c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world.
— William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham
An Odonian’s goal is positive, not negative. Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it’s merely destructive.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for the present; its anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary recollections of the past!
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear. ... It's too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it's as of now real. ... He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. ... But he could choose not to listen.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Afflictions are light when compared with what we really deserve. They are light when compared with the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. But perhaps their real lightness is best seen by comparing them with the weight of glory which is awaiting us.
— Arthur W. Pink
One learns a good deal in the school of suffering. I wonder what would have happened to me if I had had an easy life, and had not had the privilege of tasting the joys of jail and all it means." ~ Badsha Khan, quote in Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, p. 87
— Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan: A Man to Match His Mountains
On accepting adversity in our lives: Always it is initiated by an act of will on our part; we set ourselves to believe in the overruling goodness, providence, and sovereignty of God and refuse to turn aside no matter what may come, no matter how we may feel. I mistakenly thought I could not trust God unless I felt like trusting Him. Now I am learning that trusting God is first of all a matter of the will. I choose to trust in God, and my feelings eventually follow.
— Margaret Clarkson, Grace Grows Best in Winter
The will has no overall purpose, aims at no highest good, and can never be satisfied. Although it is our essence, it strikes us as an alien agency within, striving for life and procreation blindly, mediated only secondarily by consciousness. Instinctive sexuality is at our core, interfering constantly with the life of the intellect. To be an individual expression of this will is to lead a life of continual desire, deficiency, and suffering. Pleasure or satisfaction exists only relative to a felt lack; it is negative, merely the cessation of an episode of striving or suffering, and has no value of itself. Nothing we can achieve by conscious act of will alters the will to life within us. There is no free will. Human actions, as part of the natural order, are determined [....] As individual parts of the empirical world we are ineluctably pushed through life by a force inside us which is not of our choosing, which gives rise to needs and desires we can never fully satisfy, and is without ultimate purpose. Schopenhauer concludes that it would have been better not to exist—and that the world itself is something whose existence we should deplore rather than celebrate.
— Christopher Janaway
He were found drowned. He were coming home very hopeless o' aught on earth. He thought God could na be harder than men; mappen not so hard; mappen as tender as a mother; mappen tenderer. I'm not saying he did right, and I'm not saying he didn't wrong. All I say is, may neither me nor mine ever have his sore heart, or we may do like things.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Those who are in pain – most of the world’s populations at any given moment – do not do a lot of thinking, speaking, or writing about suffering. All their energy goes into surviving. That is why a lot of what is said and written about suffering seems hollow to those actually in pain.
— Luke Timothy Johnson, The Living Gospel
I loathe, detest, hate and abominate the block, the gibbet, the rack, the pillory and the faggots with equal passion," said the old man vehemently. "Not only are they devilishly cruel but they are not even common sense. They do not lesson the evil in the world, they increase it, by making those who handle these cruelties as wicked as those who suffer them. No, I'm wrong, more wicked, for there is always some expiation made in the endurance of suffering and none at all in the infliction of it.
— Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch
Desire is suffering. A simple equation, and a nice catchphrase. But flipped around, it is more troubling: suffering is desire.
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
I was beginning to think that in life there might be some suffering that was worth enduring.
— Ingrid Betancourt, Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle
He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely.
— Charles Dickens
Suffering can thus be seen in large part as a kind of resistance or reactivity to the pain of the present moment. (p. 74)
— Donald Rothberg, The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World
I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision.
— Charles Lamb
The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it round the neck and use it.
— Brennan Manning, The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus
It's a shame there has to be a tragedy before the best in people will finally shine.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
When someone is suffering, there is a deep, visceral reaction in the core of our being, a flood of empathy and a frightfully desperate compulsion to give aid.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved by his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
While God is not the author of evil and He never prompts or condones sin, nothing occurs without His sovereign oversight. Others may choose to do evil deeds and God's people may suffer in the short term, but He will transform the evil intentions of evil people into opportunities for the enrichment of those in His care.
— Charles R. Swindoll
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light; but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
Once past the comfort zone in either direction, humans soon lost the ability to discriminate bad from worse.
— Roger Zelazny, Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming
A man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the 'size' of human suffering is absolutely relative.
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
Behind Calvary's cross is the throne of heaven.
— James Stewart
Christianity is like a nail," he (Yemelian Yaroslavsky). "The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.
— John Ortberg, Who Is This Man?: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus
That which should distinguish the suffering of believers from unbelievers is the confidence that our suffering is under the control of an all-powerful and all-loving God. Our suffering has meaning and purpose in God's eternal plan, and He brings or allows to come into our lives only that which is for His glory and our good.
— Jerry Bridges, Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
Love is something worth suffering for...
— Scott Hahn, Hope for Hard Times
This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and memoirs I read--that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will; and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pass to the real life above.
— Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward
Some animal rights activists are demanding vegetarianism, even veganism now, or nothing. But since only 4 or 5 percent of Americans claim to be vegetarians, 'nothing' is the far more likely outcome. I ask these activists to weigh the horrors of Bladen County's industrial farms and the Tar Heel slaughterhouse against the consequences of doing nothing to alleviate the hour-to-hour sufferings of its victims. Is not a life lived off the factory farm and a death humanely inflicted superior to the terrible lives we know they lead and the horrible deaths we know they suffer in Bladen County today?
— Steven M. Wise, An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River
So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. An when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bides the soul be rid of it.
— Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
Fact One: Races are won or lost in key moments. Fact Two: Success in the sport is, above all else, about enduring suffering.
— Chris McCormack, I'm Here To Win: A World Champion's Advice for Peak Performance
The answer to the problem of evil does not lie in trying to establish its point of origin, for that is simply not revealed to us. Rather, in the moment of the cross, it becomes clear that evil is utterly subverted for good.... If God can take the greatest of evils and turn them for the greatest of goods, then how much more can he take the lesser evils which litter human history, from individual tragedies to international disasters, and turn them to his good purpose as well.
— Carl R. Trueman
The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. 69 L
— Oswald Chambers, Baffled to Fight Better
One day, when I thought I was alone, I prayed in church. While making this offering before the cross, a parishioner came up to me, put her arm around my shoulder and prayed, ‘Dear God, please heal Father Jim. And give me his cancer.’ I was incredulous. I looked at her, and then back to the Lord and quietly prayed, ‘If she insists, Lord, hear our prayer!’ Later I was able to pray, ‘Lord, rather than give my cancer to her, give her heart of love to me – the love that prompted her to deny her very self and pray in such a loving way.
— Jim Willig, Lessons From the School of Suffering: A Young Priest With Cancer Teaches Us How to Live
It is our contemporary culture’s tragedy to have lost any sense of suffering as a positive dimension of human existence. Beginning with the premise that life ought to be without pain, we make suffering something to be avoided at all cost. We consider the equation between evil and suffering so self-evident that we make avoiding suffering the equal of fighting evil. No wonder we are the most narcotized generation ever to inhabit the earth, searching for ever more effective addictive patterns to anaesthetize our existence.
— Luke Timothy Johnson, The Living Gospel
Towards the end of the Second World War, when I was sixteen years old, I was taken out of school and forced into the army. After a brief period of training at a base in Wüzburg, I arrived at the front, which by that time had already crossed the Rhine into Germany. There were well over a hundred in my company, all of whom were very young. One evening the company commander sent me with a message to battalion headquarters. I wandered all night long through destroyed, burning villages and farms, and when in the morning I returned to my company I found only the dead, nothing but dead, overrun by a combined bomber and tank assault. I could see only dead and empty faces, where the day before I had shared childhood fears and youthful laughter. I remember nothing but a wordless cry. Thus I see myself to this very day, and behind this memory all my childhood dreams crumble away.
— Johann Baptist Metz, A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity
There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures.
— Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
Theology alone doesn't convine anyone.Only those words which are pregnant with action, theology that is born of suffering, of struggles, of the poor--this theology is a testimony. This theology leads to conversion. (Leonardo Boff, p. 169)
— Mev Puleo, The Struggle Is One: Voices and Visions of Liberation
All believers in Christ, the Scripture teaches, will suffer-all of us. You will be glorified, Paul says, if you suffer with him. The problem with too many of us is not that we don't suffer, but that we assume that only Third World Christians or heroic missionaries are suffering. My boys didn't know that they were suffering in Russia; they would feel it as suffering now.
— Russell D. Moore, Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches
I could not feel, smell, see, hear, or taste the world around me. If I had allowed myself to experience these things in all their intensity, I might have lost my mind. If I had allowed myself to cry, I might never have been able to stop. So I survived, but I never felt joy, never felt safe.
— Yeonmi Park, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
All at once I feel desperate, outraged. Why am I alone doomed to spend nights of torment, with an unseen jailer, when all the rest of the world sleeps peacefully? By what laws have I been tried and condemned, without my knowledge, and to such a heavy sentence, too, when I do not even know of what or by whom I have been indicted? A wild impulse comes to me to protest, to demand a hearing, to refuse to submit any longer to such injustice. But to whom can one appeal when one does not even know where to find the judge? How can one ever hope to prove one’s innocence when there is no means of knowing of what one has been accused? No, there’s no justice for people like us in the world: all that we can do is to suffer as bravely as possible and put our oppressors to shame.
— Anna Kavan, Asylum Piece
What can be achieved with suffering can be achieved without it.
— Marty Rubin
The strong do as they will while the weak suffer what they must.
— Karen Essex, Pharaoh
...In a case like this, the thing is (in my own opinion) to draw back upon oneself, and not to strive after any other being, not to relate the suffering, occasioned by both, to the cause of the suffering (which lies so far outside) but to make it fruitful for oneself. If you transfer what goes on in your emotion into solitude and do not bring your vacillating and tremulous feeling into the dangerous proximity of magnetic forces, it will, through its inherent flexibility, assume of its own accord the position that is natural and necessary to it. In any case, it helps to remind oneself very often that over everything that exists there are laws which never fail to operate, which come rushing, rather, to manifest and prove themselves upon every stone and upon every feather we let fall.So all erring consists simply in the failure to recognize the natural laws to which we are subject in the given instance, and every solution begins with our alertness and concentration, which gently draw us into the chain of events and restore to our will its balancing counterweights..."―from letter to Emanuel von Bodman Westerwede bei Bremen (August 17, 1901)
— Rainer Maria Rilke
For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking a man, even though he may a very strong one.
— Homer
On the far horizon waved some flicker of lightMy heart, a city of suffering, awoke in a state of dreamMy eyes, turning restless, still dreaming,the morning, dawning in this vacuous abode of separation.
— Faiz Ahmed Faiz
I felt as though the vessel if my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer.
— Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human
But there is no value to suffering!
— Anne Rice, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis
When one has been as near to the reality of Life (which after all is Death) as I have been dearest, one only remembers the beautiful and tender moments and all the rest becomes a half veiled mist of unrealities. Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon . . . . Darling I love you—I love you—and had I loved you just a little less I might have remained with you—only after one has created a very beautiful blossom one does not drag it through the mire. The higher you set your ideal the lower it falls. I have loved you my darling as it is given to few men to be loved. I only beseech you that the tragedy which commenced in love should also end with it. . . .Ruttie Jinnah's last letter to Jinnah
— Rafia Zakaria, The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan
To be wounded by the suffering of others is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
— Gregory Baum, The Oil Has Not Run Dry: The Story of My Theological Pathway
The world has become jaded. Romance has died, some no longer believe in love, and because of this, they suffer.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman
Admiral Nelson won the great Battle of Trafalgar against the French during the Napoleonic Wars. The Viscount of Camperdown, who also won many battles during that period, was one of the admirals under Nelson. The Viscount of Canperdown's family crest had a ship with full sails on it and with two little Latin words: Disce pai—"Lean to suffer." That is precisely what Peter and Paul and Job and Moses and Jesus would say to you and me as believers in the fallen world. "Learn to suffer.
— J. Ligon Duncan III, Does Grace Grow Best in Winter?
While we are together, I will never suffer a prison again.
— Victoria Aveyard, Glass Sword
...that the doctor being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer.
— Thomas Sydenham
No, what one wanted, really, was the city or anyone in it to see how one suffered. Of course, this being New York, they'd likely just tell him Get over it . . . Was it possible that the last month had been a kind of judgement on him for ever daring to pretend that anything meant anything at all?
— Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain...
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
A life of hardship and personal suffering is unavoidable. A person must endure many humiliations of the mind and body, and expect persons whom they trusted to someday betray them. People inevitably witness the death of their loved ones. We also witness acts of depravity committed by criminals that lurk in every society and rouge acts of scandal committed by government officials in charge of the public welfare. A person must nonetheless resist personal discouragement, sadness, dejection, and despondency. I must reach an accord with pain, suffering, and anguish, or forevermore be tortured by reality while constantly seeking to escape from the inescapable agony of being.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Human suffering is caused mainly by ideas, emotions, and thoughts which are the handiwork of the human itself.
— Shai Tubali, A Guide to Bliss: Transforming Your Life through Mind Expansion
When the Buddha declares there is escape from sorrow, the escape is Nirvana, which is not a place, like heaven, but a psychological state of mind in which you are are released from desire and fear. And your life becomes harmonious, centered and affirmative. Even with suffering. The Buddhists speak of the bodhisattva - the one who knows immortality, yet voluntarily enters into the field of the fragmentation of time and participates willingly and joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
It seems improbable, unless one knows how obstinately, purposefully and unerringly any stricken animal will find its way to the same place where in the past it has endured suffering and recovered.
— Georgi Vladimov, Faithful Ruslan
Suffering, though, can be nothing more than a sad and sorry thing without the presence on the part of the sufferer of a graceful heart, an accepting and open heart, a heart that holds no malice toward the inflictors of his or suffering This is a difficult concept to understand, and it is even more difficult to internalize, but it has everything to do with the way of nonviolence. We are talking about love here....This is a broader, deeper, more all-encompassing love. It is a love that acepts and embraces the hateful and the hurtful. It is a love that recognizes the spark of the divine in each of us, even in those who would raise their hand against us, those we might call our enemy.
— John Lewis
It isn't enough that the bad guy is prevented from doing his bad deeds; he must suffer as much as possible. It is as if the existence of evil - or something that can be designated as evil - provides a safe haven for the good to engage in evil. It's a safe space to indulge in inflicting harm, to experience the sublime of suffering.
— M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
Experience makes good people better." She was staring at the lake. "How does it do that?" "Through their suffering." "I had enough of that," he said in disgust. "We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness All it taught me was to stay away from it. I am sick of all I have suffered." She shrank away a little.
— Bernard Malamud, The Natural
All I want to convey to anyone who is suffering while they're young is that sometimes you get a reprieve when you're older. Maybe it's just your perception that changes, but somehow it eases up, because life ebbs and flows. When you're ebbing, maybe you're strengthening your perspective of the world. And when you're flowing, maybe you can use everything to create, to write, to sing, act, and eventually stand taller and see farther.
— Cyndi Lauper, Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir
Chasms are deceived by rumors of their depth.
— Marty Rubin
Mindfulness means being present to whatever is happening here and now - when mindfulness is strong, there is no room left in the mind for wanting something else. With less liking and disliking of what arises, there is less pushing and pulling on the world, less defining of the threshold between self and other, resulting in a reduced construction of self. As the influence of self diminishes, suffering diminishes in proportion.
— Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
Suffering is not a consequence, it is about permission.
— Karen A. Baquiran
The world we inhabit is one where children feel sorrow long before they have the words to express it.
— Russ Ramsey, Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death
Suffering, my child?...Suffering is the divine trigger you can press..for you to accomplish your dreams...
— Viorica Dragotel
The suffering that is there in this world is such that it will fall off (go away), but people give support to it.
— Dada Bhagwan
The goal of becoming a better person is within the reach of us all, at every moment. ... We need only invoke the power of mindful awareness in any action of body, speech, or mind to elevate that action from the unconscious reflex of a trained creature to the awakened choice of a human being who is guided to a higher life by wisdom. ... We may not "complete" the work in this lifetime and root out the very mechanism by which our minds and bodies manifest their hereditary karmic toxins. Yet to whatever extent we can notice them as they arise, understand them for what they are, and gently abandon our grasp of them - if only for this moment - we are gaining ground in the grand scheme of things. And even a modest moment of emancipation from the unwholesome roots of greed, hatred, and delusion is a moment without suffering.
— Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
Suffering is the common lot of man.
— Theresa Breslin, Remembrance
No one suffers as beautifully as you do.
— V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light
Sometimes lightning struck twice; sometimes, one person got more than their share of suffering.
— Rob Thomas, Mr. Kiss and Tell
God will spare no pains necessary to bring us into relationship with Himself, even as that may mean permitting whatever pain is necessary to do so. Suffering is the grist by which the mill of faith yields the raw material of new character, greater insight and deeper relationship with God.
— James Castleton, MD, Mending of a Broken Heart
Unless you refuse the bad things happening to you, you will continue to suffer with your own consent!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
On the ward there was hurt and pain so big and so deep that speech could not express it. I had been interested in philosophy, and suddenly philosophy came alive for me, for here the basic questions of human existence were not abstractions: they were embodied in human suffering
— Frank X. Barron, Unusual Associates: A Festschrift for Frank Barron
What is the return on investment of being wedded to your suffering? What do you receive from stewing in victim consciousness? Righteous indignation or an excuse not to change?
— Lisa Cypers Kamen, Are We Happy Yet?: Eight Keys to Unlocking a Joyful Life
Human societies train people to "keep a stiff upper lip" and to "be strong" by which they mean the person should endure negative emotions. This is bad advice. Several branches of science have been studying human thriving. The results, when compiled, point to the fact that people thrive when they feel emotionally good and suffer when they do not.
— Jeanine Joy, Ph.D.
The main problem in a person's life is never his suffering
—  it's his sin.
God is not indifferent to suffering. In suffering He created us knowing, in the moment of creation, the necessity of the crucifixion. Christ suffered that we might have confidence that God understands our suffering. In suffering, God reconciled His beloved to Himself. In suffering, He makes us like Himself …
— James Castleton, MD, Mending of a Broken Heart
The mind says what it says,and the heart objects,and it wants what it wants,and it always wins,and I break in tears,and I cover my ears,and I close my eyes,and I scream my lungs,and I wish i never met you.
— A.K.Yasmine
Radically accept, release and allow suffering to move through you like a passing storm.
— Lisa Cypers Kamen, Are We Happy Yet?: Eight Keys to Unlocking a Joyful Life
What is the ROI (return on investment) of your suffering?
— Lisa Cypers Kamen, Are We Happy Yet?: Eight Keys to Unlocking a Joyful Life
The mess we are making of our planet is caused by our own greed, hatred, and delusion. Aside from the existential afflictions of aging, death, and at least some of the illnesses, every instance we see of human misery, injustice, affliction. or sufficient and pain will, upon sufficient and sometimes even cursory investigation, be shown to be rooted in the attachment, aversion, or ignorance of some person or some group of people together.
— Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
I shall not be defined by what I have suffered but how I have endured them.
— Donna Lynn Hope
And so beneath the weight lay IAnd suffered death, but could not die.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems
He had felt viable being near her or knowing she was listening to him or having the comfort of their casual meeting within a dream. With her, he simply and effortlessly felt better. They all felt better, unburdened, cared for, and heard. Being connected to her eased his suffering as he gave her his. It was only when she began to drown in the cumulation of commingled torments that to save whatever part of her was left, she disconnected, and when she did, his suffering returned and remained with him longer than she had. But instead of saving herself, it was the additional burden of her own anguish from letting them all go that took her breath and inevitably pulled her under.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Most people would rather suffer through a bad situation than take the steps needed to free themselves, especially if they knew that by freeing themselves, it would make them hunted.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Born of Night
We don’t have a good excuse before God if our nation and people are suffering as a result of our complacency
— Sunday Adelaja
Suffering often clarifies what really matters in life.
— Skip Prichard
If one suffers from the pain and the hardship, its friends feel empathy and sadness too. Whereas, its opponents celebrate and enjoy that.
— Ehsan Sehgal
How will we ever get out of the labyrinth of suffering ?
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Then the Lord God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!” So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden.
— New Living Translation NLT 1996
Love, no matter how high or low its form, must be requited, or the lover suffers.
— Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion
If you endured the suffering, shall find the joy of overcoming any difficulty.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
It takes all my strength to do daily tasks. To some people, I’m just a number. I’m a projected food stamps debit card lifetime member. I’m seen as crazy or insane, but it doesn’t matter. I know I am bigger than my suffering.
— Jacquelyn Nicole Davis, Trace The Grace: A Memoir
If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary... •	If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of existence in his own peculiar way.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays
Broken MelodyBroken melody — tear sparkling in the eyeOf a woman loved…Please past,Jewel lost,A trampled dreamLips unkissedIn the broken melody.With silent sobs the naked shoulders shake,Their whiteness dazzling…Stabbed, stabbed with remorseFor the moments of mindlessness,For her ruined fate,For the happiness lostIn the broken melody.Face hidden in her hands in shame,Remorsefully the woman weeps,With heart despairing(A broken guitar,A voice stifledOn lips kissed by painIn the broken melody).Silent he stands beside the woman weepingScolding tears of shameThat dim her eyes.Some money on the table quickly laysAnd goes away,Leaving the woman lostIn the broken melody.But when another comes, lust mounts again,The heated bloodPounds furiously through the veins,Benumbing mind… and only gaspsAnd grants are heardIn the horrid melody.(Translated by R.Elsie)
— Millosh Gjergj Nikolla (Migjeni), Free Verse
The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world... They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet... Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
They say: misfortunes, sufferings...well, if someone said to me right now, this minute: do you want to remain the way you were before captivity, or live through it all over again? For God's sake, captivity again and horsemeat! Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it's only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there's life, there's happiness. There's much, much still to come.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Fate demands that we continue suffering, until we willingly seek out and discover the sacred path of righteousness. Until we surrender to the sameness of life, we are unable to experience the absolute ground zero of reality. Only by surrendering our desires, by readjusting our consciousness to a state undefined, unbound, and unmotivated by passion and desire, will we experience life transformed.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Soci malorum, compagnon de miseres!
— Schopenhauer
Once upon a time there was a child who had a golden brain. His parents only discovered this by chance when he injured his head and gold instead of blood flowed out. They then began to look after him carefully and would not let him play with other children for fear of being robbed. When the boy was grown up and wanted to go out into the world, his mother said: “We have done so much for you,we ought to be able to share your wealth.” Then her son took a large piece of gold out of his brain and gave it to his mother. He lived in great style with a friend who, however, robbed him one night and ran away. After that the man resolved to guard his secret and to go out to work, because his reserves were visibly dwindling. One day he fell in love with a beautiful girl who loved him too, but no more than the beautiful clothes he gave her so lavishly. He married her and was very happy, but after two years she died and he spent the rest of his wealth on her funeral, which had to be splendid. Once, as he was creeping through the streets,weak,poor, and unhappy, he saw a beautiful little pair of boots that would have been perfect for his wife. He forgot that she was dead- perhaps because his emptied brain no longer worked- and entered the shop to buy the boots. But in that very moment he fell, and the shopkeeper saw a dead man lying on the ground.Daudet, who was to die from an illness of the spinal cord, wrote following this story:This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering…Does not mother love belong to the ‘smallest’, but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?
— Alice  Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?' she asked. 'Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more pain¬ful?''Wouldn't it be great if it did?' I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering. Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteris¬tic of the organism is striving. Describing life otherwise was like painting a tiger without stripes. After so many years of living with death, I'd come to understand that the easiest death wasn't necessarily the best. We talked it over. Our families gave their blessing. We decided to have a child. We would carry on living, instead of dying.
— Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
It is a property of works of genius that, even when they represent vividly the nothingness of things, even when they clearly show and make you feel the inevitable unhappiness of life, even when they express the most terrible despair, nevertheless to a great soul that finds itself in a state of extreme dejection, disenchantment, nothingness, boredom, and discouragement about life, or in the most bitter and deathly misfortune (whether on account of lofty, powerful passions or something else), such works always bring consolation, [260] and rekindle enthusiasm, and, though they treat and represent nothing but death, they restore, albeit momentarily, the life that it had lost. And so, while that which is seen in the reality of things grieves and kills the soul, when seen in imitation or any other form in works of genius (e.g., in lyric poetry, which is not, properly speaking, imitation), it opens and revives the heart. In fact, just as the author who described and felt so powerfully the vanity of illusions, but still preserved a great fund of them and gave ample proof of this by conveying their vanity so accurately (see pp. 214–15), in the same way, the reader, however disillusioned both about himself and about what he reads, is yet drawn by the author into the same deception and illusion that he experienced and that are hidden in the most intimate recesses of his spirit. And the recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of beauty and greatness that fills the soul when it is conveyed by a work of genius." from "Zibaldone
— leopardi
Self-deception and vanity are grievous sin. The ego is the cause of all human suffering. We suffer from life only when we fail to examine the cause of our sorrow. Letting go of destructive illusions and freeing oneself from egotism of self-pity enables a person to sense the rich intertexture of their inner world, which is the only facet of reality that we exercise exclusive dominion and control.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
One learns not to need by needing.
— Antonio Porchia, Voices
You can be saved without suffering, but you cannot be sanctified without suffering. That doesn't mean you seek it out, but it does mean you see it for what it is. It's an opportunity to glorify God.
— Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life
The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering.
— Matthieu Ricard, A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion
Positive disintegration is the sublimation of suffering
— Martijn Budel
How wil we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?
— John Green
Her smile didn't mean her suffering was over, but when it appeared it was something beautiful to see; a rare flower.
— Melissa C. Water, Lady Injury
You have seen so much purposeless suffering that at least being killed for a reason can be borne?
— N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate
Once upon a time there was a child who had a golden brain. His parents only discovered this by chance when he injured his head and gold instead of blood flowed out. They then began to look after him carefully and would not let him play with other children for fear of being robbed. When the boy was grown up and wanted to go out into the world, his mother said: “We have done so much for you,we ought to be able to share your wealth.” Then her son took a large piece of gold out of his brain and gave it to his mother. He lived in great style with a friend who, however, robbed him one night and ran away. After that the man resolved to guard his secret and to go out to work, because his reserves were visibly dwindling. One day he fell in love with a beautiful girl who loved him too, but no more than the beautiful clothes he gave her so lavishly. He married her and was very happy, but after two years she died and he spent the rest of his wealth on her funeral, which had to be splendid. Once, as he was creeping through the streets,weak,poor, and unhappy, he saw a beautiful little pair of boots that would have been perfect for his wife. He forgot that she was dead- perhaps because his emptied brain no longer worked- and entered the shop to buy the boots. But in that very moment he fell, and the shopkeeper saw a dead man lying on the ground.This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering…Does not mother love belong to the ‘smallest’, but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?
— Alice MIller, The Drama of the gifted child
How to build a fire: stay true to your perspective! Then burn.
— Ralph L Harmon
We have only to conquer Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.Now is the triumph of the cross.
— T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
Ageing is not easy, Sennhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Love must always meet its unwanted end.
— Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal
The tears of God are the meaning of history.
— Nicholas Wolterstorff
I may be immortal, even if for a short time. But if it were up to me, I would not endure for even one more day.
— Ross  Turner, Midnight
Nevertheless, some free time remains. What’s to be done? How do you use your time? In dedicating yourself to helping people? But basically other people don’t interest you. Listening to records? That used to be a solution, but as the years go by you have to say that music moves you less and less. Taken in its widest sense, a spot of do-it-yourself can be a way out. But the fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments when your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end all combine to plunge you into a state of real suffering.
— Michel Houellebecq, Whatever
Only the strong knew what suffering was. The weak never found themselves in the strong webs; the strong man was the one who found himself day and night bound and struggling, so that the work he did, the plotting and the owning and the buying, the decisions he made—and in a large family there had been many to make—were often hard-fibered.
— John Ehle, The Land Breakers
Language is accurate: you run for your life. If you are dying, leave. If you are suffering, move. There is no other law, only movement.
— Amélie Nothomb, Ni d'Ève ni d'Adam
Suffering becomes beautiful whenever a person bears great calamities with cheerfulness.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Whoever can survive the stress involved in every institutional/documentation process, etc in Nigeria can survive anywhere.
— OMOSOHWOFA CASEY
The capacity for suffering – or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness – is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language or for higher mathematics. Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark ‘the insuperable line’ that determines whether the interests of a being should be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic. The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a child. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because mice will suffer if they are treated in this way.
— Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
If God has entrusted us with suffering, let us set our hearts and minds to work together with Him to enable Him to bring out of our trials all the glory He longs us to know.
— Margaret Clarkson, Destined for Glory: The Meaning of Suffering
Do not let anybody reign with you, until they suffer with you.
— Olawale Daniel
I value and honor the way that my suffering brings me to further search and surrender.
— Maureen Brady, Daybreak: Meditations For Women Survivors Of Sexual Abuse
There is no house of life out of reach of the stream. So, to be surprised when the rain descends and the foods come, and the winds blow and beat upon the house, as though some strange thing happened unto us, is unreasonable and unjust; it so miscalls our good Master, who never told us to build for fair weather or even to be careful to build out of reach of floods. "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" is not a fair-weather word. "My son, if thou comest to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation." "Ye will not get leave to steal quietly to heaven, in Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross." Even so, even though we must walk in the land of fear, there is no need to fear. The power of His resurrection comes before the fellowship of His sufferings.
— Amy Carmichael, Gold by Moonlight
In fact, she [Pamela Flitton] seemed to prefer 'older men' on the whole, possibly because of their potentiality for deeper suffering. Young men might superficially transcend their seniors in this respect, but they probably showed less endurance in sustaining that state, while, once pinioned, the middle-aged could be made to writhe almost indefinitely.
— Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement