“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.”

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "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, o…" by Albert Einstein?
Albert Einstein photo
Albert Einstein 702
German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativi… 1879–1955

Related quotes

Seneca the Younger photo

“Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.”
Quemadmodum omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque intemperantia laboramus: non vitae sed scholae discimus.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Alternate translation: Not for life, but for school do we learn. (translator unknown)
Alternate translation: We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life. (translator unknown).
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CVI: On the corporeality of virtue, Line 12

Julian of Norwich photo

“Two things belong to our soul as duty: the one is that we reverently marvel, the other that we meekly suffer, ever enjoying in God. For He would have us understand that we shall in short time see clearly in Himself all that we desire.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 47
Context: Two things belong to our soul as duty: the one is that we reverently marvel, the other that we meekly suffer, ever enjoying in God. For He would have us understand that we shall in short time see clearly in Himself all that we desire.
And notwithstanding all this, I beheld and marvelled greatly: What is the mercy and forgiveness of God? For by the teaching that I had afore, I understood that the mercy of God should be the forgiveness of His wrath after the time that we have sinned. For methought that to a soul whose meaning and desire is to love, the wrath of God was harder than any other pain, and therefore I took that the forgiveness of His wrath should be one of the principal points of His mercy. But howsoever I might behold and desire, I could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
But how I understood and saw of the work of mercy, I shall tell somewhat, as God will give me grace. I understood this: Man is changeable in this life, and by frailty and overcoming falleth into sin: he is weak and unwise of himself, and also his will is overlaid. And in this time he is in tempest and in sorrow and woe; and the cause is blindness: for he seeth not God. For if he saw God continually, he should have no mischievous feeling, nor any manner of motion or yearning that serveth to sin.
Thus saw I, and felt in the same time; and methought that the sight and the feeling was high and plenteous and gracious in comparison with that which our common feeling is in this life; but yet I thought it was but small and low in comparison with the great desire that the soul hath to see God.

Cesar Chavez photo

“We are suffering. We have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Plan of Delano (1965)
Context: We are suffering. We have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause. We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hunger on us, and now we hunger for justice. We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

John Stuart Mill photo

“Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

"The Spirit of the Age, I", Examiner (9 January 1831), p. 20 Full text online http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/256/50650

Paul Erdős photo

“The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. … The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

SF was an abbreviation for "Supreme Fascist" — the term Erdős often used to refer to God, as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 4

W. Somerset Maugham photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.”

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), III
Context: On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!

Angelina Jolie photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)
Source: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Related topics