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“Everyone likes happiness, no one likes pain. But you can't have a rainbow without a little rain.”

“Think of your pain like a bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

“Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.”
As quoted in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 128 (1986), p. 137; later in Quotable Quotes (1997) by Editors of Reader's Digest

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Context: We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."