Trials

Trials are difficult experiences which test the character of the person experiencing them.

Quotes

• TRIAL, n. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. In order to effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused. If the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• Q: You just don't get it, do you, Jean-Luc? The trial never ends. We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did.
  • Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, "All Good Things", Star Trek: The Next Generation, (May 23, 1994).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 814-15

• Pray, pray, thou who also weepest,—
  And the drops will slacken so;
  Weep, weep—and the watch thou keepest,
  With a quicker count will go.
  Think,—the shadow on the dial
  For the nature most undone,
  Marks the passing of the trial,
  Proves the presence of the sun.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fourfold Aspect.

• The child of trial, to mortality
  And all its changeful influences given;
  On the green earth decreed to move and die,
  And yet by such a fate prepared for heaven.
  • Sir Humphrey Davy, Written after Recovery from a Dangerous Illness.

• 'Tis a lesson you should heed,
  Try, try, try again.
  If at first you don't succeed,
  Try, try, try again.
  • W. E. Hickson, Try and try again.

• But noble souls, through dust and heat,
  Rise from disaster and defeat
  The stronger.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Sifting of Peter, Stanza 7.

• Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd.
  • John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671), Book 2, line 228.

• There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below.
  • Charles Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves, Cross-Bearers.

• As sure as ever God puts His children in the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them.
  • Charles Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves, Privileges of Trial.

• Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of; they just turn up some of the ill weeds on to the surface.
  • Charles Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves, The Use of Trial.

See also

• Trial by jury