That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing.

I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn__ sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.

Endure every hardship as a discipline of grace.

Discipline is to present us before grace, it does not produce grace to make sense.

It is no accident that the words discipline and disciple resemble each other in the English language. The most common word in the Gospels for a Christian is disciple.

Christ never told his disciples that they would get an Academy Award for their performances, but He did tell them to expect to have troubles.