c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before.Some do the first, others the second. To attain the first there is but one means: moral enlightenment — the increase of light in oneself and attention to what it shows. To attain the second — to hide from oneself the indications of conscience—there are two means: one external and the other internal. The external means consists in occupations that divert one’s attention from the indications given by conscience; the internal method consists in darkening conscience itself.As a man has two ways of avoiding seeing an object that is before him: either by diverting his sight to other more striking objects, or by obstructing the sight of his own eyes—just so a man can hide from himself the indications of conscience in two ways: either by the external method of diverting his attention to various occupations, cares, amusements, or games; or by the internal method of obstructing the organ of attention itself. For people of dull, limited moral feeling, the external diversions are often quite sufficient to enable them not to perceive the indications conscience gives of the wrongness of their lives. But for morally sensitive people those means are often insufficient.The external means do not quite divert attention from the consciousness of discord between one’s life and the demands of conscience. This consciousness hampers one’s life; and in order to be able to go on living as before, people have recourse to the reliable, internal method, which is that of darkening conscience itself by poisoning the brain with stupefying substances.One is not living as conscience demands, yet lacks the strength to reshape one’s life in accord with its demands. The diversions which might distract attention from the consciousness of this discord are insufficient, or have become stale, and so—in order to be able to live on, disregarding the indications conscience gives of the wrongness of their life—people (by poisoning it temporarily) stop the activity of the organ through which conscience manifests itself, as a man by covering his eyes hides from himself what he does not wish to see.
— Leo Tolstoy, Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?: And Other Writings
In the end we have one choice: to suffer well or suffer badly, to reach for or to reject that quality which is termed, equally, by both religious and secular, grace.
— Anna Lyndsey, Girl in the Dark
If we are taught by God in affliction we are blessed. When God teaches, he applies his instruction to the heart. He commands light to shine out of darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6). The Holy Spirit brings divine truths in such a clear and convincing light that the soul sits down fully satisfied. The soul both sweetly and freely acquiesces in the revealed truths. When God teaches, the soul experiences truth as David (Psalm 119:71). Some only know notionally, but David knew by experience; he became more acquainted with the Word. He knew it more, loved it better, and was more transformed in the nature of it. Thus, Paul, “I know who I have believed” (2 Timothy 1:12) – “I have experienced his faithfulness and his all-sufficiency; I can trust my all with him. I am sure he will keep it safe to that day.” Those taught of God in affliction can speak experimentally, in one degree or another. They can speak of their communion with God (Psalm 23:4). The sweet singer of Israel had comfortable presence. Those taught of God can say: “As we have heard, so we have seen. I have experienced this word upon mine heart, and can set my seal that God is true.” God’s teaching is a powerful teaching. It conveys strength as well as light. Truth only understood needs to be put into action and practice. God’s teachings are sweet to the taste. David rolled them as sugar under his tongue, and received more sweetness than Samson from his honeycomb. Luther said he would not live in paradise without the Word, but with the Word he could live in hell itself. Teaching is sweet because it is suitable to the renewed man (Jeremiah 15:16).
— Thomas Case
I am not afraid,” she said; which seemed quite presumptuous enough.“You are not afraid of suffering?”“Yes, I am afraid of suffering. But I am not afraid of ghosts. And I think people suffer too easily,” she added.“I don’t believe you do,” said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in his pockets.“I don’t think that’s a fault,” she answered. “It is not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.”“You were not, certainly.”“I am not speaking of myself.” And she turned away a little.“No, it isn’t a fault,” said her cousin. “It’s a merit to be strong.”“Only, if you don’t suffer, they call you hard,” Isabel remarked. They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had returned from the gallery, and paused in the hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her bed-room candle, which he had taken from a niche. “Never mind what they call you,” he said. “When you do suffer, they call you an idiot. The great point is to be as happy as possible.
— Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
Before it was just her infernal curves that fretted me, but now I've taken her whole soul into my soul, and through her I've become a man!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Live is like a river in which you merge. When you struggle against the current, you suffer. When you flow with the current in a smooth and fluid experience, life becomes effortless and joyful.
— Peggy Sealfon, Escape from Anxiety: Supercharge Your Life with Powerful Strategies from A to Z
Life is like a river in which you merge. When you struggle against the current, you suffer. When you flow with the current in a smooth and fluid experience, life becomes effortless and joyful.
— Peggy Sealfon, Escape from Anxiety: Supercharge Your Life with Powerful Strategies from A to Z
When indeed does the temporal suffering oppress a man most terribly? Is it not when it seems to him that it has no significance, that it neither secures nor gains anything for him? Is it not when the suffering, as the impatient man expresses it, is without meaning or purpose?
— Søren Kierkegaard
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
— Nelson Mandel
Suffering is wisdom's school teacher.
— Lauren Kate, Teardrop
As night goes round the Earth always there are hundreds of thousands of people who should be sleeping, lying awake, fearing a bully, fearing a cruel competition, dreading lest they cannot make good, ill of some illness they cannot comprehend, distressed by some irrational quarrel, maddened by some thwarted instinct or some suppressed perverted desire.
— H.G. Wells, Men Like Gods
The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, honest or dishonest, but an attempt. It had left on all a single mark in common: on lips smiling with malice, on lips loose with renunciation, on lips tight with uncertain dignity—on all—the mark of suffering.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
And I read hundreds and thousands of books, day and night, always awake and always eager to seek health. But in no book I found what I was looking for. Then, shut up in my parents' house, I thought and suffered for hundreds and thousands of hours, always awake and always mindful of the tremendous anxiety of health. But I still have not found what I was looking for.
— Giovanni Papini, Il Tragico Quotidiano
Laziness bears the fruit of hunger and crimes, and those who choose the right path are those willing to pay the price
— Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign
Inhumanity is part of humanity as much as suffering is a part of stories. Cruelty is written in the human script.
— Johnny Rich, The Human Script
After his wife died, in great pain C. S. Lewis realized, “If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came.”3 Our own suffering is often our wake-up call. But even if you aren’t now facing it, look around and you’ll see many who are....Suffering and evil exert a force that either pushes us away from God or pulls us toward him....Unfortunately, most evangelical churches—whether traditional, liturgical, or emergent—have failed to teach people to think biblically about the realities of evil and suffering. A pastor’s daughter told me, “I was never taught the Christian life was going to be difficult. I’ve discovered it is, and I wasn’t ready.”...On the other side of death, the Bible promises that all who know him will fall into the open arms of a holy, loving, and gracious God—the greatest miracle, the answer to the problem of evil and suffering. He promises us an eternal kingdom on the New Earth, where he says of those who come to trust him in this present world of evil and suffering, “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:3–4)
— Randy Alcorn, If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil
That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn't do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer.
— Chad Harbach
Every flaw you haveOnly endears me more to you;Each line of sadness on your faceSpeaks of the suffering you have been through;And the strength it tookTo come out alive;The strain it caused youJust to survive;Perhaps you will never know the prideI have for you, overcoming your trials;For while most jog for metersYou ran for miles;At the end, Death takes us allBut not all of us live in order not to fall;Many live for their own selfish meansThey live in order to avoid the pain;But they will never achieve as you have doneFor life without honourIs life in vain.
— Sarah Brownlee
You are the call and I am the answer,You are the wish, and I the fulfilment,You are the night, and I the day. What else? It is perfect enough. It is perfectly complete. You and I, What more—? Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!
— D.H. Lawrence, Look! We Have Come Through!
If your Lord calls you to suffering, do not be dismayed, for He will provide a deeper portion of Christ in your suffering. The softest pillow will be placed under your head though you must set your bare feet among thorns. Do not be afraid at suffering for Christ, for He has a sweet peace for a sufferer. God has called you to Christ's side, and if the wind is now in His face, you cannot expect to rest on the sheltered side of the hill. You cannot be above your Master who received many an innocent stroke. The greatest temptation out of hell is to live without trials. A pool of standing water will turn stagnant. Faith grows more with the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withers without adversity. You cannot sneak quietly into heaven without a cross. Crosses form us into His image. They cut away the pieces of our corruption. Lord cut, carve, wound; Lord do anything to perfect Your image in us and make us fit for glory! We need winnowing before we enter the kingdom of God. O what I owe to the file, hammer, and furnace! Why should I be surprised at the plough that makes such deep furrows in my soul? Whatever direction the wind blows, it will blow us to the Lord. His hand will direct us safely to the heavenly shore to find the weight of eternal glory. As we look back to our pains and suffering, we shall see that suffering is not worthy to be compared to our first night's welcome home in heaven. If we could smell of heaven and our country above, our crosses would not bite us. Lay all your loads by faith on Christ, ease yourself, and let Him bear all. He can, He does, and He will bear you. Whether God comes with a rod or a crown, He comes with Himself. "Have courage, I am your salvation!" Welcome, welcome Jesus!
— Samuel Rutherford
Because it’s not true that suffering purifies people; that we become better, wiser, more understanding in the process. We become cold and indifferent. When, for the first time in our lives, we properly understand our fate, we become almost calm. Calm and extraordinarily, terrifyingly lonely.
— Sándor Márai, La mujer justa
We live in truly unbelievable times. Autism is an epidemic in most westerncountries, western governments are nothing more than corrupt corporations, and corporations areroutinely suppressing information regarding the toxicity of many common household items. The resultis that many people are unnecessarily suffering from easily preventable developmental problems,sickness and cancer.
— Steven Magee
When God closes a door He does not always open a window. Sometimes He wants you to sit in the quiet darkness while He transforms your fear into trust. How long that takes, is often up to you!
— William Branks
[B]ecause the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I never had actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the value of love is the sum of what you have to pay for it and anytime you get it cheap you have cheated yourself.
— William Faulkner
Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did that wretched female skeleton, liquefying in the midst of its lace and its millions.
— Émile Zola, Lourdes
I remember one teacher there -- I can't recall her name now. She was short and spare, and I remember her eager jutting chin. Quite unexpectedly one day (in the middle, I think, of an arithmetic lesson) she suddenly launched forth on a speech on life and religion. "All of you," she said, "every one of you -- will pass through a time when you will face despair. If you never face despair, you will never have faced, or become, a Christian, or known a Christian life. To be a Christian you must face and accept the life that Christ faced and lived; you must enjoy things as he enjoyed things; be as happy as he was at the marriage at Canaan, know the peace and happiness that it means to be in harmony with God and with God's will. But you must also know, as he did, what it means to be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, to feel that all your friends have forsaken you, that those you love and trust have turned away from you, and that God Himself has forsaken you. Hold on then to the belief that that is not the end. If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life." She then returned to the problems of compound interest ...
— Agatha Christie
There is a thrill in relishing the suffering of strangers, and they hide their interest with worried faces.
— Rin Chupeco, The Girl from the Well
His jealousy, like an octopus which throws out a first, then a second, and finally a third tentacle, fastened itself irremovably first to that moment, five o'clock in the afternoon, then to another, then to another again. But Swann was incapable of inventing his sufferings. They were only the memory, the perpetuation of a suffering that had come to him from without.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
If by years of patient suffering, God can manage to take the harshness out of my voice, then the time has been well-spent.
— Eula Biss, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays
Because what's perplexing is not that you and I encounter suffering in this life
—  what's really perplexing is that He suffered in our place. Why did the innocent One suffer for our sins?
I have learnt that a good marriage is healing for the soul, something to relish. But a bad marriage is long-suffering, a thing to be endured. The only good thing about marriage is that it’s perishable like human life.
— Meghna Pant, One and a Half Wife
People, most especially those who have known ease in this life, care more about being prospered than refined. It's always about what they can get from God, not what they can do for others, unless they can call attention to it for others to see.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Whenever we suffer — no matter what the severity of our suffering is — we have the ability to find meaning in the situation.
— Alex Pattakos, Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl's Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work
When most people think about the future, they dream up ways that they might live happier lives. But notice this phenomenon. When people remember the crucial events that formed them, they don't usually talk about happiness. It is usually the ordeals that seem most significant. Most people shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering.
— David Brooks
The person who knows how to adjust to others, he will not have any suffering. ‘Adjust everywhere’.
— Dada Bhagwan
This passage, by the way, doesn't just give us the comparative negative of hell, but it translates well into a theology of suffering. With these words of Jesus in mind, I can now know that it is better never to hold my children, it is better never to run my fingers through my wife's hair, it is better not to be able to brush my own teeth, it is better never to be able to drive a car, it is better to be paralyzed and never feel anything from the neck down, and it is better to have stage III anaplastic oligondendroglioma than to find myself outside the kingdom of God.It is better never to see the sunset or the sunrise, never see the stars in the sky, never to see my daughter in her little dress-up clothes, never to see my son throw a ball - it is better never to have seen those things than to have seen those things and yet end up outside the kingdom of God. How horrible hell must be.
— Matt      Chandler
Life is suffering--and yet.
— Anonymous
There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that everything that occurs at the level of secondary causality - in nature or history - is governed not only by a transcendent providence but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. But one should consider the price at which the comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of - but entirely by way of - every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines (and so on). It is a strange thing indeed to seek peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome.
— David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Most women do not have a relationship with God, as they are either unwilling to have one or unaware of how to have one, so they choose a human partner.”“It’s not about gender or age, nor even social conditioning, religious belief or other external preferences. To surrender as Love—in a feminine way—is to become vulnerable, fragile, soft, sincere, open hearted, and “wound-able” as a choice to the alternative of living miserably inside walls and masks, hiding from pain and Joy.
— Nityananda Das, Divine Union
It doesn't matter who started it or what it's really about...war usually ends up sucking most for women. Even when we're not fighting the battles ourselves, we somehow always end up with the lion's share of the suffering.
— Brian K. Vaughan
You have to suffer in order to be beautiful.
— Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets
Suffer" he commanded seductively. "With me...or because of me.
— Donna Lynn Hope
In life there will be pain, suffering, ugliness, but let us be grateful for the beauty, blessing, and miracle of life.
— Debasish Mridha
Don't be afraid of suffering. Often scars are the medals of success.
— Debasish Mridha
Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?"Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile."Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?""This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present."Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted him. Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?
— Hermann Hesse
Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little.
— Criss Jami, Healology
He suffered," added Athos softly. "But not like you." He brought his mouth closer. "No one suffers as beautifully as you." There it was, in the corner of Holland's mouth, the crease of his eye. Anger. Pain. Defiance. Athos smiled, victorious.
— V.E. Schwab
When I consider life, 't is all a cheat.Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.To-morrow 's falser than the former day;Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blestWith some new joys, cuts off what we possest.Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;And from the dregs of life think to receiveWhat the first sprightly running could not give.
— John Dryden
She has suffered so much, and that sorrows me. But she has been strong in the face of unthinkable adversity, and that inspires me.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure
Suffering is the fire by which love is tested.
— Jocelyn  Murray, The Roman General: A Novel
Although you and I have crossed each other, we two are destined by the heavens to be together. There will come a day when the two of us will join together to do great things. But until then, you must wait and endure any hardship and danger that may come your way.
— Auliq Ice
When we all become more compassionate, there will probably be less suffering in the world.
— Kishore Bansal
King was a transformed person. Evil was no longer a theory.
— Troy Jackson
The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.
— Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
Alline knew that he could not do anything to make himself more saved, for the righteousness of Christ was sufficient. But he did see that what he did on the earth now would matter greatly in heaven. What he sowed now he would reap later. He saw the great burden of his God for lost men and women and shared that passion. He willingly suffered now so he could be crowned later. Many of God’s choice servants suffered greatly in this life and even had early deaths. Was it a waste? No! Ten thousand times, No! They saw the reward. They saw the eternal weight of glory.
— Greg  Gordon
Anticipating death and calling it gain, Christians are evangelists of the grotesque. The very hope of the Gospel rests directly upon our ability to imagine a world in which suffering serves as the soil from which resurrection springs.
— Ben Palpant
At some level, it is even tempting to think that since strict materialism is among the most incoherent of superstitions - one that has never really asked the question of the being of things in any depth or with any persistence, or one that has at best attempted to conjure that question away as a fallacy of grammar - it is incapable of imagining any conception of God more sophisticated than its own. The materialist encounters an instance of unjust suffering and, by a sort of magical thinking, concludes from the absence of any immediately visible moral order that there must be nothing transcendent of material causality, in much the same way that certain of our more remote, primitive ancestors might have seen a flash of lightning in the sky and concluded that some god must have flung it from on high. In neither case does the conclusion follow from the evidence (though in the latter case the reasoning is somewhat more rigorous); and in neither case is the god at issue much more than an affective myth.
— David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
And now that we exercise so comprehensive a medical and technological mastery over whole regions or nature at whose mercy our ancestors lived out their lives, we enjoy the unprecedented luxury of being able to render the 'natural' at once remote and benign. It is we who summon it, rather than the reverse, and we do so at our pleasure; it dwells with us, not we with it. We are free to sentimentalize or romanticize it, or even weave a veil of empty and unthreatening sanctity around it - until the moment when disease, age, infirmity, or random violence suddenly defeats us, or fire, flood, tempest, volcanic eruption, or earthquake surprise us by vaulting past our defenses. Then nature astonishes and horrifies us with its power, immensity, and sublime indifference. Even at such times, though, it is unlikely that we truly hate it; ours is a disenchanted world because it is one from which our love, reverence, dread, and hatred have all been irrevocably alienated. Nature for us is a single, internally consistent thing, an event, lovely and enticing, then terrible and pitiless, abundant and destructive at once, but moved neither by will nor by intelligence; it is sheer fact.
— David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
He has no need for faith who knows the uncreated, who has cut off rebirth, who has destroyed any opportunity for good or evil, and cast away all desire. He is indeed the ultimate man.
— Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada
But she was so happy in her gilded cage, wasn’t she? She ate well, slept well, enjoyed herself She lacked nothing. And then, look, a bunch of mental cases turn her away from her happiness and send her to -- how did you put it? -- to ‘blow herself away’?. The good doctor lives next door to a war but he doesn’t want to hear a word about it. And he thinks his wife shouldn’t worry about it, either. … We’re at war. Some people take up arms; others twiddle their thumbs. And still others make a killing in the name of the Cause. That’s life. … Your wife chose her side. The happiness you offered her smelled of decay. It repulsed her, you get it? She didn’t want your happiness. She couldn’t work on her suntan while her people were bent under the Zionist yoke. Do I have to draw you a picture to make you understand, or do you refuse to look reality in the face?
— Yasmina Khadra, The Attack
Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to you, what's in your best interest... because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of your, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn is the gratification of [the] 'yes folk' lurking in your corner. You may not agree, but always consider the voice(s) that have consistently kept it real.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
I saw myself in the mirror, and from my expression I had a shocking intimation of the rift between my body and my soul. Whereas my face was drained by defeat and shock, inside my head was another universe: I now understood as an elemental fact of life that while I was here, inside my body was a soul, a meaning, that all things were made of desire, touch, and love, that what I was suffering was composed of the same elements.
— Orhan Pamuk
We don’t like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill. To enter into pain seems rather foolish when we can run from it through denial. We simply cannot get it through our head that, with a nature twisted by sin, the route to joy always involves the very worst sort of internal suffering we can imagine. We rebel at that thought. We weren’t designed to hurt. The physical and personal capacities to feel that God built into us were intended to provide pleasures, like good health and close relationships. When they don’t, when our head throbs with tension and our heart is broken by rejection, we want relief. With deep passion, we long to experience what we were designed to enjoy.
— Larry Crabb
I was the worst kind of fool. When I look back on that August night, changed forever by all my wounds and all my suffering, that undamaged Odd Thomas seems like a different human being from me, immeasurably more confident than I am now, still able to hope, but not as wise, and I mourn for him.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
Most of the time, thank goodness, we suffer quite stupidly and unreflectingly, like the animals.
— Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit
Rather than idolizing perfection, we must choose to cherish what is real. To truly live is to love deeply, to get messy, to sometimes get hurt, and to stumble and fall. It is worth it. The alternative of living a life barren of these things in the pursuit of perfection would be tragically uninteresting.
— Ann Brasco
There are only two kinds of people in this world, Mr. Sallinger: people who rise above that suffering and people who let it define them." (The Ables)
— Jeremy Scott
It was pleasant to think that men still sang, even in the midst of butchery and famine.
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
I must give due praise to the man who first extracted morphine from poppyheads. He was a true benefactor of mankind. The pain stopped seven minutes after the injection. Interesting: the pain passed over me in ceaseless waves, so that I had to gasp for breath, as though a red-hot crowbar were being thrust into my stomach and rotated. Four minutes after the injection I was able to distinguish the wave-like nature of the pain.
— Mikhail Bulgakov
The Trade Center dead formed a kind of universal parliament.
— Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
you must never blame other people for what you Going through because it will teach you a lesson and that time you have to be gratefull
— siphesihle manzini
Hold strong to your faith
—  better days are being prepared for you by God. So be patient enough to get rewarded for all your pain and suffering.
The best remedy for people who have become your headache is to take a 'chill pill' from your willingness to endure their misery.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
All to often, suffering exists in a realm beyond vocabulary so we navigate that realm awkwardly, fumbling for the right words, hoping we can somehow approximate an understanding of matters that should never have to be understood by anyone in any place in the world.
— Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
Faith is tested throughout our lives (James 1:3; I Peter 1:7). As the object of our faith proves Himself faithful throughout these trials, our faith grows. Even if we do not have God’s personal revelation about why we are suffering or how He is weaving our trials into a hidden pattern, we do have the revelation of God’s hidden purposes for us and for creation in Jesus Christ. God has demonstrated His faithfulness objectively, publicly, and finally in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
— Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way
The world's a scary place these days. Grandpa,, you've seen worse things, haven't you? Please tell me the world has always been like this.
— Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling
No matter what it is that you are going through in life at the moment, stay strong and positive with your daily thoughts. Leave everything else that is beyond your power in God's hand, and then relax and watch time heal your wounds.
Survivor" is not a label you choose for yourself.
— Harry Smith
The loved one suffers. All loved ones suffer. Love is not enough to prevent this. Love is not enough. Love is enough. The thing that you wished for. Was this it?Here endeth the lesson.
— Kelly Link
At Gethsemane: "Jesus is subordinating His loudest desires to His deepest desires.
— Timothy J. Keller, King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus
We suffered today, because we know we have tomorrow, to live and to love.
— M.Sriteja
To love life is to love all of life; the suffering, the joy, the pain, the magnificence...all of it!
— Erin Fall Haskell
It is not so much what people suffer that makes the world mysterious; it is rather how much they miss when they suffer. They seem to forget that even as children they made obstacles in their games in order to have something to overcome. Why, then, when they grow into man’s estate, should there not be prizes won by effort and struggle? Cannot the spirit of man rise with adversity as the bird rises against the resistance of the wind? Do not the game fish swim upstream? Must not the chisel cut away the marble to bring out the form? Must not the seed falling to the ground die before it can spring forth into life? Must not grapes be crushed that there may be wine to drink, and wheat ground that there may be bread to eat? Why then cannot pain be made redemption? Why under the alchemy of Divine Love cannot crosses be turned into crucifixes? Why cannot chastisements be regarded as penances? Why cannot we use a cross to become God-like? We cannot become like Him in His Power; we cannot become like Him in His Knowledge. There is only one way we can become like Him, and that is in the way He bore His sorrows and His Cross. And that way was with love. It is love that makes pain bearable.
— Fulton J. Sheen
To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.
— Andrei Lankov
How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires. And is there any other form of listening? Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby? Listening has importance only when on is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens. Can one put aside all these screens through which we listen, and really listen?
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
All of us have had this experience. At some point, we have each said through our tears, “I’m suffering for a love that’s not worth it.” We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because our love is going unrecognized. We suffer because we are unable to impose our own rules.But ultimately there is no good reason for our suffering, for in every love lies the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we come to spiritual experience. Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all of the inhibitions and preconceptions of their era. They have been able to sing, to laugh, and to pray out loud; they have danced and shared what Saint Paul called “the madness of saintliness.” They have been joyful—because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Suffering is only suffering if it's done in silence, in solitude. Pain experienced in public, in view of loving millions, was no longer pain. It was communion.
— Dave Eggers, The Circle
The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.
— Ashley Montagu
It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Don't be a zombie for anyone, if your oppressor likes zombies, cinemas are not located in mars.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
The cadence of suffering has begun.
— Cesare Pavese
What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them.
— Homer, The Odyssey
Victory will not go to those who can inflict the most suffering, but to those who can survive the most.
— CrimethInc., Contradictionary
Truly it is the hardest of all trials to see souls so dear in pains we cannot remedy.
— Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton
Because we suddenly see that making everything all right would NOT make everything all right. We would not be human beings. We would then be no more than puppets obeying the strings of the master puppeteer. We agree sadly that it is a good thing that we are not God; we do not have to understand God's ways, or the suffering and brokenness and pain that sooner or later come to us all.
— Madeleine L'Engle, Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage
Lets reflect the hopes of the nations under oppression, injustice and brutality. All they see is Unknown suffering Of an empty heart and soul and thus their suffering is unknown. We cannot do everything; but still we can do something. Lend a hand to support the suffering ones.
— Auliq Ice
In life; threats, misery and pain weigh the same.
— Auliq Ice
The answer is that their confidence was actuallh in God, not in their limited understanding of what they thought he would do. They had inner assurance that God would rescue them. However, they were not so arrogant as to be sure they were "reading God right." They knew that God was under no obligation to operate according to their limited wisdom.
— Timothy J. Keller
That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to which I have returned!
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
i'm in love with every creature on earth.. i don't want nobody to suffer, because i can feel the pain from all of them.. and i want to gave them love.. every creature on earth...
— Anonymous
All they're going to see is a wealthy man who has no idea how to heal their suffering.
— Marie Lu, Prodigy
She was half running away from the hall, and she knew that she had done something cataclysmic, and she wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the darkness and to disappear forever.
— J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
We need not fear God as we fear all other suffering, which burns and maims and kills. For God's fire, though it will perfect us, will not destroy, for 'the bush was not consumed.
— Thomas Cahill
And as if suffering ever taught anybody a thing except to thank God when it ended.
— Kelly O'Connor McNees, In Need of a Good Wife
I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the most unspeakable sufferings of mankind.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Thoughts and sorrows seem to have remained on the other side of the mountains. Between tormented men and hateful deeds, a person has to think and sorrow so much! Back there it is so difficult and so desperately important to find a reason for staying alive. How else should a person go on living? Sheer misery makes one profound.
— Hermann Hesse, Wandering
pain is like the cold. do not give it your attention. but unlike the cold do not deny being in pain
— Laetitia R 2015
suffering is a misunderstood pain
— Haruki Murakami
As my nostrils filled with the stench of burnt hair and my friends scurried to clean up the mess, I thought, 'If your hair catches on fire while you're making a wish, does that mean it isn't coming true?
— Sarah Thebarge, The Invisible Girls: A Memoir
Walk through pain, face it, lay down in it and rest. Get up and walk again, repeat until you reach the end.
— Juls Amor, THE YEAR OF THE FROG
I needed someone to tell me how God could allow someone He loved to suffer so much when I wouldn't do this to someone I hated.
— Sarah Thebarge
If Man is stranger to his own research however, he starts redefining the life to cover up his err,and finally in his run, at his last hour,asks himself "What is this all about?" and lets his hour pass over.
— Ajay Chandan
Who ain't a slave? Tell me that... I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.
— Herman Melville
I understand you.—You do not suppose that I have ever felt much.—For four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least.— It was told me,—it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought, with triumph.— This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested;—and it has not been only once;—I have had her hopes and exultation to listen to again and again.— I have known myself to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection.—Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me.— I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.— And all this has been going on at a time, when, as you know too well, it has not been my only unhappiness.— If you can think me capable of ever feeling—surely you may suppose that I have suffered NOW. The composure of mind with which I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful exertion;—they did not spring up of themselves;—they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first.— No, Marianne.—THEN, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely—not even what I owed to my dearest friends—from openly shewing that I was VERY unhappy.
— Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
I'll admit it I'm on acid: uric acid! It makes my gout hurt like hell, but the foods I eat are so damn well
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries
They say we live in hard times. They say the world is full of suffering and pain and ignorance and violence. But is that not better than helpless, grinned and beared mediocrity? Is this not the time of opportunity? When will we learn the importance of peace, if not in war? When will we learn the importance of loving ourselves except through self-hatred? How else will we come together except to realize how we hurt when we are apart? The world is not full of horror. It is full of opportunity. It is not lacking in love. It is hungry for it. So eat. So feed.
— Vironika Tugaleva
Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of scarifice
— Viktor E. Frankl
It's not just the wounded who suffer.
— David Powning, The Ground Will Catch You
Life has existential suffering
—  we become happy by caring.
Suffering has many faces. If we discover the roots of one suffering, we are at the same time discovering the roots of others.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its warm presence.
— Dave Pelzer, A Child Called "It"
I almost gave my life long ago for a thingThat has gone to dust now, stinging my eyes—It is strange how often a heart must be brokenBefore the years can make it wise.
— Sara Teasdale, Flame and Shadow
It would take me a long time to understand how systems inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough.
— Helen Prejean
The answer to the problem of suffering is not away from the problem but in it. The inevitability of pain will not be met by deadening sensitivity but by increasing it, by exploring and feeling out the manner in which the natural organism itself wants to react and which its innate wisdom has provided.
— Alan W. Watts, Nature, Man and Woman
I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children's lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble. But now I realize I'm a crazy woman running into a burning house for children who don't exist.
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
When you're suffering, you're oversensitive to everything.
— Henri Charrière
And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day, and the real facts of existence. He was still very young.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it.
— Henry James
Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained.
— G.K. Chesterton
What if...the doctors couldn't find anything wrong? What if I was over-exaggerating the pain, weakness, and weird sensations?
— Jennifer Starzec
I don’t think it makes much difference what we’re recovering from, all suffering eventually points to the need for healing.
— Marta Mrotek, Miracle in Progress: A Handbook for Holistic Recovery