“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.”

“When your heart has been broken,
Hard words have been spoken.
It ain't easy - but it's only love.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

“I use the word ‘guru' for him in the mythological sense — all other educationists ask for payment for knowledge imparted; this gentleman paid me and taught me. What a journey it has been, after I met him at the age of 17-and-a-half.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

“Everyone with any experience of life is aware of the extent to which the characters of people he has known have been given their particular forms by the sufferings through which they have passed. But it is not simply what has happened to them that has defined them; their responses to what has happened to them have been of even greater importance, and these responses have been shaped by their interpretations of what they suffered.”

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian

“Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

“I have loved another with all my heart, and for me that has always been enough.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

“What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.”

Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) American author

“If some lives form a perfect circle, other take shape in ways we cannot predict or always understand. Loss has been part of my journey. But it has also shown me what is precious. So has love for which I can only be grateful.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

“I have been given superiority over the other prophets in six respects: I have been given words which are concise but comprehensive in meaning; I have been helped by terror (in the hearts of enemies): spoils have been made lawful to me: the earth has been made for me clean and a place of worship; I have been sent to all mankind and the line of prophets is closed with me.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist