Suffering Quotes

The soul that loves and suffers is in the sublime state.

~ Victor Hugo

Just because a person successfully steers a voyage through hell doesn't mean he ever wants to sail that route again.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

...everything I treasure is broken - it's of no use to anybody but me...

~ John Geddes

Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about

~ John Green

We come to the end of suffering, through suffering.

~ T. Scott Mcleod

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

~ John Green

...love is suffering - that's the happy ending...

~ John Geddes

it seemed to him that no matter what evils a man had committed, making him suffer purely for the sake of suffering was pointless. It didn't undo the harm he had wrought; it didn't please anyone or improve anyone's life.

~ Kim Fielding

And you thought: they're used to it. But that was how those who suffered less always thought about those who suffered more, that they were used to it, that they no longer felt it as you did. Nobody ever got used to it. All they learned to do was to stop letting it show.

~ James Meek

...you go back to liberate the captives and sadly realize, some want to remain tied down in the cave...

~ John Geddes

This was too much for him to handle. It was like watching memories of his life play out from a different camera angle, sometimes with new scenes added. He was living DVD extras.

~ Dennis Sharpe

...the real absurdity is that to love is to suffer, but the reverse isn't always true...

~ John Geddes

Why does it hurt so much? Why does it have to hurt?

~ Zoë Marriott

...it's always somebody's fault - I blame you for my helpless love - do you think I chose this? Your beauty compelled me...

~ John Geddes

This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls, --what declaimers!

~ Victor Hugo

...you can't rationalize suffering - it's indeterminate - the real unknowable variable God substitutes in...

~ John Geddes

Let us remember: when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant; but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free.

~ A.w. Tozer

I replied that I did not quite know what my ailment had been, but that I had certainly suffered a good deal especially in mind. Further, on this subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for the details of what I had undergone belonged to a portion of my existence in which I never expected my godmother to take a share. Into what a new region would such a confidence have led that hale, serene nature! The difference between her and me might be figured by that between the stately ship cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old, dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide between them the rule of the great deep. No, the Louisa Bretton never was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own counsel, and spins no yarns.

~ Charlotte Brontë

I still think that the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, just having no one... That is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.

~ Mother Teresa

When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.

~ Oswald Chambers

After all, what is suffering but an awareness of suffering?

~ Nancy Farmer

As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can.

~ Virginia Woolf

No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it’s only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying, once gone, what is left is only an object.

~ Diana Gabaldon

This last week has been a little hell for both of us simply because I didn't understand my own feelings. And because I can't understand them, I blame her for provoking in me feelings that make my world seem suddenly unsafe.

~ Paulo Coelho

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply. God actually rises up storms of conflict in relationships at times in order to accomplish that deeper work in our character. We cannot love our enemies in our own strength. This is graduate-level grace. Are you willing to enter this school? Are you willing to take the test? If you pass, you can expect to be elevated to a new level in the Kingdom. For He brings us through these tests as preparation for greater use in the Kingdom. You must pass the test first.

~ A.w. Tozer

The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.

~ Ally Condie

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way un which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity -even under the most difficult circumstances- to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

What is heroic is not making life any harder that it has to be.

~ Marty Rubin

Suffering shapes the life force, sometimes into anger, sometimes into blame and self-pity. Eventually it may show us the wisdom of embracing and loving life.

~ Rachel Naomi Remen

I know that suffering is one place where He ministers to us the most. So to think that we've had our quota would be foolish. I am just longing for the day when all the pain stops.

~ Mary Beth Chapman

It's hard to know, isn't it, whether the things we face are just because the world is full of sin and sinful people, or if God is working out a plan,' Grandma continued. 'I happen to think it's both. There's sin, but through it all, He takes the mess we make and paints a masterpiece. In fact, I'm quite certain that before God can ever bless a woman—and use her to impact many—He uses the hammer, the file, and the furnace to do a holy work.

~ Tricia Goyer

God pours out his choicest blessings on those who are anxious that nothing shall stick to their hands. Individuals who value the rainy day above the present agony of the world will get no blessing from God.

~ William Macdonald

By looking to the Source, to the Creator of nature, we can remember how to navigate life organically, with less struggle, and less suffering.

~ Jeffrey R. Anderson

You are enjoying the gift of genius. When ordinary people are confronted with multiple tragedies, the pain scarcely increases. They simple can't feel the extra burdens. But you have a greater capacity for suffering.

~ Vernor Vinge

But they both agreed that it's always nice to know that your wife is desired by another man, although they wouldn't go any further than that.

~ Paulo Coelho

Maybe awful things is how God speaks to us, Vernon thought, trudging up the lightless tunnel. Maybe folks don’t trust in good things no more. Maybe awful things is all God’s got to remind us he’s alive. Maybe war is God come to life in men. Vernon pushed on toward the light of day. He stepped out onto the ledge and into the heat, and it felt like leaving a theater after the matinee had shown a sad film, the glare of sunshine after the darkness far too real to suffer.

~ Alan Heathcock

Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

He's been through so much and to watch that boy suffer makes me wish this world wasn't so cruel.

~ Shannon A. Thompson

One simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer