Some of Lamb's finest writings were produced amidst deep sorrow, and Hood's apparent gaiety often sprang from a suffering heart.

As he himself wrote, "There's not a string attuned to mirth, But has its chord in melancholy." Again, in science, we have the noble instance of the suffering Wollaston, even in the last stages of the mortal disease which afflicted him, devoting his numbered hours to putting on record, by dictation, the various discoveries and improvements he had made, so that any knowledge he had acquired, calculated to benefit his fellow-creatures, might not be lost.
Afflictions often prove but blessings in disguise.

"Fear not the darkness," said the Persian sage; it "conceals perhaps the springs of the waters of life." Experience is often bitter, but wholesome; only by its teaching can we learn to suffer and be strong.

Character, in its highest forms, is disciplined by trial, and "made perfect through suffering." Even from the deepest sorrow, the patient and thoughtful mind will gather richer wisdom than pleasure ever yielded.
"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made." "Consider," said Jeremy Taylor, "that sad accidents, and a state of afflictions, is a school of virtue.

It reduces our spirits to soberness, and our counsels to moderation; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning....