Explore Quotes on Suffering

Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.

Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

Pain and love - the whole of life, in short - cannot be looked on as a disease just because they make us suffer.

Pain is a message asking for our help.

There are some arts which to those that possess them are painful, but to those that use them are helpful, a common good to laymen, but to those that practise them grievous. Of such arts there is one which the Greeks call medicine. For the medical man sees terrible sights, touches unpleasant things, and the misfortunes of others bring a harvest of sorrows that are peculiarly his; but the sick by means of the art rid themselves of the worst of evils, disease, suffering, pain and death.

On the one hand, then, in the reproductive functions proper-menstruation, defloration, pregnancy and parturition-woman is biologically doomed to suffer. Nature seems to have no hesitation in administering to her strong doses of pain, and she can do nothing but submit passively to the regimen prescribed. On the other hand, as regards sexual attraction, which is necessary for the act of impregnation, and as regards the erotic pleasures experienced during the act itself, the woman may be on an equal footing with the man.

Pain is inevitable, it eventually touches us all. Suffering is optional.

The real thing is that you are suffering from your expectations. When they are not fulfilled - and they are never going to be fulfilled - frustration arises, failure arises, and you feel neglected, as if existence does not care for you. Drop expectations for the future. Remain open, remain available to whatsoever happens, but don't plan ahead. Don't make any psychological, fixed ideas about the future - that things should be like this - and much more suffering will disappear.

That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.

There are very few new things in this world, very few. That's why people that are young, if they're smart, try to profit from the experience of an older guy so they won't have to go through all the pain and suffering. But a certain amount of pain and suffer is good, because it makes a person think they've learned.

Drugs are not the way to the light. They won't lead to a fairy-tale life, they lead to suffering.

I also, as I think most people do, have a healthy instinct that if we upset the balance of nature, we are in all probability going to suffer a reaction. With world growth, and population as it is, this reaction must increase.

Success and suffering are vitally and organically linked. If you succeed without suffering, it is because someone suffered for you; if you suffer without succeeding, it is in order that someone else may succeed after you.

It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.

It is true that I have had heartache and tragedy in my life. These are things none of us avoids. Suffering is the price of being alive.

I wanted to be the exception to the other kids, but in the right way._x000D__x000D_We have a lot of suffering in our part of the world, but that suffering is, in a way, a blessing. _x000D__x000D_Obviously, I could not afford to go to school without a scholarship, so that meant I had to excel in order to get one.

I believe that I was lucky to have suffered._x000D__x000D_Some people don't realize that in suffering there is great potential, because if you are deprived for any reason._x000D__x000D_Politically, financially, socially or otherwise and if you set your mind in the right direction, you will find that the only way to survive is for you to excel, by being better so you can be treated better.

Suffering is due to our disconnection with the inner soul. Meditation is establishing that connection.

Half the human race can change its name and sometimes its nation without suffering — at least half! All women!

There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, 'Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.' The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.

Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, fuels our love and carries our friendships, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limits... A passion for life is contagious and uplifting. Passion cuts both ways... Those that make you feel on top of the world are equally able to turn it upside down... In my life I want to create passion in my own life and with those I care for. I want to feel, experience and live every emotion. I will suffer through the bad for the heights of the good.