Suffering Quotes - Page 28

Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and grief! He who has not seen the things of this world, and the heart of men in this double light, has seen nothing, and knows noting of the truth.

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).

No one can sing well, play well, or write well, without living through moments of the deepest pain and anguish. Every real talent has known times of torturing depression when the heart in its agony has cried out to God: “Why hast Thou forsaken me? What have I done that I should suffer so?" And then, at the very darkest moment, suddenly, the veil is torn from their eyes! Truth, with her flaming torch, stands before them, and they understand that God sends them suffering to strengthen and ennoble their talent, that it may touch men's hearts and show to tired wanderers on earth glimpses of heaven.

He was without any comforts of God — no feeling that God loved him — nofeeling that God pitied him — no feeling that God supported him. God was hissun before — now that sun became all darkness… He was without God — hewas as if he had no God. All that God had been to him before was taken fromhim now. He was Godless — deprived of his God. He had the feeling of thecondemned, when the Judge says: “Depart from me, ye cursed,” “who shallbe punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord andfrom the glory of his power.” He felt that God said the same to him. Ah! This isthe hell which Christ suffered. The ocean of Christ’s sufferings isunfathomable… He was forsaken in the [place] of sinners. If you close with himas your surety, you will never be forsaken… “My God, my God, why hast thouforsaken me?” [The answer?] For me — for me.

So does he live, seeking, finding, joying and suffering.

Well to be fair, I said, I mean she probably can't handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn't have to handle it. And you do.

Life makes us suffer at times if we cruise through such moments and look forward to the light the day brings, that darkness that has crippled our mind can be fought and it can be defeated.

To walk in faith is to confess that we do not know what awaits us, and the faith I have embraced does not promise an easy road.

Pain makes people who they are.

Nothing cuts a neural route faster through the brain then a pinch of pain. Periods of unhappiness penetrate and scar the brain. Experiencing intense periods of unpleasantness incites us to grow. If we can bunt the destructive forces of extreme pain and embrace its forceful impact for its educational value, experiencing profound pain causes us to appreciate the pleasure of simply living in the moment, enjoying each blade of grass in nature’s glorious bouts of beauty.

in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them

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.

A man of suffering is familiar with pain.

I think it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering.

If anyone understands, it's Jesus.

Those who believe their suffering has been valuable love more readily than those who see no meaning in their pain. Suffering does not necessarily imply love, but love implies suffering

In the end when God does speak, it is not the pious friends who are commended. God tells then they have been guilty of misrepresenting God. Only Job – only angry, defiant, doubting Job has been faithful.The story of Job reminds us that God is not offended when we question. Indeed, if anything God is offended when we speak too glibly. Make room in your heart for the angry, defiant and doubting questions. You may find God there as well.

Reasonableness is a matter of degree. Beliefs can be very reasonable (Japan exists), fairly reasonable (quarks exist), not unreasonable (there's intelligent life on other planets) or downright unreasonable (fairies exist).There's a scale of reasonableness, if you like, with very reasonable beliefs near the top and deeply unreasonable ones towards the bottom. Notice a belief can be very high up the scale, yet still be open to some doubt. And even when a belief is low down, we can still acknowledge the remote possibility it might be true.How reasonable is the belief that God exists? Atheists typically think it very unreasonable. Very low on the scale. But most religious people say it is at least not unreasonable (have you ever met a Christian who said 'Hey, belief in God is no more reasonable than belief in fairies, but I believe it anyway!'?) They think their belief is at least halfway up the scale of reasonableness.Now, that their belief is downright unreasonable might, in fact, be established empirically. If it turned out that not only is there no good evidence of an all-powerful, all-good God, there's also overwhelming evidence against (from millions of years of unimaginable and pointless animal suffering, including several mass extinctions - to thousands of children being crushed to death or buried alive in Pakistan earthquake, etc. etc. etc.) then it could be empirically confirmed that there's no God.Would this constitute a 'proof' that there's no God? Depends what you mean by 'proof'. Personally I think these sorts of consideration do establish beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no all-powerful all-good God. So we can, in this sense, prove there's no God.Yet all the people quoted in my last blog say you cannot 'scientifically' prove or disprove God's existence. If they mean prove beyond any doubt they are right. But then hardly anything is provable in that sense, not even the non-existence of fairies.

God's 'permission' of evil so multiplied is not simply to be accounted for by his respecting our free will. He takes the harms we mutually inflict and overrules them for our good.

I guess he was right; I’m just a scorpion without wings,God created me this way, no wings, just a poisonous sting,The one I loved knew my true natureShe knew I could sting her heart, and poisoned her soul,My lover knew me well, she knew my truth,She could see my poisonous soul, My ego bowed to her beauty, always ready to strike She knew my true nature, she saw the scorpion,She saw the venom in heart, she loved me still,I struck her heart multiple times,I poisoned her soul with my sting,I guess he was right; I’m just a scorpion without wingsShe knew me well; she saw the lethal sting,She saw her wounded heart, she loved me stillShe you loved the scorpion to the end,She fell in love, and now she’s dead,The scorpion cries, in agony, He wishes he wasn’t a venomous beast,The scorpion suffers; he misses his loved one,The one he killed, the one he stung,The one who loved him to the end

But I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like moulten lead.

If we can prevent just one marriage from disintegrating--or just one child from suffering the loss of a family--our effort will be justified.

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.

Forgiveness is not simply a single act, it is a full process.

As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As Wilfred Owen's poem "Insensibility" puts it so well, those who feel most of others suffer most in war.

Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.

The beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.

It is easy to tell the toiler How best he can carry his packBut no one can rate a burden's weightUntil it has been on his back

Sacred joy exists in any suffering.

Incarnation is good news not because it offers us a way out of the mess of this world, but because it shows us what God's love looks like here and now.

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.

Honesty, vulnerability and a good amount of courageous faith allows you to cry out in your bewilderment and not lose your belief in the process. These things allow you to wrestle your faith rather than lose it.

Make sure your fun is not mocking someone’s pain and your enjoyment is not another’s suffering. The melody of your ears must not be the cries of a powerless.

O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!

It is a destiny of a woman to suffer in silence.

The Trade Center dead formed a kind of universal parliament.

We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world....No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.

Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we often do not know where and how to find genuine happiness and so make the mistakes that cause suffering for ourselves & others.

Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.

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

Sympathy is imagining the pain. Empathy is having suffered through it first.

We are not a voice for the voiceless. The truth is that there is a lot of noise out there drowning out quiet voices, and many people have stopped listening to the cries of their neighbors. Lots of folks have put their hands over their ears to drown out the suffering. Institutions have distanced themselves from the disturbing cries..It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. One of the verses I have grown to love is the one where Jesus is preparing to leave the disciples and says, "I no longer call you servants.... Instead, I have called you friends" (John 15:15). Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships. Someday, perhaps we can even say those words that Ruth said to Naomi after years of partnership: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried" (Ruth 1:16-17).

You will suffer, son of Hades!’ What else is new? Nico thought.

Where neither go wrong, the naive only see the world as a victim of bad doctrine; the cynic only sees good doctrine as a victim of the world.

She had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering.

Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, real hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilization. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, everyone does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche’s had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today.

How I wish, how fervently I ache, to take my mother's hand, kiss her check,tell her I love her, and watch her smile. For me it was not, nor can ever be. But for you, reach out now. Reach out for your mother's hand-the hands of those you love. Say I love you.Don't wait.

[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.

In this book we paint an unprecedented portrait of Britain’s first ‘false memory’ retraction and show that, like other ‘false memory’ cases which appeared in the public domain, memory itself was always a false trail – these women never forgot. We are not challenging people’s right to tell their own story and then to change it. But we do assert that the chance should be interpreted in the context that created it.Thousands of accounts of sexual and physical abuse in childhood cannot be explained by a pseudo-scientific ‘syndrome’. We have been shifted to the wrong debate, a debate about the malignancy of survivors and their allies, rather than those who have hurt them. That’s why the arguments have become so elusive. […]

Never deprecate another person's sufferings even when imaginary.

How wil we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?

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).

Most of the dreams that have suffered to death were murdered by their own owners.

Who gives you pain? Your anger, pride, illusion and greed. Where is the fault of the nature in all this?

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

Pleasure! The end of suffering or the beginning of an enjoyment?

Your generation has been the target of incredible disinformation on the subject of premarital sex, which is another enticing addictive behavior to be considered. In this instance, our own government is responsible for much of the confusion. For some thirty years, federal and state programs have promoted a concept its promoters call "safe sex," which refers to the use of condoms in sexual intercourse. Billions of dollars have been spent telling young people that they can have sex—lots of really good sex—without suffering from the consequences of it. Condoms, they say, will solve all the problems.

There is no shadow without the sun.No suffering without divinity.No fear without love.No despair without desire.No hopelessness without faith.

Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.