Discipline and Wisdom

Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death.

My son, if your heart is wise, then my heart will be glad indeed; my inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak what is right.

—Proverbs 23:12-16

Difficult Trials

“Difficult trials are merely challenges which most other people will be unwilling or unable to overcome, but which I, with tenacity, resilience, and discipline, will prevail over, thereby earning the rewards envied by many and attained by few. When I come up against a difficulty, I have learned to think, ‘Good. This is an opportunity to move ahead of those less capable and less motivated individuals who will give up, even though I will not.’” —Steven R. Hobbs

Distractions and Meals

“Healthy distractions are like gourmet meals; they demand something of you in time, preparation, patience, and effort, and they contribute to your long-term growth and well-being. Unhealthy distractions are like junk food; they demand very little of you in time, preparation, patience, and effort, and leave you feeling unfulfilled and regretful in the long-term.” —Steven R. Hobbs

Struggle and Progress

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress….This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and those will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” —Frederick Douglass, speech at Canandaigua, New York, 1857