Pope John Paul II Salvifici doloris
Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris (“redemptive suffering”), 1984
Source: http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html
Source: The Odyssey
Pope John Paul II Salvifici doloris
Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris (“redemptive suffering”), 1984
Source: http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone
Context: It has often been said that every man who has suffered misfortunes prefers to be himself, even with his misfortunes, rather than to be someone else without them. For unfortunate men, when they preserve their normality in their misfortune — that is to say, when they endeavor to persist in their own being — prefer misfortune to non-existence. For myself I can say that when a as a youth, and even as a child, I remained unmoved when shown the most moving pictures of hell, for even then nothing appeared to me quite so horrible as nothingness itself. It was a furious hunger of being that possessed me, an appetite for divinity, as one of our ascetics [San Juan de los Angeles] has put it.
“Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger. Travel too far that road and the way is lost.”
Terry Brooks book The Elfstones of Shannara
Source: The Elfstones of Shannara
H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian
Source: The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (1963), pp. 60-61
“we travel far and fast
and as we pass through we forget
where we have been”
W.S. Merwin (1927–2019) American poet
John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar
Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book X, p. 367