One moment they appear to be lost; the next we notice them again struggling on as determinedly as ever. ”

“ Sorely as I have struggled, I have yet to encounter that common myth of weak men, an insurmountable barrier. The imperfection of our lives— what is it but the imperfection of our planning and doing? Shattered ideals—what hand shatters them but one's own? ”

“ Passionately convinced (at twenty) that we had sworn ourselves for life to each cause which we espoused, we have pleaded and planned and denounced and persuaded; have struck the shrewdest blows which our strength could compass, and devised the most dangerous pitfalls for our opponents' feet which wit could suggest. ”

“ I sometimes wonder why it is that troubles pile up. Why they are not scattered along through our lives, instead of being accumulated, and then dumped upon our heads all at once. It doesn't seem like a fair game to me. ”

“ How frightful a thing it is to consider what—under an overruling hand and will omnipotent—may be the consequences of the smallest deed we do. The consequences immediate, proximate, future! How many lives, what an amount of misery, how much damnation, may depend upon a light word, an idle jest, a sportive trick! ”

“ It is not life that's complicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life. ”

“ Evidently some mind, full of energy and forethought, had made its appearance late in the history of these failing generations and had begun a fight to reverse failure and turn back the tide of aggression. ”

“ For the mind, oppressed and weighed down by its sorrows, sinks into a weak and timorous despondency; inclining us to submit, almost without resistance, to the incumbent affliction; or if we struggle at all with it, it is only to ease the labouring heart by putting forth some fruitless sighs and ineffectual complainings. ”