“How in the world--when what is such knowledge but suffering?”

“What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.”

“When you see how you react when you suffer that's when you know what you are made of.”

“Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.”

“As stone suffers of stoniness,As light of its shiningness,As birds of their wingedness,So I of my whoness.And what the cure of all this?What the not and not suffering?What the better and later of this?What the more me of me?How for the pain-world to beMore world and no pain?How for the faithful rain to fallMore wet and more dry?How for the wilful blood to runMore salt-red and sweet-white?And how for me in my actualnessTo more shriek and more smile?By no other miracles,By the same knowing poison,By an improved anguish,By my further dying.”

“The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God.”