“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 130 <!-- also p. 156 -->
Context: Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.
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Paulo Coelho 844
Brazilian lyricist and novelist 1947Related quotes
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 130
Translation of Virgil's Aeneid (2007), Book I, lines 198–199 and 202–203
Book 7, Ch. 50 (trans. George Rawlinson)
Variant translation: It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
The Histories
"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
“The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.”
On Manners and Fashion
Essays on Education (1861)
“It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.”
AIDS and Its Metaphors, (1989), ch. 4, p. 125, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42013-7
AIDS and Its Metaphors was later published in combination with Illness As Metaphor. This combined edition is the one referenced here.
“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays
