"Our difficulties are not a transitory state of affairs... No, they are the normal state of affairs and we should reckon on being angustia temporum ['in straightness of times,' Dan. 9:21] all our lives, so far as the good we want to do is concerned."
Charles de Foucauld

      "It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!"
Abraham Lincoln

      "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as one dieth, so dieth the other; yes, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity."
Ecclesiastes 3:19