Suffering Quotes

Am reading the life of Mozart and cannot help thinking that one's capacity for suffering is in direct proportion to one's greatness.

~ Lily Koppel

I envy these people. Wide-open suffering, their messes all hanging out. Lives boiled down to raw need--a near-holiness to it. And all of us driving our cars up and down the mountain--we'll go on forever trying to fool each other.

~ Jamie Quatro

No wise forward look can ignore the possibility of many sorrows and the certainty of some. Hope has ever something of dread in her eyes. The road will not be always bright and smooth, but will sometimes plunge down into grim cations, where no sunbeams reach. But even that anticipation may be calm. Thou art with me is enough. He who guides into the gorge will guide through it. It is not a cul de sac, shut in with precipices, at the far end; but it opens out on shining tablelands, where there is greener pasture.

~ Alexander Maclaren

All continuous suffering, is self inflicted.

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

Make sure your fun is not mocking someone’s pain and your enjoyment is not another’s suffering. The melody of your ears must not be the cries of a powerless.

~ Shahla Khan

Through the round of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house-builder. Painful is birth again & again.House-builder, you're seen!You will not build a house again.All your rafters broken,the ridge pole destroyed,gone to the Unformed, the mind has come to the end of craving.

~ Gautama Buddha

Suffering reminds us of our brokenness, our humanity. It disarms us of our self-absorption and magnifies our need for one another.

~ Marquita Burke-Dejesus

The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke, there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.

~ Thomas Carlyle

There is, in fact, no safeword for chemical burns under one’s fingernails.

~ Agnostic Zetetic

Where neither go wrong, the naive only see the world as a victim of bad doctrine; the cynic only sees good doctrine as a victim of the world.

~ Criss Jami

Unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

Why do we come to the world, only to suffer and depart? This is a unsolved misery.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

You don’t change the world by telling it what to do, sitting at home, and telling it what you believe. You believe by throwing yourself into it. Making a leap, getting involved, then waiting, taking some one person’s place for a while, one suffering person at a time.

~ Geoffrey Wood

Your suffering only matters if it connects you to the suffering of others, if it heals them too.

~ Geoffrey Wood

Peace....Henrietta was not quite sure what it was but she knew it was very important. If one wanted it, Grandfather had told her once, one must not hit back when fate hit hard but must allow the hammer-strokes to batter out a hollow place inside one into which peace, like cool water, could flow.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Daydreaming is the purest form of being. Take that away and One suffers.

~ Solange Nicole

Siddhartha embarked on a mission that human civilization has been on since its inception – How to overcome pain and suffering in human life. Siddhartha was perhaps the first scientist on the planet who wanted to address pain and suffering at their roots. While every other thinker from every other religious traditions speculated on the goals of life and afterlife, such speculative queries were nonsensical for Siddhartha for in the mold of a true scientist, he saw no evidential basis for them. Siddhartha didn’t even query what is pain, and where does it come from. He directed his query on how can pain and suffering be removed, an enquiry no speculative philosopher had undertaken before.

~ Ajit Kumar Jha

I must choose to cease from suffering or to cease from loving.

~ Marcel Proust

Suffering has a noble purpose.

~ Marquita Burke-Dejesus

God allows us to face the tension whether we like it or not.

~ Donald Miller

It’s easy to thank God and to be happy when you live a sheltered life and have no concept of suffering, Suffer and then do all of the above.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

Those who suffer suffer because hurt people hurt people, and busy people let it happen. So am I going to be busy or am I going to be brave?

~ Marquita Burke-Dejesus

I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.

~ David Pearce

I'd realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.

~ Isabel Allende

A sincere and warmly-expressed apology can produce the same effects as morphine on a suffering soul.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Most of the dreams that have suffered to death were murdered by their own owners.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

But how to be present to another? Our hearts are so hard. We are so insensitive to the suffering of others. We must pray the Holy Spirit to change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh so that we may give life, for love is giving of life and liberty. By our confidence in another we can bring forth new aspirations and a taste for life in him. We can help the miserable person to live, to progress and to grow. And he will only begin to want to live when he has been told by our gestures, words, the tone of our voice, our look, our whole being that it is important that he live.

~ Jean Vanier

Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. That is its purpose.

~ Seth (Spirit)

Do you think that a doe in the jaws of a tiger feels less horror than you? People thought up the idea that animals don't have the same capability for suffering as humans, because otherwise they couldn't bear the knowledge that they are surrounded by a world of nature that is horror and nothing but horror. Paul was pleased that man was gradually covering the whole earth with concrete. It was as if he were watching a cruel murderess being walled up.

~ Milan Kundera

No one can sing well, play well, or write well, without living through moments of the deepest pain and anguish. Every real talent has known times of torturing depression when the heart in its agony has cried out to God: “Why hast Thou forsaken me? What have I done that I should suffer so? And then, at the very darkest moment, suddenly, the veil is torn from their eyes! Truth, with her flaming torch, stands before them, and they understand that God sends them suffering to strengthen and ennoble their talent, that it may touch men's hearts and show to tired wanderers on earth glimpses of heaven.

~ Aimée Dostoyevsky

…suffering can be a work of art. It can be made of buried and rising things, helpless and undiscovered, song of frustrated want, silence after desire. It can be the test of the self falling short, constrained, distorted, disturbed or rebuffed, the vacuum left by longing, call without an answer.

~ Lydia Millet

One who walks in blindness and confusion cries out more than one who knows why he is suffering.

~ Davin Turney

Humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Are you so dead inside you don't feel the daily anguish, terror and deathly suffering of millions? What happened to you? You've changed.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Those who have suffered in the hands of others,know what it is to be free.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Every moment is brand new, but we often fill the new with fear of the future or pain of the past instead of simply enjoying the present.

~ Vivian Amis

Resurrection hope turned those who believed it into a counter-empire, an alternative society that knew the worst that tyrants could do and knew that the true God had the answer.

~ Bible Review

Intelligence is often worshiped, even when that intelligence allows unfathomable injustice and suffering to occur under its smart watch.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Your suffering needs to be respected. Don't try to ignore the hurt, because it is real. Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.

~ Bryant Mcgill

For those who praise God and say “God is good,” or, ‘I’m so blessed,” when you get what YOU want, try praising Him and saying, “God is good,” and “I’m so blessed,” when you’re suffering. To do the first is effortless. The masses do it, that's how easy it is. To do the latter requires something greater: strength, faith and gratitude - no matter the ouch involved.

~ Donna Lynn Hope