quotations about suffering
Suffering is suffering. It doesn't matter if you are addicted to porn on the internet or you're codependent or you're addicted to gambling or if you're addicted to The Real Housewives of Atlanta. You're suffering, and that's what gets us into trouble.
SEAN BROOK
"Sean Brock Opens Up About Rehab and Sobriety to NYT", Eater Charleston, July 5, 2017
Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
SAUL BELLOW
"The Sealed Treasure", It All Adds Up
Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
The public's spirit of solidarity in face of suffering is heartening and reminds us of our common humanity.
DIPTI PARDESHI
"Refugee Week: British solidarity in the face of suffering", The London Economic, June 25, 2017
To rest in your own suffering
Is evasion of suffering. We must learn to suffer more.
T. S. ELIOT
The Family Reunion
The best fruit loads the broken bough;
And in the wounds our sufferings plow,
Immortal love sows sovereign seed.
GERALD MASSEY
"The Ballad of Babe Christabel"
Your suffering is something you choose. Experience it fully. Without it you will not achieve personal growth and higher consciousness.
ERNIE J. ZELINSKI
The Lazy Person's Guide to Happiness
You have to suffer in order to be a human being who can help people understand suffering.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.
RAM DASS
One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life
Sick system built on suffering
Sick system built on pain
It's a bullet in the head
Of every happy boy and girl
NASUM
"Sick System"
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays
Those who have experienced traumatic events speak about their profound realizations of the importance of kindness, the power of love and their appreciation for what remains. It appears that this level of insight often comes from suffering.
DANA LIGHTMAN
Power Optimism
Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
AMERICAN PROVERB
No man ever grows to a full man's estate without the ministration of suffering.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
You know, my dear, you're wrong that suffering ennobles people.... It simply makes one cross.
GREGORY BENFORD
"Nooncoming", In Alien Flesh
One does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.
WILLIAM STYRON
Darkness Visible
Sometimes the only way around suffering is to go straight through it.
ANONYMOUS
Affliction is a spiritual physic for the soul, and is compared to a furnace, for as gold is tried and purified therein, so men are proved and either purified from their dross, and fitted for good uses, or else entirely burnt up and undone forever.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave