Quotes about suffering
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“Let us be clear about three facts. First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm…. The infantryman has to use initiative and intelligence in almost every step he moves, every action he takes on the battle-field. We ought therefore to put our men of best intelligence and endurance into the Infantry.”

Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (1883–1950) senior officer of the British Army

In Praise of Infantry, The London Times, Thursday, 19 April 1945.

Men, War, Art, Intelligence

“One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.”

John Fortescue (1394–1476) Chief Justice of the King's Bench of England

De laudibus legum Angliae (c. 1470), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Death, Personality

“Dear God, these are anxious times. Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me. I shall promise You one thing, God, just one very small thing: I shall never burden my today with cares about my tomorrow, although that takes some practice. Each day is sufficient unto itself. I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn't seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

12 July 1942, p. 488-89
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

God, Time, Help

“The terrible situation of the country makes my mind restless and I cannot keep silent. Meaningless ritual keep the Hindus divided in hundred sects. Sop we are suffering from series of defeats. We are tired and worn-out by the fortunes by the internal external enemies. The Muslims are united in religion and rituals. The Bengali Muslims the South Indian Muslims and even the Muslims outside India-all are united. They always stand untied in face of danger. The broken and divided Hindus will not be able to combat them. Days are coming when the Hindus will be again humiliated by the Muslims. "You are a mother of children, one day you will die, passing the future of Hindus society on the weak shoulders of your children, but think about their future."”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

From the letter to Hemantabala Sarkar, written on 16the October, 1933, quoted in Bengali weekly `Swastika', 21-6-1999 http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html

Children, Religion, Thinking, Future

“However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U. S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

War, People, Failure, Understanding

“To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. XIV, ch. 15
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Love, Life, God

“Thus great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921) Context: When sorrow is deepest... then the surface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. Thus great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. So while we are cowards before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood.

“My own Jesus,
They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God – they would go through all that suffering if they had just a little hope of possessing God.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

On her dark night of spiritual desolation amidst devotion, in a letter addressed to Jesus, as quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007) edited by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, p. 192; regarding this quote, Fr. Kolodiejchuk writes: "...when addressing Jesus — that is, in prayer — she could express herself with ease. Fufilling her confessor's request, she sent to him a letter addressed to Jesus, enclosing it with her letter dated September 3, 1959." https://books.google.com/books?id=P4cqT0nK_joC&pg=PA192&dq=%22when+addressing+Jesus+-+that+is,+in+prayer+-+she+could+express+herself+%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk0IOm5vTOAhVF1x4KHYdRDE4Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22when%20addressing%20Jesus%20-%20that%20is%2C%20in%20prayer%20-%20she%20could%20express%20herself%20%22&f=false 1950s Context: My own Jesus, They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God – they would go through all that suffering if they had just a little hope of possessing God. In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing (Jesus, please forgive my blasphemies, I have been told to write everything). That darkness that surrounds me on all sides. I can’t lift my soul to God – no light or inspiration enters my soul. I speak of love for souls, of tender love for God, words pass through my words sic, lips], and I long with a deep longing to believe in them! What do I labour for? If there be no God—there can be no soul.—If there is no soul then Jesus—You also are not true... Jesus don't let my soul be deceived—nor let me deceive anyone. In the call You said that I would have to suffer much.—Ten years—my Jesus, You have done to me according to Your will—and Jesus hear my prayer—if this pleases You—if my pain and suffering—my darkness and separation gives You a drop of consolation—my own Jesus, do with me as You wish—as long as You wish, without a single glance at my feelings and pain... I beg of You only one thing—please do not take the trouble to return soon.—I am ready to wait for You for all eternity.

God, Pain, People, Hope

“We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992
Context: We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the eighteenth century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in, we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and are responsible for, and what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that's dripping from their hands because of the way they are allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system.

“The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: — let such a one be dismissed!”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter I · Detail Assessment and Planning

“My argument with so much of psychoanalysis, is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness, when in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people's suffering”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

1963 interview, used in The Century of the Self (2002)
Context: My argument with so much of psychoanalysis, is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness, when in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people's suffering; that the problem is not to undo suffering or to wipe it off the face of the earth but to make it inform our lives, instead of trying to cure ourselves of it constantly and avoid it, and avoid anything but that lobotomized sense of what they call "happiness." There's too much of an attempt, it seems to me, to think in terms of controlling man, rather than freeing him. Of defining him rather than letting him go. It's part of the whole ideology of this age, which is power-mad.

People, Truth

“All that is done and said and thought and suffered upon the Earth combine together, and flow onward in one broad resistless current toward those great results to which they are determined by the will of God.
We build slowly and destroy swiftly. Our Ancient Brethren who built the Temples at Jerusalem, with many myriad blows felled, hewed, and squared the cedars, and quarried the stones, and car»ed the intricate ornaments, which were to be the Temples. Stone after stone, by the combined effort and long toil of Apprentice, Fellow-Craft, and Master, the walls arose; slowly the roof was framed and fashioned; and many years elapsed, before, at length, the Houses stood finished, all fit and ready for the Worship of God, gorgeous in the sunny splendors of the atmosphere of Palestine. So they were built. A single motion of the arm of a rude, barbarous Assyrian Spearman, or drunken Roman or Gothic Legionary of Titus, moved by a senseless impulse of the brutal will, flung in the blazing brand; and, with no further human agency, a few short hours sufficed to consume and melt each Temple to a smoking mass of black unsightly ruin.
Be patient, therefore, my Brother, and wait!
The issues are with God: To do,
Of right belongs to us.
Therefore faint not, nor be weary in well-doing! Be not discouraged at men's apathy, nor disgusted with their follies, nor tired of their indifference! Care not for returns and results; but see only what there is to do, and do it, leaving the results to God! Soldier of the Cross! Sworn Knight of Justice, Truth, and Toleration! Good Knight and True! be patient and work!”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XIX : Grand Pontiff, p. 321

Men, God, Truth, Justice

“Vanquish your foes by always keeping yourself in a safe and unassailable position; then no one will suffer any losses.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)
Context: The real Art of Peace is not to sacrifice a single one of your warriors to defeat an enemy. Vanquish your foes by always keeping yourself in a safe and unassailable position; then no one will suffer any losses. The Way of a Warrior, the Art of Politics, is to stop trouble before it starts. It consists in defeating your adversaries spiritually by making them realize the folly of their actions. The Way of a Warrior is to establish harmony.

Loss

“The great honor of Christianity, its incontestable merit, and the whole secret of its unprecedented and yet thoroughly legitimate triumph, lay in the fact that it appealed to that suffering and immense public to which the ancient world, a strict and cruel intellectual and political aristocracy, denied even the simplest rights of humanity. Otherwise it never could have spread.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

Dover edition, p 75
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

Secret, World

“Mankind will soon see that there is no alternative to sharing the produce of the world. Every other method has been tried and failed, and has led inevitably to war, suffering, degradation and misery.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

War, World

“I'd rather ten guilty persons should escape, than one innocent should suffer.”

Julius Caesar (-100–-44 BC) Roman politician and general

Attributed by Edward Seymour in 1696 during the parliamentary proceedings against John Fenwick ( "I am of the same opinion with the Roman, who, in the case of Catiline, declared, he had rather ten guilty persons should escape, than one innocent should suffer" http://books.google.com/books?id=dIM-AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA565), to which Lieutenant General Harry Mordaunt replied "The worthy member who spoke last seems to have forgot, that the Roman who made that declaration was suspected of being a conspirator himself" (Caesar was the only one who spoke in the Senate against executing Catiline's co-conspirators and was indeed suspected by some to be involved in the plot). However, the Caesar's corresponding speech as transmitted by Sallust http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Sallust/Bellum_Catilinae*.html#51 contains no such phrase, even though it appears to be somewhat similar in spirit ("Whatever befalls these prisoners will be well deserved; but you, Fathers of the Senate, are called upon to consider how your action will affect other criminals. All bad precedents have originated in cases which were good; but when the control of the government falls into the hands of men who are incompetent or bad, your new precedent is transferred from those who well deserve and merit such punishment to the undeserving and blameless.") The first person to undoubtedly utter such a dictum was in fact John Fortescue ("It is better to allow twenty criminals to mercifully avoid death than to unjustly condemn one innocent person"). It should also be noted that whether the exchange between Seymour and Mordaunt even happened is itself not clearly established http://books.google.com/books?id=IitDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA694. Misattributed

Personality

“We are seeing a globalization of indifference. There is a culture of conflict, which makes us think only of ourselves. Makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are also insubstantial. We've become used to the suffering of others. It doesn't affect me. No one in our world feels responsible. Who is responsible for the blood of our…”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Source: Movie The Two Popes, Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis

Love, World, Making love, Feeling

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language (1946)

Bad luck, People, Age, Knowledge

“It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

“Every action of man, the highest as well as the lowest, is egoistic; for it flows from a certain individuality, a certain I, with a sufficient motive, and can in no way be omitted. To go into the reason of the difference of characters is not the place here; we have simply to accept it as a fact. Now it is just as impossible for the merciful man to let his neighbor starve as it is for the hard-hearted man to help the poor. Each of the two acts according to his character, his nature, his ego, his happiness, consequently egoistically; for if the merciful one did not dry the tears of others, would he be happy? And if the hard-hearted one relieved the suffering of others, would he be satisfied?”

Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) German poet and philosopher

Source: Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Ethik, § 11 ISBN 978-1494963262

Happiness, Way, Motivation, Nature

“You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering.”

Anne Rice book Pandora

Pandora (1998)

Silence, Waiting

“Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

People

“I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Reality, For women

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

World, Feeling, Thinking

“We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped… We suffer, therefore we think.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Pain, Hope, Problem, Thinking

“Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

Love, God, Joy, Gratitude

“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

Du kannst Dich zurückhalten von den Leiden der Welt, das ist Dir freigestellt und entspricht Deiner Natur, aber vielleicht ist gerade dieses Zurückhalten das einzige Leid, das Du vermeiden könntest.
104
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

World, Nature

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

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

Justice, Passion

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

“Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: De Profundis and Other Writings

Pain, Mood, Time, Season

“It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Truth

“The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

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

Life, World

“To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others.”

Giovanni Boccaccio book The Decameron

Source: The Decameron

Past

“Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who don't suffer, time flows, so that they don't live in time, in fact they never have.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Time

“We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to hate when we suffer. It is so depressing to think that we suffer because we are fools; yet, taking mankind in the mass, that is the truth.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

Hate, Truth, Fools, Thinking

“We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation

“A beautiful object has no intrinsic quality that is good for the mind, nor an ugly object any intrinsic power to harm it. Beautiful and ugly are just projections of the mind. The ability to cause happiness or suffering is not a property of the outer object itself. For example, the sight of a particular individual can cause happiness to one person and suffering to another. It is the mind that attributes such qualities to the perceived object.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Happiness, Beauty, Personality

“Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Happiness, World, Feeling

“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Variant: We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate one another.

“Suffer love! A good ephitet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Love

“A man's allowed to make lots of small mistakes, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the mistakes are big ones and they weigh him down, his only solution is to stop taking himself seriously. It's the only way to avoid suffering - suffering, prolonged, can be fatal.”

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (1950) Cuban writer

Source: Dirty Havana Trilogy

Way

“Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in The Memoirs of Stalin's former secretary (1992) by Boris Bazhanov [Saint Petersburg] (in Russian) http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/BAZHANOW/stalin.txt Contemporary witnesses

Dogs, Gratitude

“Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Pain, Feeling

“We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job…”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

“To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Hurt

“I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting "Forward, brave comrades!" you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People

“Warriors should suffer their pain silently.”

Erin Hunter

Source: Into the Wild

Pain, Hurtful

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
Context: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

Love, Life, Search, Knowledge

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Death, Fear, Dead

“People never remember happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Happiness, People

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Men, For Men

“More than any other nation, the United States has been almost constantly involved in armed conflict and, through military alliances, has used war as a means of resolving international and local disputes. Since the birth of the United Nations, we have seen American forces involved in combat in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, and Vietnam, and more recently with lethal attacks in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other sovereign nations. There were no “boots on the ground” in some of these countries; instead we have used high-altitude bombers or remote-control drones. In these cases we rarely acknowledge the tremendous loss of life and prolonged suffering among people in the combat zones, even after our involvement in the conflict is ended.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Life, War, People, Birth

“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic

Variant: When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

“I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Truth, Thinking

“Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so.”

Anna Funder book All That I Am

Source: All That I Am

People, Imagination

“Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.”

Arthur Miller All My Sons

Source: All My Sons

People, Time

“It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Art, Color

“The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader's charisma. What matters is the leader's mission.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices

History

“Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.”

Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly

“Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Forgiveness, Sense

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Pain, Motivational, Heartbreaking

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

People, Fear, Time, Moving On

“If there is suffering, then it's best to accept it, because it won't go away just because you pretend it's not there. If there is joy, then it's best to accept that too, even though you're afraid it might end one day.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Joy

“If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Community And Growth

Love, Effort

“They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

World, Way

“Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Love, Happiness, Disease

“Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

Secret

“I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

Source: J'accuse! (1898)
Context: In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29/7/1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.
As for the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, and I bear them neither ill will nor hatred. To me they are mere entities, agents of harm to society. The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.
I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight! I am waiting.

Happiness, Soul, Passion, Cry

“… happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves…. The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement….”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Life, Happiness, Effort

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Way, Thinking, Time, Sun

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threating to destroy the Social and the Political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people, is not simply some romantic dream, or a proverb in a dusty book, that we read, just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea of which founded our nation and has guided us in our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else. We've always believed in a thing called, progress. We've always had a faith, that the days of our children, would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith. Fopr the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe, that the next five years, will be worse than the past five years. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor, unitl the shock of Watergate. We've got to stop crying and start sweating. Stop talking and start walking. Working together, with our common faith, we cannot fail.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Children, People, Books, Faith

“This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this and I do not. Everything is unique — and insignificant.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Truth

“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Memory, Wise, Moving On

“There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

November 10, 1963
This was said before Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and as he himself stated, before he truly understood Islam.
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

Books, Peace, Religion, Law

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Life

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

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

Nobel acceptance speech (1986)

Silence, Help

“No matter how much you hate or how much you suffer, you can't bring the dead back to life”

Nobuhiro Watsuki (1970) Japanese manga artist

Life, Hate, Dead

“The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?”

Jeremy Bentham book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 17 : Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence
Source: The Principles of Morals and Legislation
Context: The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?

Question

“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.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 130

God, Fear, Dreams, Search