“Happiness does not await us all. One needn’t be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another.”
Letter to K.S. Barantsevich (March 3, 1888)
Letters
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Anton Chekhov 222
Russian dramatist, author and physician 1860–1904Related quotes
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
Context: Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man who, like Satan, thought himself, for an instant, equal to God; but who now acknowledges, with Christian humility, that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom... There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
“Why, one wonders, does lightning strike in one place rather than another?”
P 86
The Search Warrant (2000)
Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
The Road to Oz (1909)
Later Oz novels
No. 169 (13 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
As quoted in "2011's Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters" http://www.fpa.es/en/awards/2011/leonard-cohen-1/speech/
We would reply that these experiences are trials in relation to our faith, which indicates that with regard to troubling or painful experiences we have duties resulting from our human vocation; in other words, we must prove our faith in relation to God and in relation to ourselves. In relation to God, by our intelligence, our sense of the absolute, and thus our sense of relativities and proportions; and in relation to ourselves, by our character, our resignation to destiny, our gratitude. There are in fact two ways to overcome the traces that evil, or more precisely suffering, leaves in the soul: these are, firstly, our awareness of the Sovereign Good, which coincides with our hope to the extent that this awareness penetrates us; and secondly, our acceptance of what, in religious language, is called the "will of God"; and assuredly it is a great victory over oneself to accept a destiny because it is God's will and for no other reason.
[2003, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, World Wisdom, 215, 978-0-94153227-3]
Spiritual life, Trials