Daily quotations came to me via email:

The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear the burden.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all for him to bear; but they are so, because they are the very ones he needs.--RICHTER.

To which I say, "bovine excrement". No one could write such sentiments who has watched a loved one struggle and strangulate, drowning in his own lungs from lung cancer.

No one could pontificate that a burden calls out the best in a person, who has watched someone bend and break under the affliction of schizophrenia.

No one who has watched a child die could puff himself up to say that such a trial was the very one the parent needed.

Some things are too terrible to endure, though endure them we must or perish. And though we've endured them, a part of us has crashed into smithereens, never to be made whole again.

Stupid, cruel sayings--as though someone who cannot bear the pain and loss is somehow wanting, because it was what he needed. And we should not help him in his affliction, lest we impede the improvement of his character or lessen his energy. Horsefeathers!