Quotes about suffering
page 10

“We suffer each other to have each other a while.”

Li-Young Lee (1957) American writer

“Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

World

“There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Courage, Freedom

“The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Rant in E-Minor (1997)
Variant: The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Beleive or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.

Love, God, Forgiveness, Question

“Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

God

“If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea…does that mean that 1 enjoys it?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People

“Struggling is mandatory. Suffering is optional.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Forbidden Falls

“Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Life

“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

C. 2, p. 10.
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Life, Tree

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

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Art of Power

Love

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”

Frank Herbert book Dune Messiah

Source: Dune Messiah

Truth

“Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Game

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Problem, Personality

“Suppose death had a heart to love and to release you, to whom would he turn this passion, would you chose a person from the crowd there. A person to suffer as you suffer.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Death, Passion, Heart

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Women, Men, Peaceful

“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

March, 1933 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ps_DtS_PFb4C&q=%22I+postpone+death+by+living+by+suffering+by+error+by+risking+by+giving+by+losing%22&pg=PT203#v=onepage <br class="br">Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Error

“Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.”

Elie Wiesel book Day

Source: Day

“life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Life

“I don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love, Understanding

“Something is wrong here: sex has been with us since the human race began its existence, yet I would estimate that 90 percent of human beings still suffer enormous inhibitions in this area.”

Xaviera Hollander (1943) Dutch prostitute

Sex

“Do you not tire of eternity? Do you not wish to end your suffering?"
"By leaping into the Void? Not really.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen (1988)

“Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Context: Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom, whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country; nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.

“Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Law

“I don't think you understand," he said. "I'm going to have you, at any cost. Any cost, Jenny, even if you have to suffer on the way. If I can't force you, I'll persuade you— and I can be very persuasive.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Hunter

Way, Understanding, Thinking

“The tragedy of life is not so much what
men suffer, but rather what they miss.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Life, Men, Sad

“God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

God, Thinking

“We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Belonging: A Culture of Place

World

“Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”

Milan Kundera book Ignorance

Source: Ignorance

Nostalgia

“Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.'
To live alone?'
To live. With what you are.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Learning

“As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Inès, describing her path to Hell, Act 1, sc. 5
Source: No Exit (1944)

Heart

“Only two things can reveal life's great secrets: suffering and love.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Love, Life, Secret

“It's good to suffer. Dont complain. Bear, bow, accept - and be grateful that God has made you suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

God, Happiness, People

“We are always in a hurry to be happy…; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Happiness, Time

“I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now."
Vronsky”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Ana Karenina

Hope

“If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

World, Personality

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be in pain, and I definitely don’t want to suffer.” – Nick
“Well…The only way to avoid them is to die.” – Death
“Okay, let’s change the topic now. Oh, look! A chicken.” – Nick”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Death, Pain, Way, Change

“When you bring an idealised relationship down to the level of an ordinary one it isn't necessarily the ordinary one that suffers'.”

Winston Graham (1908–2003) British writer

Source: Warleggan

“I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

Feeling, Past

“People who don't expect justice don't have to suffer disappointment.”

Isaac Asimov book The Robots of Dawn

Source: The Robots of Dawn

People, Justice, Disappointment

“We all suffer from dreams.”

Bernard Cornwell book Death of Kings

Source: Death of Kings

Dreams

“Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished.”

Maurice Druon (1918–2009) French writer

Source: El rey de hierro

World, Universe

“As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.”

Jack London book The Star Rover

Source: The Star Rover

Hurt, Heartbreaking, Hurtful

“We've come from the same history - 2000 years of persecution - we've just expressed our sufferings differently. Blacks developed the blues. Jews complained, we just never thought of putting it to music.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Music, History

“You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude.
And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they
were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade,
you'll suffer yet!”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Dreams

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful graces of God.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Wisdom, God, Pain, Sleep

“No one is ever holy without suffering.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“That will be her undoing," gasped Artemis, already suffering under the weight of the flak jacket. "Artemis Fowl will never be."
"I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?" said Holly.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

“Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Love

“Pain and suffering are the soil of strength and courage.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Someone Dies, Someone Lives

Pain, Courage

“God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.”

William Nicholson movie Shadowlands

Source: Shadowlands

God, World, Selfishness

“If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.”

Diane Wood Middlebrook (1939–2007) biographer

Source: Anne Sexton: A Biography

Pain, Way, Communication

“When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

God, Soul, Season

“[Knowing how to suffer without complaining is the only practical thing, it's the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution to the problem of life. ]”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

Life, Problem, Learning, Science

“I was still searching for someone to blame for my suffering. I really wanted someone to transfer my hate to, so that I could stop hating myself.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Source: The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life

Hate, Search

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Death, Fear

“Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing

is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.”

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) American writer

Way, Sense

“Love is a disease no one wants to get rid of. Those who catch it never try to get better, and those who suffer do not wish to be cured.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Love, Disease

“Grim sighed heavily. "I swear I'm getting a migraine."
"My mom suffers from those a lot, too."
"Being around you, I imagine she does.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Imagination, Moms

“I palliate the sufferings of others. yes I see myself as softening the blows, dissolving acids, neutralizing poisons, every moment of the day. I try to fulfill the wishes of others, to perform miracles. I exert myself performing miracles.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

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

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Love

“Many people have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Variant: People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.
Source: Diary

Love, People

“We're being trained through our incarnations--trained to seek love, trained to seek light, trained to see the grace in suffering.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love, Light, Training

“As a teenager, Michel believed that suffering conferred dignity on a person. Now he had to admit that he had been wrong. What conferred dignity on people was television.”

Michel Houellebecq book Atomised

Source: The Elementary Particles

People, Personality

“I wanted to cry but I didn't, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room ending our suffering.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Cry

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Parting, Training, Hurtful

“Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.”

Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist

Source: Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals

“What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.”

Peter de Vries (1910–1993) American editor and novelist

Source: The Blood of the Lamb

People

“It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Pain, Happiness, People, Truth

“… women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps… they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique

Death, Women

“Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“How can one be well… when one suffers morally?”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“Why do we write?
"To make suffering endurable
To make evil intelligible
To make justice desirable
and… to make love possible”

Roger Rosenblatt (1940) American writer

Source: Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing

Love, Making love, Justice, Intelligence

“I don't suffer from my insanity -- I enjoy every minute of it.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

“When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“Because i've suffered. Because many times in my life i have tried to love with all my heart, and my love has wound up being trampled or betrayed.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Love, Life, Time, Heart

“People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

People

“Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that's patrotism.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader

Love, Hope

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, People, Hurtful, For Father

“Do you know what it's like to like someone so much you can't stand it and know that they'll never feel the same way? Probably not. People like you don't have to suffer through those kind of things.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

People, Way, Feeling

“Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Heart, Joy

“We do not suffer by accident.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Suffering comes from desire, not from pain.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Pain

“Nothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

World

“Horror was rooted in sympathy… in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Heart-Shaped Box

Understanding

“Have patience; the lovers will suffer lovers always suffer.”

Clive Barker book Galilee

Source: Galilee

Lovers, Patience

“All we have to do is understand that we're all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Understanding

“You're mistaken, Father. You were in paradise, but you didn't recognize it. It's the same with most people in this world; they seek suffering in the most joyous of places because they think they are unworthy of happiness.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Happiness, People, World, Thinking

“So I'm an ace?' Will grinned. 'I'm flattered Halt, flattered. I had no idea you regarded me so highly.'
Halt gave him a long-suffering look. 'I might have been more accurate to say a joker.'
Whatever you say.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Kings of Clonmel

Idea

“A beggar’s mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king’s mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.”

R. Scott Bakker book The Judging Eye

TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES
Source: The Judging Eye (2009)

Stupidity

“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?”

Milan Kundera book Identity

pg 40
Source: Identity (1998)

Feeling, Nostalgia, Personality

“You want something to drink?” – Nick
“Human blood would be fabulous. But since I doubt you’re donating, let me suffer for a minute longer.” – Caleb”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Drink

“They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People, World, Way, Past

“No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.”

Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart

Source: The Hellbound Heart

Tear

“It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

“The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Disease

“I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Life, Fate, Happiness, Nature

Quotes about suffering page 10

Quotes about suffering
page 10