Quotes on Suffering

Oh, how I like those little mortifications that are seen by nobody, such as rising a quarter of an hour sooner, rising for a little while in the night to pray!

If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget. Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition, they're suffering from childhood.

Jesus Christ has taken the lead on the way of the cross. He has suffered first. He does not drive us toward suffering but shares it with us, wanting us to have life and to have it in abundance.

Understanding and Love are not two separate things, but just one. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you cannot help but love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.

NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.

You will pass through storms and heavy rains, and at times you will suffer defeat. The essence of the creative life, however, is not to give up in the face of defeat but to follow the rainbow that exists within your heart.

What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The I and the you vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved.

About one month before he was killed, when asked by David Frost how his obituary should read: Something about the fact that I made some contribution to either my country, or those who were less well off. I think back to what Camus wrote about the fact that perhaps this world is a world in which children suffer, but we can lessen the number of suffering children, and if you do not do this, then who will do this? I'd like to feel that I'd done something to lessen that suffering.

Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.

What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

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?

In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.

But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?

Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?

Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.

One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about _x000D_ it or not: what is the purpose of life? From the moment of birth _x000D_ every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering. _x000D_ Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affects this. _x000D_ >From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment. _x000D_ Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the _x000D_ greatest degree of happiness.

In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.

How could people like these, without words to put to their emotions and passions, manage? They could, at best, only suffer dumbly. Their pains and humiliations would work themselves out in their characters alone: like evil spirits possessing a body, so that the body itself might appear innocent of what it did.

Why do men learn through pain and suffering, and not through pleasure and happiness? Very simply, because pleasure and happiness accustom one to satisfaction with the things given in this world, whereas pain and suffering drive one to seek a more profound happiness beyond the limitations of this world.

Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.