Life presents itself first and foremost as a task: the task of maintaining itself, the task of earning one's living. If this is accomplished, what is gained is a burden of which one is soon weary.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

-Viktor E. Frankl

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

-C. S. Lewis

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?

-John Steinbeck

The water’s fine, they said. They lied.

-Anyone who’s ever jumped into an icy lake