Suffering Quotes - Page 9

When someone is suffering, there is a deep, visceral reaction in the core of our being, a flood of empathy and a frightfully desperate compulsion to give aid.

I alone knew what I had suffered. I alone knew what it felt like to be alive but dead.

I venture to say Kierkegaard meant that truth has lost its force with us and horrible pain and evil must teach it to us again, the eternal punishments of Hell will have to regain their reality before mankind turns serious once more. I do not see this. Let us set aside the fact that such convictions in the mouths of safe, comfortable people playing at crisis, alienation, apocalypse and desperation, make me sick. We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time, that we are waiting for the end, and th rest of it, mere junk from fashionable magazines. Things are grim enough without these shivery games. People frightening one another--a poor sort of moral exercise. But, to get to the main point, the advocacy and praise of suffering take us in the wrong direction and those of us who remain loyal to civilization must not go for it. You have to have the power to employ pain, to repent, to be illuminated, you must have the opportunity and even the time.

Life is like a story, when all the resolution is resolved, you heave a sigh of relief.

Compassion doesn't arise from the belief that the evil in the world is somebody else's fault or that it is a result of poor choices a suffering person has made.

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

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.

I can see her struggling to find the right word. Death seems so harsh. Passing so oblique. Some things are beyond words, I suppose, and she never finishes the statement. It seems right, that her words should fall into oblivion; after all, she—like me, like everyone—has no words for what follows, for the unknowable, only her hopes and prayers and an unwavering faith in something more.

They'll say you are bador perhaps you are mador at least you should stay undercover.Your mind must be bareif you would dareto think you can love more than one lover.

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.

Certainly human culture may have achieved great progress in the course of history. Suffering and unhappiness in the human world, however, do not seem to have decreased. The present situation of our world is so full of poverty, distrust, diseases, strife, that there seems to be no end. Hundreds and thousands of great men admired as saints and sages have appeared in the world in the past, and they have devoted their lives for the betterment of the world. Human suffering and unhappiness, however, do not seem to have decreased or ended. Over and over again they repeatedly, thanklessly endeavoured to fill up the well with snow. The true life of Zen is found here, when we all become true Great Fools and calmly and nonchalantly keep on doing our best, realizing well that our efforts will never be rewarded.

We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it.

It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering, I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence.

It seems improbable, unless one knows how obstinately, purposefully and unerringly any stricken animal will find its way to the same place where in the past it has endured suffering and recovered.

If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.

The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.

It is important never to separate love and knowledge, compassion and wisdom. A wisdom without compassion is closed upon itself and does not bear fruit. A compassion without wisdom is a madness and a cause of suffering.

Why does it hurt so much? Why does it have to hurt?

Ann: How does God’s character fit into things that seem totally against his character?

It is unjust, but only Christlike, to suffer persecution for doing what is right.

When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long 'till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse?

Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up young in a house with your mother watching. And even if it's to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won't see coming will need you. Like a kid who asks you to help him clean motel rooms. Or some ghost who drifts your way, hungry. And good people might even ask you to marry them. And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why. It is, as Ben would say about most of what I used to worry about, none of my business.

We all suffer our share of grief but we are stronger than our grief.

We don’t have a good excuse before God if our nation and people are suffering as a result of our complacency

If this turns to friendship, it only meansThat one of us will suffer.That when we meet after the worst of endings,There will only be this skein of words between us—Most of them for boredom, fewer for loneliness—Rising out of our mutual space of breath, leavingBehind a bluer sky each moment of departure.And one of us will cling on to its blue,Hung on partings like a muted cloud, whileThe other rides on a wing of word away from here.

Sometimes the imagination could be even crueler than the bone saw.

You are simply naturally inclined to make mistakes just as everyone else is, whether male or female, black or white, young or old. These mistakes are your school of learning, therefore forgiveness is your greatest teacher in this school of learning.

Though poor in this world's goods, though grieving the loss of loved ones, though suffering pain of body, though harassed by sin and Satan, though hated and persecuted by worldlings, whatever be the case and lot of the Christian, it is both his privilege and duty to rejoice in the Lord.

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.

Ageing is not easy, Sennhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Love must always meet its unwanted end.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering.

Even if there were pains in Heaven, all who understand would desire them.

Worries and sufferings are helpful for (one’s) spiritual development.

I believe in not trying to control things that are out of my control or none of my business.

The undisciplined mind confuses misfortune with mistakes.

With Christ, I can endure every suffering,

Do our dreams carry messages from the great beyond, sent by the people we have lost, or are they a reflection of our desperation and wishful thinking?

[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!

Not all writers are silently suffering inside. But it certainly helps.

Some animal rights activists are demanding vegetarianism, even veganism now, or nothing. But since only 4 or 5 percent of Americans claim to be vegetarians, 'nothing' is the far more likely outcome. I ask these activists to weigh the horrors of Bladen County's industrial farms and the Tar Heel slaughterhouse against the consequences of doing nothing to alleviate the hour-to-hour sufferings of its victims. Is not a life lived off the factory farm and a death humanely inflicted superior to the terrible lives we know they lead and the horrible deaths we know they suffer in Bladen County today?

With memories of gravestones, of combing fingers through tangled hair, I wonder too ... If the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, and our own emptiness, might actually become places to see.To see through to God.That which tears open our souls, those holes which splatter sight, they actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart aching beauty beyond. To him. To the god whom we endlessly crave.But how? How do we choose to allow the holes to become seeing through to collect places? How do I give up resentment for gratitude, anger for spilling joy, so focus for God communion. To fully live to fully live grace enjoy with all that is beauty internal it is possible

There is pain and suffering in this world, but there is also joy, and not just suffering here and joy there, but suffering and joy in the very same place.

Afflictions are but the shadow of His wings.

Something significant in me snapped when I miscarried; that something hadnt unsnapped yet. It hadn't been put back together and I was afraid it never would. I knew Jesus was with me, but my insides twirled threatening to take me down from the inside out. I knew He was with me, giving me permission to be in the broken parts of my story...

Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way

Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are greater yet. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but also why it will not cease to grow.

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.

Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls.

I watched life and death unfold like a dance on the side of that road. My son was born with a bloodstained face and he died with blood from the accident covering that same face.

Wisdom is not making life any harder than it has to be.

What is heroic is not making life any harder that it has to be.

Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of its existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering - unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.

Nobody is responsible for your sorrows and poverty, not even the devil. It is the work of the enemies of time that lives in some men, and their names are, 'Laziness and Procrastination'.

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.

I envy these people. Wide-open suffering, their messes all hanging out. Lives boiled down to raw need--a near-holiness to it. And all of us driving our cars up and down the mountain--we'll go on forever trying to fool each other.

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.

When we can accept reality as it is and are okay with it without needing to change it, we then can begin to take steps toward creating a brighter reality for ourselves and others, coming from a place of understanding. But when we are motivated to change reality due to our discomfort with it, we do not think clearly. The reason that there is so much suffering in the world is because people are too busy judging everyone and everything, and through the judgments they perpetuate the suffering. People are so focused on changing outside conditions, all the while forgetting the judgment and separation within their own heart.

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.

If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire.