Every little thing counts in a crisis.

He divines remedies against injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage.

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep - into the evil.

Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

The person who runs away exposes himself to that very danger more than a person who sits quietly.

Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.