c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
In interviews with riders that I've read and in conversations that I've had with them, the same thing always comes up: the best part was the suffering. In Amsterdam I once trained with a Canadian rider who was living in Holland. A notorious creampuff: in the sterile art of track racing he was Canadian champion in at least six disciplines, but when it came to toughing it out on the road he didn't have the character.The sky turned black, the water in the ditch rippled, a heavy storm broke loose. The Canadian sat up straight, raised his arms to heaven and shouted: 'Rain! Soak me! Ooh, rain, soak me, make me wet!'How can that be: suffering is suffering, isn't it?In 1910, Milan—San Remo was won by a rider who spent half an hour in a mountain hut, hiding from a snowstorm. Man, did he suffer!In 1919, Brussels—Amiens was won by a rider who rode the last forty kilometers with a flat front tire. Talk about suffering! He arrived at 11.30 at night, with a ninety-minute lead on the only other two riders who finished the race. The day had been like night, trees had whipped back and forth, farmers were blown back into their barns, there were hailstones, bomb craters from the war, crossroads where the gendarmes had run away, and riders had to climb onto one another's shoulders to wipe clean the muddied road signs.Oh, to have been a rider then. Because after the finish all the suffering turns into memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature's payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. 'Good for you.' Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lay with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately. That's why there are riders.Suffering you need; literature is baloney.
— Tim Krabbé, The Rider
Not all writers are silently suffering inside. But it certainly helps.
— Joyce Rachelle
A shout for help isn’t always a cry of pain
—  sometimes it is a hymn of praise.
As far as we are concerned we do not wish to stand in anyone’s way, nor do we wish to bring discredit on the ministry God has given us. Indeed we want to prove ourselves genuine ministers of God whatever we have to go through—patient endurance of troubles or even disasters, being flogged or imprisoned; being mobbed, having to work like slaves, having to go without food or sleep. All this we want to meet with sincerity, with insight and patience; by sheer kindness and the Holy Spirit; with genuine love, speaking the plain truth, and living by the power of God. Our sole defence, our only weapon, is a life of integrity, whether we meet honour or dishonour, praise or blame. Called “impostors” we must be true, called “nobodies” we must be in the public eye. Never far from death, yet here we are alive, always “going through it” yet never “going under”. We know sorrow, yet our joy is inextinguishable. We have “nothing to bless ourselves with” yet we bless many others with true riches. We are penniless, and yet in reality we have everything worth having.
— J.B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English
People always ask, Why does God allow suffering? Why does He allow a child to be beaten? A woman to cry? A holocaust to happen? A good dog to die painfully? Simple truth is, He wants to see for Himself what we’ll do. He’s stood up the candle, put the devil at the wick, and now He wants to see if we blow it out or let it burn down. God is suffering’s biggest spectator.
— Tiffany McDaniel, The Summer that Melted Everything
A man's allowed to make lots of small mistakes, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the mistakes are big ones and they weigh him down, his only solution is to stop taking himself seriously. It's the only way to avoid suffering - suffering, prolonged, can be fatal.
— Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Dirty Havana Trilogy
Mademoiselle, I speak as a friend. Bury your dead! ... Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.''I'm sure that would suit dear Linnet admirably.'Poirot made a gesture. 'I am not thinking of her at this moment! I am thinking of you. You have suffered - yes - but what you are doing now will only prolong the suffering.
— Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
The inartistic methods that we use to blunt anxiety and unartful expedients that we resort to in order to escape pain and numb banality reveals what we dread most, the act of suffering from a mortal loss or the debasement that we earn by wallowing in our decadent acts of escapism.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
No person can escape the germs of their eventual deterioration and destruction. A round-table of physical breakdown and death awaits the rich person and the poor person, as well as the common people and world leaders. The skulls of noble men and savages alike litter the streets of ancient cities. Modern humans live longer than the ancient people did, but eventually we all succumb to the same wretched infirmities.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
When Christianity says that God loves man it means that God LOVES man: not that He has some 'disinterested'; because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds......How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes. It is certainly a burden of glory, not only beyond our deserts but also, except in rare moments of grace, beyond our desiring; we are inclined, like the maidens in the old play, to deprecate the love of Zeus.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Of course, we are drawn to teachers who unconsciously mirror our own psychology. None of us are clean. We all make mistakes. It's the repetition of those mistakes and the refusal to look at them that compound the suffering and assure their continuation.
— Natalie Goldberg, The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
While the classic conversion story involves desperation, hitting bottom, and a plea for help, I think now that it was gratitude, as well as the suffering I'd seen, that made room for me to open my heart to something new.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
I know much less about why God allows people to suffer than I know that He Himself is a suffering God.
— Jonathan Martin, Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You're More Like Jesus Than You Think?
It is for people we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children we are exacting and would rather see. them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records that though He has often rebuded us, condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexcusable sense.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
... that "take" was a word people used for those who had so little to give as to be immeasurable.
— Adam Johnson
I did not know what she suffered from, but I knew that her malady must have been horrible; I knew that from the way she used to embrace me.
— Octave Mirbeau, Le Calvaire
I have spent hours and hours watching elephants, and to come to understand what emotional creatures they are...it's not just a species facing extinction, it's massive individual suffering.
— Mike Bond, The Last Savanna
What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering...
— Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
Paroxysms of pain and twinges of desire leach from universal sources. All human suffering buttons itself to the pang of wanting.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
She falls back like a dead weight. The red hair loosens from the hair band and spreads in the colorful surface of the pillows, her white body is in sharp contrast, the gleam in her bloodshot eyes becomes intense and shines. My aunt, lying like this, looks like a goddess in an orgasm, only that, inside, she is suffering. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. The same is happening to us, we're really disappearing. I think of the matter of our bodies, changeable, disappearing in the particles of the air while we breathe. In this room, everywhere, we are printed on the walls, in the air that settles on things. I breathe and look at her. I'm stuck in her.
— Pat R, Os Homens Nunca Saberão Nada Disto
Fateful encounters with a cruel world reveal our character. No human is immune from heartbreaking loss. Regardless of our socioeconomic status, eventually everybody shall suffer a grievous personal loss, a body blow that inflicts pain of inexpressible magnitude.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
The epitome of our life force turns on the seam where our tempered idealistic expectations meet the annealed exigencies fueling the cataclysm of a pressing personal crisis. Many of us do not decipher who we are and what we truly cherish until we experience the terror of an inconsolable loss. Failure and suffering lead to self-scrutiny.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
The dimension of space and time, represented by what is transpiring in the here and now, is all that we will ever know. Unlike the continuum of perpetual time and infinite space, everything that we know will experience disruption, dissolution, disintegration, dismemberment, and death. The inevitability of our ending represents the tragic comedy of life. Much of our needless suffering emanates from resisting our impermanence rather than embracing our fate. Only through acceptance of the events and situations that occur in a person’s life including suffering, and by releasing our attachments, will a person ever experience enlightenment.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
He who is afraid of suffering, is already suffering fear. Out of fear, true creativity is blocked.
— Chinese Proverb
When a person understands the problem that vexes them, and comprehends the choices that created them, they begin a journey of the mind seeking personal liberation from suffering.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Suffering is an essential component of life. No person escapes suffering, which is indivisible from life itself. Suffering is what places in in contact with the self; it is what allows us to understand the spiritual nature behind our existence.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
One of the primary purposes of suffering is not to weaken the heart of the feeble, but to strengthen the spirit of the brave.
— Sebastian de Assis, The Alchemy of Time
To conquer, you must endure not just your own suffering but the suffering of others. Indifference is the ultimate evolutionary achievement, the highest rung on nature's ladder.
— Rick Yancey, The Last Star
You remember the dialogue you had with yourself, you can quote the emotion word for word, as if you’re still there, as if it matters that you can map in detail the geographies of regret.It starts with a hope and ends with a turn of the stomach: a cringe at the excuses you make for your heart, a momentary forever you remember on alternate days over coffee and novels that hit too close to home.You cry because you know the point at which you could have turned back but didn’t, could have taken time by the throat and resisted, could have ignored the phone, answered that message, said no, said yes, said nothing, smiled - whatever it is that you didn’t do. But by the time that moment ends, it is over and you are in too deep, wondering why there exists no rewind button for the soul, no second chance for the petty player, no backup plan for those who risk everything on nothing, all at once.
— Tania De Rozario, Tender Delirium
Fresh wounds, in later years, often make interesting scars.
