Suffering Quotes - Page 24

The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.

You are the custodian of your own happiness. What other people say, do or think does not create a basis for your happiness. It is you who decides your own happiness, just like forgiveness.

I swore that I would not suffer from the world's grief and the world's stupidity and cruelty and injustice and I made my heart as hard in endurance as the nether millstone and my mind as a polished surface of steel. I no longer suffered, but enjoyment had passed away from me.

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.

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.

Long-suffering is the greatest life survival virtue.

The causes of this distribution I do not know; but from our present point of view it ought to be clear that the real problem is not why some humble pious believing people suffer, but why some do not. Our Lord Himself, it will be remembered, explained the salvation of those who are fortunate in this world only by referring to the unsearchable omnipotence of God.

Once past the comfort zone in either direction, humans soon lost the ability to discriminate bad from worse.

Nightmares are seldom a foreshadowing of real events, but always a showing of real fears.

You can be saved without suffering, but you cannot be sanctified without suffering. That doesn't mean you seek it out, but it does mean you see it for what it is. It's an opportunity to glorify God.

If you think about life simply as one big waiting room for eternity, who cares if it's not fully air conditioned?

God draws near to the brokenhearted. He leans toward those who are suffering. He knows what it feels like to be wounded and abandoned.

Pleasure is ‘suffering’ (vedna) and pain is distress as well. If pleasure is ‘suffering’, it cannot be considered a pleasure. If pleasure is enjoyed excessively, it becomes ‘suffering’. How can it be considered a pleasure? These are all entanglements of those living in illusion [of the Self]. To live in the ocean of happiness and yet no dislike arises; that is known as true happiness.

For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls , drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead---indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.

I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

We can only forgive the world to the extent that we forgive ourselves for being in it.

So he had them into the slaughter house, where was a butcher killing a sheep. And behold, the sheep was quiet and took her death patiently. Then said the Interpreter, "You must learn of this sheep to suffer, and put up wrongs without murmurings and complaints. Behold how quietly she takes her death! And without objecting she suffereth her skin to be pulled over her ears. Your King doth call you his sheep.

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.

Job understood that he was nothing more than God’s invention and so too was his suffering

We begin to realize that it will take something more powerful than we are to relieve our suffering. This is what we’ve been missing all along – a source of hope.

Happiness is just like a glacier-the visible one eighth tip sitting on seven eighth mass of pain and suffering under the surface

I'm afraid of life! There are times I--I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding-- this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain... If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could... get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self--ceases. I don't know how to say it. But I believe that the reality--the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness--that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.

Pain without cause is a pain we can't trust. We assume it's been chosen or fabricated.

Human is a suffered mind but an enlightened soul.

The primary function of mental pain, says Lewis, is to force our misdirectedness on our attention. But just as it belongs to our fallen state to be blind to holiness until we suffer the consequences of sin, and blind to a higher good until natural satisfactions are snatched from us; so equally it belongs to our state that we cannot achieve disinterestedness until it costs us pain.

Avoiding pain causes endless suffering for you and others. Avoiding pain is really selfishness.

You are afraid to suffer, but it were better to thank God for it, since the more you undergo down here, the less you will endure above. Grief is a portion of one's heritage taken in advance from Purgatory.

Life is but a Weaving” (the Tapestry Poem)“My life is but a weavingBetween my God and me.I cannot choose the colorsHe weaveth steadily.Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;And I in foolish prideForget He sees the upperAnd I the underside.Not ’til the loom is silentAnd the shuttles cease to flyWill God unroll the canvasAnd reveal the reason why.The dark threads are as needfulIn the weaver’s skillful handAs the threads of gold and silverIn the pattern He has plannedHe knows, He loves, He cares;Nothing this truth can dim.He gives the very best to thoseWho leave the choice to Him.

When things are good, it is because we remember a time when they were not. When there was pain. But now the pain is gone, so things are ‘good’. When we hurt, it is because we recall a time when we did not. When there was no pain. But now we suffer, so things are ‘bad’. The tiger sipped from the cup, peering at the boy over the rim. Stars swirled in its eyes. “Good. Bad. The cup holds both.

Do you think that a doe in the jaws of a tiger feels less horror than you? People thought up the idea that animals don't have the same capability for suffering as humans, because otherwise they couldn't bear the knowledge that they are surrounded by a world of nature that is horror and nothing but horror." Paul was pleased that man was gradually covering the whole earth with concrete. It was as if he were watching a cruel murderess being walled up.

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.

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.

People who have been initiated "broke through in what felt like breaking down".

In the process of forgiveness, you can only control your own actions and decisions.

In a democracy, there will be more complaints but less crisis, in a dictatorship more silence but much more suffering.

What can be achieved with suffering can be achieved without it.

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.

If you allow it, [suffering] can be the means by which God brings you His greatest blessings.

I still think that the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, just having no one... That is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

It is raining in my heart.Humanity is shedding a tear.I asked, “Who is suffering?”Is it my mother?Silence.No answer.Everyone has a mother,And she always suffers.Why as a child do we let our mothers suffer?I could not get an answer.

Only those who do not care, only those who find a way to diminish or extinguish the value of other human beings, survive wars without damage and speak of warrior honor afterward.

It is easy to become disillusioned with the circumstances of our lives compared to others'. But in the presence of God, He gives us a deeper peace and joy that transcends it all.

In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.

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.

You have to suffer in order to be beautiful.

Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I've known for some time what my life's work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.

When you forgive, you are freed from some of the feelings of disapproval and it can contribute to lessening your negative thoughts.

It is ironic that constructive thinkers are often misunderstood as negative, as they differ from those longing for positivity: constructive thinkers have been conditioned to find positive in negative rather than suffering from the negative in negative. Or as Paul the Apostle wrote, 'I have learned the secret to contentment in any and every circumstance.' He was right. Indeed the Lord is our strength, especially under the commandment to love one another. Otherwise we are nothing and easily thrown about by both our own and other people's mind control in a painful, mental, physical desperation to run from every thought, every thing, and every one not seeming so positive or immediately beneficial to us.

...you go back to liberate the captives and sadly realize, some want to remain tied down in the cave...

I am willing without further exercise in pain to open my heart. And this needs no doctrine or theology of suffering. We love apocalypses too much, and crisis ethics and florid extremism with its thrilling language. Excuse me, no. I've had all the monstrosity I want.

Yea ! by your works are ye justified--toil unrelieved ;Manifold labours, co-ordinate each to the sending achieved ;Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremitting, unfeigned ;Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known, faced, and disdained ; Courage that sunsOnly foolhardiness ; even by these, are ye worthy of your guns.

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?"Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.

Who taught you all this, doctor?"The reply came promptly:"Suffering.

Claiming to love self, but willingly default to cheating at the first sign of trouble is nothing short of playing yourself. Your ego may feel avenged - temporarily - but your heart and soul, the true self, will suffer the long term affects of karma's justifiable sting.

Oh, with my pathetic, earthly, Euclidean mind, I know only that there is suffering, that none are to blame, that all things follow simply and directly from one another, that everything flows and finds its level - but that is all just Euclidean gibberish, of course I know that, and of course I cannot consent to live by it! What do I care that none are to blame and that I know it - I need retribution, otherwise I will destroy myself. And retribution not somewhere and sometime in infinity, but here and now, on earth, so that I see it myself. I have believed, and I want to see for myself, and if I am dead by that time, let them resurrect me, because it will be too unfair if it all takes place without me. Is it possible that I've suffered so that I, together with my evil deeds and sufferings, should be manure for someone's future harmony? I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion, and the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly finds out what it was all for.

This pain you are avoiding is a very necessary pain that will make you strong again.

She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and miseries to keep the sharp edge on her work. But the idea that an artist needed to suffer to do her best work was a conceit of the young and inexperienced. The happier she grew, the better she wrote.

[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness.