“Do not be afraid of your difficulties.Do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are. For when you have made the best of an adversity, it becomes the stepping stone to a splendid opportunity.”
― Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891)
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) said something similar: "Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty."
Roosevelt said this on November 4, 1910 almost 2 decades after the death of HPB.