“To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves — these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.”

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down.”

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

“The person who does not know how to put up with others should retire into himself, if indeed he can suffer even himself.”

“You may take great comfort from the fact that suffering inwardly for the sake of truth proves abundantly that one loves it and marks one out as being of the elect.”

“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.”

“The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice.”

“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”

“He who would love much has also much to suffer.”

“If we decide – and this is our decision; it’s not imposed on us from above – if we decide that reducing the amount of suffering in the world is a good ethical principle to live by, then it becomes entirely unjustified and arbitrary to extend this principle to human beings but not also to extend it to other animals capable of suffering. Why should the suffering of nonhumans be less important than that of humans? Surely a universe with less suffering is better than one with more, regardless of whether the locus of suffering is a human being or not, a rational being or not, a member of the moral community or not. Suffering is suffering, and these other variables are morally irrelevant.”