quotations about suffering
A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.
HOMER
The Odyssey
You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, October 5, 1938
Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
SAUL BELLOW
"The Sealed Treasure", It All Adds Up
One does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.
WILLIAM STYRON
Darkness Visible
If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
You know, my dear, you're wrong that suffering ennobles people.... It simply makes one cross.
GREGORY BENFORD
"Nooncoming", In Alien Flesh
Seek not life's jewels where the poppies grow,
Nor where Desire, all passion-poisoned, rears
Her luring domes, but in the heart of woe,
With shores far washed by sanctifying tears.
EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR
"Life's Jewels"
To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan.
THOMAS GRAY
Odes on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
Nothing brings suffering as does
the untamed, uncontrolled unattended and unrestrained heart.
That heart brings suffering.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Anguttara Nikaya
It is a comfort, in anguish, to be reminded of the scale of one's own troubles against the mighty breadth of the world.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
Suffering is as God's letter. Open it and read it. Many a one will find that he is titled, or that there is an inheritance laid up for him.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Suffering of sentient beings is like decay; it fertilizes the growth of their souls.
ANNE RICE
Memnoch the Devil
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.
C. S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
Learn to bear suffering, and it shall bear thee.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
In this house of suffering
I gotta let some joy in
BAD BRAINS
"House of Suffering"
Sometimes the only way around suffering is to go straight through it.
ANONYMOUS
Some people seem to be born to suffer.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
Easter
Suffering must be the inevitable tariff exacted from spirit for residing in human form.
MARK FROST
The List of Seven
When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
BERTOLT BRECHT
"When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain"
Complete success alienates a man from his fellows, but suffering makes kinsmen of us all.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible