“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.”

“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.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

“One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

“My sole occupation is love.
All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God, all the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

“Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

“The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

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

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

“The more you love, the more you suffer”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

“You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables