quotations about suffering
Pain and suffering are the soil of strength and courage.
LURLENE MCDANIEL
attributed, Quotes on Courage
Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.
ANNE RICE
Pandora
But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Diana of the Crossways
As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
CHINUA ACHEBE
A Man of the People
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
attributed, The St. Helena Journal of General Baron Gourgaud, 1815-1818: Being a Diary Written at St. Helena During a Part of Napoleon's Captivity
In sorrow and in suffering are hidden the springs of a peace and a power that can be affected by no outward storms. It is a great thing, when one has grown strong through that trial which melts away the dross and proves the true gold; when, being driven to the handling of many expedients, he has been trained to detect all counterfeit comforts, and to discriminate between unsubstantial good and that which abides every test; when he has learned to dispense with all outward props, can let riches, honors, health drop away from him, and yet feel that all this does not touch his real life; while above these coils of uncertainty and mutation he lifts his naked personality erect in its own spiritual resources. Surely, prosperity has never generated such depths of power, such intrinsic and full consolation.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.
SAUL BELLOW
Seize the Day
Long-protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
Patience, piety, and salutary knowledge spring up and ripen under the harrow of affliction; before there is wine or oil, the grape must be trodden and the oil pressed.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
All that affliction of the darkest kind ever can work to the true soul is to awaken it up to spiritual things, to open the clear eye, to make the spiritual reality the more real. If you rightly comprehend it it only strikes that which is round about you, it only removes that which is outward and physical, but it leaves you all the same a greater and a better man for your trial.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
There is nothing like suffering to enlighten the giddy brain, widen the narrow mind, improve the trivial heart.
CHARLES READE
A Simpleton
You didn't die. That was the treachery of suffering. It took you to the point from which you thought death must follow, then let you know it could hold you there indefinitely. That was when you stopped fearing death and started wanting it, praying for it, begging for it.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages: they have learned to understand and be understood by all.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Those who have suffered, who have known poverty or oppression, are generally the most prone to kindness. Perhaps it is well to endure some misery if only to learn this lesson.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
He who knows how to suffer everything can dare everything.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
The indifference of others to our suffering is soul chilling. It's the single thing that most consistently reminds me of the finiteness of life.
WILLIAM DASS
"The American Dream is Gonna Eat You, Too", Film School Rejects, July 8, 2017
The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede