Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humility, and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish.

Who hath not known ill fortune, never knew himself, or his own virtue.

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.

True valor, on virtue founded strong, meets all events alike.

Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.