Quotes about suffering
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“Reading has always been the largest and most irreplaceable pleasure for Vincent; reading about other people's successes and failures, joys and sufferings seemed to bury his own failures.”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

People, Pleasure, Failure, Reading

“… children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.”

Ishmael Beah book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Source: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Children, Chance

“If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead.”

Sena Jeter Naslund (1942) American writer

Source: Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

Life, Time, Dead

“Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise for all the riches of Barsoom. Such is love, and such are lovers wherever love is known.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book A Princess of Mars

Source: A Princess of Mars

Love, Fools, Lovers

“Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.”

James Frey My Friend Leonard

Source: My Friend Leonard

Pain, Feeling, Learning

“When you're older you'll know what people who love suffer. The agony. It's better to be cold and young than to love. It's happened to me before but never like this - so accidental - just when everything was going well.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Love, People

“You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.”

Alasdair Gray book Lanark: A Life in Four Books

Source: Lanark

World, Thinking, Change

“Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.”

Terry Tempest Williams book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Source: Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

“I hope suffering don't exist.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Hope

“Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Literature

“Each snowflake was a sigh heard by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. All the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women suffer.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Women, People, World

“I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Life, Happiness, Future

“When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”

Ian McEwan book Enduring Love

Source: Enduring Love

Love, Fight

“Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?”

Aldous Huxley book Antic Hay

Source: Antic Hay

Life, Happiness, Art

“If you are waiting for anything in order to live and love without holding back, then you suffer.”

David Deida (1958) American writer

Source: Blue Truth: A Spiritual Guide To Life & Death And Love & Sex

Love, Waiting

“The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Time

“[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68)”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Crooked Little Heart

Love

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

Wisdom, Stupidity

“In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those people who decide to die? No one can judge. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering or the total absence of meaning in their lives.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People, World, Personality

“To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Life, Learning

“Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Life, Pain, Way, Learning

“Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.”

Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing

Source: Book of Longing

“I hammered him with my fists. He just stood and took it. He didn't suffer graciously, he looked pissed off to no end. But he let me hit him. And he didn't hit me back.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

“I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 40, The Rat Who Wound the Clock

Pain, Light, Summer

“It's the sorrow you feel that allows you to crave love. Without the suffering, there would be no true pleasure. Without tears, no joy. Without deficiency, no longing. This is the secret of the human heart, Rom.”

Ted Dekker book Forbidden

Source: Forbidden

Love, Pleasure, Secret, Feeling

“All the suffering there is in this world arises from wishing our self to be happy. All the happiness there is in this world arises from wishing others to be happy.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Happiness, World

“Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change

Love, Way

“Surrender… sacrificing my life or suffering in order to change what needs to be changed”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Life, Change

“Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Black Tulip

Source: The Black Tulip

Happiness

“Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Happiness

“There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

As quoted in Honor Your Gifts (2007) by Dona M. Deane, p. 199.
Variant: But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for

Life, Dreams, Fight

“Stories distribute the suffering so that it can be borne.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

“In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Love, Life

“Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way”

Barry Unsworth book Sacred Hunger

Source: Sacred Hunger

Way

“It is that we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never no helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object of its love.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Love

“It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect it’s presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Business

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”

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

“Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

“I never meant it," he was saying.
"Never meant it to happen. Can't stand it,
seeing her suffer. Must do something, do something… What do I do? What can I do…?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

“They will be like shadows, they will be like wraiths, gray members of a congregation of nightmare; hark! his long wavering howl… an aria of fear made audible.
The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you will suffer, in itself a murdering.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Fear

“Added to their loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent, visible in the blue puffiness beneath their eyes or the way they would sometimes stop in mid-stride, look down, and shake their heads as though disagreeing with life.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Life, Way

“There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Hope, Despair, Sad, Depressing

“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Betrayal

“I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.”

Margaret Atwood book Alias Grace

Source: Alias Grace (1996)

“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
Source: Gulliver's Travels (1726)

Nature

“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

“You'll need to suffer to make any real art.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

Art

“We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39)”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Fate, Way, Help

“When to stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“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

God, Dreams, Search, Heart

“We all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Source: Vittorio, The Vampire

Knowledge

“I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down… The other accident is Diego.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote in Imagen de Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund in Novedades (Mexico City) (10 June 1951)
1946 - 1953

Life

“You suffer the blow, but you capitalize on the opportunity left in its wake.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

“If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.”

William Faulkner book Absalom, Absalom!

Source: Absalom, Absalom!

Happiness

“Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Alcohol, Disease

“One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Light, Night

“I believe there is a reason such as autism, severe manic-depression, and schizophrenia remain in our gene pool even though there is much suffering as a result.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Pain, Solitude, Distant

“My suffering left me sad and gloomy.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 1, p. 3

Sadness

“Women were supposed to be the enigmas, but men? Moody, brooding bastards, the lot of them. A woman with PMS had nothing on a man. Where women might get hormonal once a month, men suffered their own brand of PMS on a daily basis.
- Faith”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Surrender

Women, Men, Faith

“creative people always suffer from depression because we're so
super sensitive and special?”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

People

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)
Source: The Awakening, and Selected Stories
Context: The years that are gone seem like dreams -if one might go on sleeping and dreaming- but to wake up and find -oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all ones life.

Life

“For as long as he could remember, he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Feeling

“Congratulations, love. You traded up. Does he treat you well?'
'He's a teddy bear,' I said.
Teddy bear looked like he was suffering from murder withdrawal.

(Rene and Kate on Jim!)”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Love

“… it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Nature

“I was starting to come to grips with the fact that I had created a lot of pain and suffering around me, not just within me.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Pain

“Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Soul

“In a typical mental health catch-22, the alienating nature of depression tends to keep its sufferers from finding their way to the very support groups that might help them.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Health, Way, Support, Nature

“The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in our health, or we suffer in our soul, or we get fat.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 737. The only source given in the end notes is "personal information". Einstein is said to have made this comment when a box of candy was being passed around after dinner, and he said that his doctor wouldn't let him eat it. The book also says that 'A friend asked him why it was the devil and not God who had imposed the penalty. "What's the difference?" he answered. "One has a plus in front, the other a minus."'.
Attributed in posthumous publications

Life, Health, Penalty, Soul

“Shame, isn’t it? That we only like our heroes out in the street when they are looking their best and their uniforms are ‘spit and polished,’ and not when they’re showing us the wounds they suffered on our behalf.”

Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs

Source: Maisie Dobbs

“We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Imagination

“Sometimes you suffer for the things that are important to you.”

Marta Acosta American novelist

Source: Dark Companion

“When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

God, Happiness

“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Beauty, Music, Hurt

“As long as one suffers one lives.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 5, ch. 1
Source: The End of the Affair (1951)

“I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)

Silence, Falseness

“…. it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Death

“When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

This is attributed to Pirsig by Richard Dawkins in the Preface to The God Delusion (2006), p. 28, but cannot be found prior to that. It is obviously a paraphrase of the following from Pirsig's Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals (1991): „An insane delusion can't be held by a group at all. A person isn't considered insane if there are a number of people who believe the same way. Insanity isn't supposed to be a communicable disease. If one other person starts to believe him, or maybe two or three, then it's a religion." ( books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=51i6WkGn6qYC&q=%22An+insane+delusion%22; books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=WZtRAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA426) <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

People, Religion, Personality