— Orlando Ortega-Medina, Jerusalem Ablaze: Stories of Love and Other Obsessions
...[A]ccording to Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition, a being that achieves Buddhahood, although freed from Samsara,the 'wheel of suffering', as the phenomenon of existence is known, will continue to return to work for the benefit of all other sentient beings until such time as each one is similarly liberated.
— Dalai Lama XIV, Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama
Man does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning.
— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
He means to make his subjects merciful and wise; sorrow and struggle bringeth both. We will, he tells me, grow by grieving, live by dying, love by losing. The heart itself is the field of battle and the garden green.
— Andrew Peterson, The Monster in the Hollows
Sooner or later suffering will find you, It's better you find it first.
— Imran Bughio
The problem with trying to find your happiness through avoidance is the nature of reality. Reality simply does not allow us to evade unwanted experiences. Sure, we might be able to escape a few {...] but the evasive life often comes at a cost, like having to live your life in terror. Even if we can successfully ward off some terrifying experiences, we can not advert them all. Particularly, the most unpleasant ones: sickness, old age and death. If our strategy has been to flea unpleasant circumstances, when they come to meet us - as they surely will - our suffering will be great indeed.
— Mark W. Muesse
Two days after his twelfth birthday, a fortnight before his father was jailed for debt, Charles Dickens was sent to work in a blacking factory. There, in a rat-infested room by the docks, he sat for twelve hours a day, labelling boot polish and learning the pain of abandonment. While he never spoke publicly of this ordeal, it would always be with him: in his social conscience and burning ambition, in the hordes of innocent children who languished and died in his fiction.Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory: some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth. And the outcome can't be called. Some of us end up like Dickens, others like Jeffrey Dahmer. It's not a question of good or evil, Pete believes. Just the random brutality of the universe and our native ability to withstand it.
— Armistead Maupin, The Night Listener
The apple was meant to take away the bitter taste, perhaps,” he said.“I imagine that Mr. Turing wasn’t exactly looking for a taste experience,” said Corell.“Man always tries to limit his suffering.
— David Lagercrantz, Fall of Man in Wilmslow
Sometimes when we’re suffering we feel as if we have been singled out. We wonder why God has picked on us. But my life as the rabbi of a small synagogue taught me that if that’s what we think, we are mistaken. We are never alone in our suffering. Scratch the surface of any family, any social gathering, any congregation, and you will find loss and pain there. We may not always be privy to the pain, but it is there just the same. If we had the power to peer inside the heart of any human being, we would uncover there a silent anguish.
— Naomi Levy, To Begin Again: The Journey Toward Comfort, Strength, and Faith in Difficult Times
All suffering is the consequence of a constant quest.
— Nilesh Rathod, Destiny of Shattered Dreams
None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.
— Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
I often wonder if I am entitled to be as happy as I am, given the amount of suffering in the world.
— Dennis Prager, Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual
Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn; And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born.
— Matthew Prior
There is no shadow without the sun.No suffering without divinity.No fear without love.No despair without desire.No hopelessness without faith.
— Brownell Landrum, A Chorus of Voices: DUET stories Volume III - Adult Version
Until you press the switch button of the light in your room on, you shall always have light in your room and still leave in darkness.
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Till thou hast learned to suffer from a saint a well as from the wicked, and to be abused by the godly as well as the ungodly, never look to live a contented or comfortable life, nor ever think thou has truly learned the art of suffering (383).
— Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest
YOUNG WOMAN: Time is altered, the years to came are alteredYou know where you will find meI, fear, I, deathI, the memory beyond reachI, the recollection of the tenderness of your handsI, the sadness of our broken lifeI will defeat "it's not my concern" with my anguish
— Griselda Gambaro, Information for Foreigners: Three Plays
If we are to follow the Jesus who suffered with us and bled for us, we too must suffer. We must hold the dying in our arms. We must shed tears for hungry stomachs, trafficked children, and wandering souls. This is what He wants for us. It's the reason we are called to lay down our nets and take up our crosses to pursue the Suffering Servant. And it's the one thing we will avoid at all costs.It is not enough to feel bad. Religion to me, has always been the routine of feeling guilty for all the things we should do but don't. We must act. This is where life happens, where we begin to participate in our stories. This is when we awaken. Not on the sidelines; not on the outside looking in. Life is lived right in the midst of all this mess. Incidentally, that's where mercy and the miraculous are found. That's where flowers begin to grow again.
— Jeff Goins, Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life
Woe to the soul which God rejoiceth to punish! . . . . Is it not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shal lie roaring perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them; when they shall cry out for mercy, yea, for one drop of water, and God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when non in heaven or earth can help them but God, and hell shall rejoice over them in their calamity(244)?
— Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest
When shall I be past these soul-tormenting fears, and cares, and griefs, and passions? When shall I be out of this frail, this corruptible, ruinous body; this soul-contradicting, insnaring, deceiving flesh? When shall I be out of this vain and vexatious world, whose pleasures are mere deluding dreams and shadowsl whose miseries are real, numerous, and uncessant? How long shall I see the church of Christ lie trodden under the feet of persecutors ; or else, as a ship in the hands of foolish guides, though the supreme Maker doth moderate all for the best? (642-3)
— Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest
Just as a line drawn on water with a stick will quickly vanish and will not last long; even so is human life like a line drawn on water. It is short, limited, and brief; it is full of suffering, full of tribulation. This one should wisely understand, one should do good and live a pure life; for none who is born can escape death.
— Gautama Buddha
Suffering tests the strength of faith.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Suffering fuels strength.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
But this was different, as if some creature had risen from a corner of my cell and taken over every part of me. It swallowed meaning. I hadn't thought suffering would be like this, so ordinary, so dull, and so endless.
— Robyn Cadwallader
Sufferings helps to soften the harden heart.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
When you are molested for your piety; when your religion brings the trial of cruel mockings upon you, then remember it is not your cross, it is Christ's cross
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
No worthy goal should come easily, he told himself. Suffering created value.
— Conn Iggulden, Conqueror
May the Lord comfort the lonely and suffering souls.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Even creative nonviolence can go unnoticed unless participants are attacked.
— Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World
The bulk of suffering does not stem from 'dreadful' experiences but rather from frightening beliefs.
— Abraham Low
She knew as well as anyone that the world could be a place of trial and sorrow, that there was injustice and suffering and heartlessness - there was enough of all that to fill the great Kalahari twice over, but what good did it do to ponder that and that alone? None, she thought.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine
Our sin is our resistance to going along with God's initiative in making suffering reparative. We are deeply drawn towards God, but we also sense how following him will dislocate and transform beyond recognition the forms which have made life tolerable for us. We often react with fear, dismay, hostility. We are at war with ourselves, and responding differently to this inner conflict, we end up at war with each other. So it is undoubtedly true that the result of sin is much suffering. But this is by no means distributed according to desert. Many who are relatively innocent are swept up in this suffering, and some of the worse offenders get off lightly. The proper response to all this is not retrospective book-keeping, but making ourselves capable of responding to God's initiative. But now if that's what sin is, then one can sympathize with a lot of the modern critique of a religion which focuses on the evil tendencies of human nature, and the need for renunciation and sacrifice. This is not because humans are in fact angelic, or there is no point to sacrifice. It's just that focusing on how bad human beings can be, even if it's to refute the often over-rosy views of secular humanists with their reliance on human malleability and therapy, can only strengthen misanthropy, which certainly won’t bring you closer to God; and propounding sacrifice and renunciation for themselves takes you away from the main points, which is following God's initiative. That this can involve sacrifice, we well know from the charter act in this initiative, but renunciation is not is point.
— Charles Taylor, A Secular Age
To be poor is to suffer. It's the kind of suffering that freezes the heart stone cold.
— A Que, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 104
Job tries to comfort himself with philosophical pessimism like the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But God comforts Job with indecipherable mystery, and for the first time Job is comforted. . . . Job flings at God one riddle, God flings back at Job a hundred riddles, and Job is at peace. He is comforted with conundrums.
— G.K. Chesterton
The unavoidable harshness of life surprised none of them, for they were Christians one and all, believing that they inhabited a fallen world, albeit one filled with God's grace.
— Philip Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
In the wilderness, we walk and keep the way of the Creator
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Why they were loaded with bags of beans and peas and anything else they happened to pick up when they were still some distance away from the street where the first blind man and his wife lived, for that is where they are going, is a question that could only occur to someone who has never in his life suffered shortages.
— José Saramago, Blindness
For the modern consciousness, the artist (replacing the saint) is the exemplary sufferer. And among artists, the writer, the man of words, is the person to whom we look to be able best to express his suffering.
— Susan Sontag
The idyll ended, as idylls must.
— Philip Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
When people are in need, you must be present. When people suffer, you must let them know you’re suffering with them.” “The good side of bad acts?” I say. “I would not say that from horror comes goodness. That would be giving horror too much credit. But goodness prevails in spite of horror.
— Mark Matousek, When You're Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living
Thy faith never looks so grand in summer weather as it does in winter?
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
Can it be thattheir prayers and their tears are fruitless? Can it be that love,sacred devoted love, is not all powerful? Oh, no! Howeverpassionate, sinful or rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, theflowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes;they tell us not only of eternal peace, of that great peace of"indifferent" nature; they tell us also of eternal reconciliation andof life without end.
— Ivan Turgenev
All who believe and obey the glorious gospel of God, all who are true and faithful and overcome the world, all who suffer for Christ and his word, all who are chastened and scourged in the Cause of him whose we are—all shall become as their Maker and sit with him on his throne and reign with him forever in everlasting glory.
— Bruce R. McConkie
But how does the Atonement motivate, invite, and draw all men unto the Savior? What causes this gravitational pull-- this spiritual tug? There is a certain compelling power that flows from righteous suffering-- not indiscriminate suffering, not needless suffering, but righteous, voluntary suffering for another. Such suffering for another is the highest and purest form of motivation we can offer to those we love. Contemplate that for a moment: How does one change the attitude or the course of conduct of a loved one whose every step seems bent on destruction? If example fails to influence, words of kindness go unheeded, and the powers of logic are dismissed as chaff before the wind, then where does one turn...In the words of the missionary evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, suffering has "an intesnse moral appeal." Jones once asked Mahatma Gandhi as he sat on a cot in an open courtyard of Yervavda jail, "'Isn't your fasting a species of coercion?' 'Yes,' he said very slowly, 'the same kind of coercion which Jesus exercises upon you from the cross.'" As Jones reflected upon that sobering rejoinder, he said: "I was silent. It was so obviously true that I am silent again every time I think of it. He was prfoundly right. The years have clarified it. And I now see it for what it is: a very morally potent and redenptive power if used rightly. But it has to be used rightly.
— Tad R. Callister, The Infinite Atonement
God does give times of peace in our Christian lives, but it is not all of the time.
— Dillon Burroughs, Faith Acts: A Provocative Call to Live What You Believe
Sometimes the imagination could be even crueler than the bone saw.
— Robert Kurson, Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship
Lewis had experienced more trauma than most of his modern readers ever will.
— Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life
A suffering person does not need a lecture—he needs a listener.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Suffering in life can uncover untold depths of character and unknown strength for service. People who go through life unscathed by sorrow and untouched by pain tend to be shallow in their perspectives on life. Suffering, on the other hand, tends to plow up the surface of our lives to uncover the depths that provide greater strength of purpose and accomplishment. Only deeply plowed earth can yield bountiful harvests.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
[The Lord] does go with us through our sufferings, and He awaits us as we emerge on the other side of the tunnel of testing—into the light of His glorious presence to live with Him forever!
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
In His thirty-three years on earth, Jesus suffered with man; on the cross He suffered for man.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
We enjoy the sense of God’s presence in the midst of suffering here and now. I have talked to people who are experiencing deep pain or severe difficulties, and they have said, “I feel God is so close to me.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Jesus suffered more than any other person in human history.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
The book of Job does not set out to answer the problem of suffering, but to proclaim a God so great that no answer is needed.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
I believe one reason that God allows poverty and suffering is so that His followers may demonstrate Christ’s love, mercy, and comfort to [others].
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Being a Christian does not exempt us from tough training, which may mean suffering. If the training were easy, we would not be prepared for the tough days ahead.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
To suffer for the faith is not a penalty
—  it is a privilege.
The beginning of all pain and suffering in the world started with one act of disobedience. Christian and non-Christian alike have inherited the consequences from our common ancestors, Adam and Eve—our polluted environment and flawed human nature.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
May we store up the truths of God’s Word in our hearts as much as possible, so that we are prepared for whatever suffering we are called upon to endure.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
We can react with bitterness and hate God, as some do, or we can accept suffering as a natural part of life and a condition that comes with living in this world. We cannot avoid suffering, but we can determine our response to it.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
True faith and suffering frequently go hand-in-hand . . .Living for Christ, walking in His way, will not be an easy path.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
The Bible and the history of the church both demonstrate that God’s way for the suffering of His people has not always been the way of escape, but the way of endurance.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
We don’t deliberately look for trouble in life. It comes. Suffering is a universal fact
—  no one can escape its claws.
God has prescribed the remedy for the spiritual sickness of the human race. The solution is personal faith and commitment to Jesus Christ . . .if we deliberately refuse it, we must suffer the horrible consequences.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
No one is exempt from the touch of tragedy: neither the Christian nor the non-Christian; neither the rich nor the poor; neither the leader or the commoner. Crossing all racial, social, political, and economic barriers, suffering reaches out to unite mankind.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
In my years of global travels, I have seen a world in pain . . . Without God’s guidance, our response to suffering is a futile attempt to find solutions to conditions that cannot be solved.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Ours may be the heritage of the withheld promises. We have been blessed through the endurance and faithfulness of those who have suffered in the past; the people around us, or those who will succeed us, may be blessed through our trials and suffering and how we react to them.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Suffering can give us opportunities to witness. The world is a gigantic hospital
—  nowhere is there a greater chance to see the peace and joy of the Lord than when the journey through the valley is the darkest.
The Bible teaches that we are to be patient in suffering. Tears become telescopes to heaven, bringing eternity a little closer.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Tens of thousands of God’s saints and sufferers through the ages have found their dark nights lightened and tortured souls strengthened because they found help from the Spirit in the Word of God.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Our sufferings may be hard to bear, but they teach us lessons which, in turn, equip and enable us to help others.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Lewis is a rare example of someone who liked to think about life's great questions because they were forced on him by his own experience.
— Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life
The most remarkable thing about suffering is that God can use it for our good.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
The most beautiful people I have ever met are the ones who always see life in full colour. They are the ones who have been through hell and back and still stop to savour the parts of life that many seldom pay attention to. They will always use their past experiences as a guiding light to bring forth a more authentic way of life. These are the people I admire most because no matter how much they have suffered, they will always find a reason to make the best of this imperfect world.
— Karen A. Baquiran
To live is to suffer
—  to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
This is perhaps why so many of us who know love fear love. We know that love is not the absence of pain. If anything, love is the promise of pain. No one has loved more deeply than God. Has anyone ever been more betrayed? God would not know suffering if He did not know love. But because He is Love, He chose to suffer on our behalf. Without love there is no glory in suffering.
— Erwin Raphael McManus, The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within
Could it be that the person who sees most, feels and suffers most?
— Clarice Lispector, Selected Crônicas
I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, eyes –I wonder if It weighs like Mine –Or has an Easier size.I wonder if They bore it long –Or did it just begin –I could not tell the Date of Mine –It feels so old a pain –I wonder if it hurts to live –And if They have to try –And whether – could They choose between –It would not be – to die –I note that Some – gone patient long –At length, renew their smile –An imitation of a LightThat has so little Oil –I wonder if when Years have piled –Some Thousands – on the Harm –That hurt them early – such a lapseCould give them any Balm.
— Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Evil and suffering are real . . . They aren’t an illusion, nor are they simply an absence of good. We are fallen creatures living in a fallen world that has been twisted and corrupted by sin, and we all share in its brokenness. Most of all, we share in its tragic legacy of disease and death.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Men who suffer not, attain no perfection. The plant most pruned by the gardeners is that one which, when the summer comes, will have the most beautiful blossoms and the most abundant fruit. The laborer cuts up the earth with his plough, and from that earth comes the rich and plentiful harvest. The more a man is chastened, the greater is the harvest of spiritual virtues shown forth by him.
— Abdu'l-Bahá
Though fervent was our vow,Though ruddily ran our pleasure,Bliss has fulfilled its measure,And sees its sentence now.Ache deep; but make no moans:Smile out; but stilly suffer:The paths of love are rougherThan thoroughfares of stones.
— Thomas Hardy, The Complete Poems
....I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."-Ivan Karamazov
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, and then up to the Reverend Mother. The sound of her voice contained a difference than from any other voicing his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Now I know there are many in our community who are suffering, so I do not say this lightly. But take note of the mindset of the apostles. They rejoiced because they were counted worthy to suffer. Worthy to suffer. Think on that for a moment. Is suffering some kind of badge of honor? Is it something we should consider a blessing?” He paused again. “Maybe it is, in certain circumstances. Now I don’t believe the Scriptures are talking about suffering from the consequences of our sin. But suffering because we refuse to back down from our faith? Now that is an honor, and a blessing. And we should pray for the honor to suffer for the name of Jesus.
— Jennifer H. Westall, Breaking Matthew
Can the sin of one or a few cause suffering for many? The answer, of course, is yes, for no sin is isolated in the life of the sinner. It spreads like poison gas into every available crevice.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
All of this,' the prophet said, serene, 'all of our activities, Sayid, you must understand this, all of your suffering, it's all part of a greater plan.''You'd be surprised at how little comfort I take from that notion.
— Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
God is neither just nor unjust. ‘No one be hurt in the slightest’
—  that is God’s language. Justice and injustice is people’s language.
God is not blind. He knows about you and your problems. He knows of those who are suffering . . . and His love for His children will never leave in times of trouble.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Nowhere does the Bible teach that Christians are to be exempt from the tribulations and natural disasters that come upon the world. It does teach that the Christian can face tribulation, crisis, calamity, and personal suffering with a supernatural power that is not available to the person outside of Christ.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
Some of the happiest Christians I have met have been life-long sufferers. They have had every reason to sigh and complain, being denied so many privileges and pleasures that they see others enjoy, yet they have found greater cause for gratitude and joy than many who are prosperous, vigorous, and strong.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
When suffering comes, learn to trust each day into God’s hands . . . let your lips be filled with prayer and praise.
— Billy Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes
No one escapes suffering. Everyone goes through tough times. Suffering is a part of our human condition and cannot be avoided. Setbacks, failures, pain, suffering, and hardships are all a part of life, but whether we are able to find peace within the storm depends on our resilience and perseverance. Whenever one of our children tells us that they don’t want to fail at something, we remind them that there will be times in their life when they will fail, but it’s how they come through it that matters. If we choose to focus on the negative, the failure itself, the darkness will oppress and consume us. Eventually it will destroy a person. We need to embrace the fact that we’re human and our lives will be filled with suffering and hardship, but we have the ultimate hope and victory in Our Lord.
— Karen Santorum, Bella's Gift: How One Little Girl Transformed Our Family and Inspired a Nation
The hope of Elevation has to remain something random, impossible to see properly, given not to those who earn it but to those with no discernible right to it. Resentment, fear, loathing, and a tiny, flickering light of hope always just out of reach, that is Hell, yes?
— Simon Kurt Unsworth, The Devil's Detective
Whoever thinks from a distance about his situation lives it with suffering; whoever is close to it lives it with consolation, the fruit of a true wisdom.
— Simone Troisi, Chiara Corbella Petrillo
But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But--how can I put this?--I'm almost... drawn to them.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
I know you're in a world of pain, but that pain will lessen. At the beginning you can't see that. You can only see your pain and you think it will never go away.But the nature of pain is that it changes— it changes like a sunset. At first, it's this intense red-orange in the sky, and then it starts getting softer and soften. The texture of pain changes as you work through it. And then one day, you wake up and realize that life isn't just about working through your incest; it's about living, too.- survivor of child sexual abuse
— Ellen Bass, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
A human being can only take so much when their basic rights as a citizen of the earth are being denied to them – or sold at a high cost.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
I will follow anyoneAnd ask everyoneTo stand together as one nationAgainst the killing of innocent citizens
— Widad Akreyi
Day after day, the globalization of terrorism becomes more evident. This is the one of the biggest challenges we are facing. We must stand with the innocent people around the world who are suffering or have lost their loved ones as a result of terrorism.
— Widad Akreyi
It is a mother's noble conceit to believe she has the power to take her child's suffering and do it for him.
— Kadiatou Diallo, My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou
People with Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) have the unfortunate choice of suffering Radio Frequency (RF) sickness without electromagnetically screening their homes or to get natural radiation deficiency sickness with the RF protective screening installed, the choice is which sickness is the most tolerable. It is a really bad situation to be in.
— Steven Magee, Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
The last time I saw Collin was in 1917, at the foot of Mort-Homme.Before the great slaughter, Collin’d been an avid angler. On that day, he was standing at the hole, watching maggots swarm among blow flies on two boys that we couldn’t retrieve for burial without putting our own lives at risk.And there, at the loop hole, he thought of his bamboo rods, his flies and the new reel he hadn’t even tried out yet.Collin was imaging himself on the riverbank, wine cooling in the current his stash of worms in a little metal box and a maggot on his hook, writhing like… Holy shit. Were the corpses getting to him?Collin. The poor guy didn’t even have time to sort out his thoughts. In that split second, he was turned into a slab of bloody meat. A white hot hook drilled right through him and churned through his guts, which spilled out of a hole in his belly.He was cleared out of the first aid station. The major did triage. Stomach wounds weren’t worth the trouble. There were all going to die anyway, and besides, he wasn’t equipped to deal with them.Behind the aid station, next to a pile of wood crosses, there was a heap of body parts and shapeless, oozing human debris laid out on stretchers, stirred only be passing rats and clusters of large white maggots. But on their last run, the stretcher bearers carried him out after all… Old Collin was still alive.From the aid station to the ambulance and from the ambulance to the hospital, all he could remember was his fall into that pit, with maggots swarming over the open wound he had become from head to toe… Come to think of it, where was his head? And what about his feet?In the ambulance, the bumps were so awful and the pain so intense that it would have been a relief to pass out. But he didn’t. He was still alive, writhing on his hook. They carved up old Collin good. They fixed him as best they could, but his hands and legs were gone. So much for fishing.Later, they pinned a medal on him, right there in that putrid recovery room.And later still, they explained to him about gangrene and bandages packed with larvae that feed on death tissue. He owed them his life. From one amputation and operation to the next – thirty-eight in all – the docs finally got him “back on his feet”. But by then, the war was long over.
— Jacques Tardi, Goddamn This War!
No one wants to suffer. But that is the fate of each. And some suffer more. Not necessarily of their own volition. It's not about to enduring the suffering. It's about how you endure it.
— Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki
He’s suffering from Politician’s Logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it.
— Antony Jay, The Complete Yes Minister
Pain is holy ground in a person's life.
— Jason Gray
We want God to change situations. God wants to change us in them.
— Wayne Stiles, Waiting on God: What to Do When God Does Nothing
As a jailer, I never got to understand my charges. But when I became a bandit, I spent a lot of time being close to the lowliest of the low: criminals, the enslaved, deserters, men who had nothing to lose. Contrary to what I had expected, I found that they had a hardscrabble beauty and grace. They were not mean in their nature, but made mean by the meanness of their rulers. The poor were willing to endure much, but the emperor had taken everything from them.
— Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings
When we're inspired by the desire to practice and transform our suffering, the mind of the moment is very beautiful. Sometimes we call it the mind of love. It's because of love that we practice.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Attachment strangles freedom and clarity and makes us a puppet to our desires and cravings; attachment is the root of suffering, a root that if left unattended grows into a tree which drops the fruits of anger, greed, envy, dispersion, competitiveness, ego and pain
— Evan Sutter, Solitude: How Doing Nothing Can Change the World
In terms of the real quality of a human being, only when suffering comes, when pain comes, does a man stand up as a human being. You can see great human beings surface only when the society is really suffering. When India was under the oppression of British rulers, how many wonderful people stood up? Where are they now? They have just fallen back into their comforts, that's all. All those Ghandis, Patels, Tilaks are still there, but they're dormant. When pain came, they all became alive. They left everything behind and stood up as giants. Where are they now? This is the human misfortune that still there's not enough intelligence in the world that human beings will rise to their peaks when everything is well. They wait for calamities.
— Sadhguru, Mystic's Musings
Some trees love an ax, a drunk old-timer mumbled one night at the Tap, back when she still went there, and something in what he said rang true, but when she later remembered what he'd said, she disagreed and though instead that the tree gets used to the ax, which has nothing to do with love. It settles into being chipped away at, bit by bit, blade by blade, until it doesn't feel anything anymore, and then, because nothing else can happen, what's left crumbles to dust.
— Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family
Nature might be a great experimentalist, but one who would never pass muster with an ethics review board – contravening the Helsinki Declaration and every norm of moral decency, left, right, and center.
— Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies