Quotes About Suffering

You could see New Jersey out of Mardi's window. From the seventy-second floor it looked like a scale model of Purgatory.

The world needed to suffer in order to understand the simplest of universal principles, the unity of man with man and with God. The world of men had to reap the harvest of its seeds of hate, selfishness and greed it had been sowing for centuries. It had to reap this harvest in order to learn that universal law is inevitable and inescapable.

No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.

T]hou knowest not the heart of woman... [N]ot in thy fiercest battles hast thou displayed more of thy vaunted courage than has been shown by woman when called upon to suffer by affection or duty.

Great God! hast Thou given men Thine own image that it should be thus cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren!

You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with magic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.

He tried to close a hand around the precious coffee but had to jerk his fingers away, sharply enough that his wrist popped painfully. Tallow wondered if the other end of the coffee machine was slurping water out of a lake in Hell.

He who has ascended the cross and refuses to drink the vinegar mingled with gall is the one who knows the Lord. Many go up to the cross rather reluctantly, still thinking of drinking vinegar mingled with gall to alleviate their pain. All who say—"The cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?"—will not drink the cup of vinegar mingled with gall.

Predicar la Cruz es relativamente fácil, pero ser una persona crucificada que predica la Cruz no es tan fácil.

Attachment to being right creates suffering. When you have a choice to be right, or to be kind, choose kind and watch your suffering disappear.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds, on the heel that has crushed it.

In essence, I'm urging you to stop taking your life so personally. You can end any and all suffering by reminding yourself that nothing in the universe is personal. Of course you've been taught to take life very personally, but this is an illusion. Tame your ego, and absolutely free yourself from ever taking anything personally.

suffering is a part of the human condition that no one escapes in their lifetime, and that it may be more despairing for some than others.

You must teach people to find meaning in their suffering, and in so doing they will be able to turn their personal tragedies into personal triumphs.

Every day I see Jesus Christ in all of his distressing disguises.

I wipe away my tears and nod, because the pain in my leg is nothing compare to the one in my heart.

Misery loves company.

I wipe away my tears and nod, because the pain in my leg is nothing compared to the one in my heart.

What can't be helped must be endured.

If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down to the world? ...how it might, because it could know its own creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?

Why were drunks, almost always, persons of talent, personality, lovable qualities, gifts, brains, assets of all kinds (else why would anyone care?); why were so many brilliant men alcoholic?

If he wanted to drink himself to death it was nobody's affair but his own; his life was his life to throw away, if that's what he wanted; but—was that what he wanted? If so, why did he suffer remorse? Obviously there was the will in him to destroy himself; part of him was bent on self-destruction—he'd be the last to deny it. But obviously, too, part was not; part held back and expressed its disapproval in remorse and shame.

Was this what he had been seeking? He had reached the point where always there was only one thing: drink, and more drink, till amnesty came; and tomorrow, drink again.

Medicine--and particularly hospital medicine, which lives in a sea of human suffering--has a way of beating callowness out of even the most self-possessed youth.