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Quotes About Suffering

My friends have forgotten me, My dependents and maidservants respond to me as a stranger. Summon my servant but he does not respond Ã¢â'¬Â¦ My odor is repulsive to my wife, I am loathsome to my children. (19:15–17) He
~ Harold S. Kushner
About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically defineable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be described as the general neurosis of our time.
~ Harold S. Kushner
Why did they say that? Why did they assume that they were somehow responsible for this tragedy? Who taught them to believe in a God who would strike down an attractive, gifted young woman without warning as punishment for someone else's ritual infraction?
~ Harold S. Kushner
Pain is the price we pay for being alive. Dead cells—our hair, our fingernails—can't feel pain; they cannot feel anything. When we understand that, our question will change from, "Why do we have to feel pain?" to "What do we do with our pain so that it becomes meaningful and not just pointless empty suffering?
~ Harold S. Kushner
Why do so many—not all, but many—run to see a crashed plane, or a train, or two autos with numerous dead about? Why? What is it? Weariness of humdrum and commonplace? Love of change? Horror of the same thing happening to themselves? Or is it something evil in them? In us? Do we like to see other people suffer when we ourselves are safe and don't suffer? Are we really just evil or a mixture of good and evil, whether we want to be or not?
~ Harold Schechter
It is not enough for a woman to murder an enemy; she wants to make him suffer, and she enjoys his death.
~ Harold Schechter
To be sure, not every abused child grows up to be a psychopathic killer. But virtually every psychopathic killer has suffered extreme, often grotesque, mistreatment at the hands of his or her parents or guardians. In the language of logic, severe child abuse may not be a sufficient cause in the creation of serial murderers, but it appears to be a necessary one.
~ Harold Schechter
I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.
~ Harriet Ann Jacobs
Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.
~ Harriet Ann Jacobs
Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.
~ Harriet Ann Jacobs
But it is often those who have least of all in this life whom He chooseth for the kingdom. Put thy trust in Him and no matter what befalls thee here, He will make all right hereafter.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. "Ye poor miserable critter!" he said, "there ain't no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul!" and he fainted entirely away.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian's last struggle less than glorious.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
O, that's what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and never to have any pain,—never suffer anything,—not even hear a sad story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain and sorrow, all their lives,—it seems selfish. I ought to know such things, I ought to feel about them!
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear. What brother-man and brother-Christian must suffer, cannot be told us, even in our secret chamber, it so harrows the soul! And yet, oh my country! these things are done under the shadow of thy laws! O, Christ! thy church sees them, almost in silence!
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens every day! One sees girls and mothers crying at these sales, always! it can't be helped, etc.; and he walks off, with his acquisition, in another direction.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
No tear dropped over that pillow; in such straits as these, the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
And in those tears they all shed together, the high and the lowly, melted away all the heart-burnings and anger of the oppressed. O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
Deem not the just by Heaven forgot! Though life its common gifts deny,— Though, with a crushed and bleeding heart, And spurned of man, he goes to die! For God hath marked each sorrowing day, And numbered every bitter tear, And heaven's long years of bliss shall pay For all his children suffer here.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
Poor Cassy!" said Emmeline, "don't feel so! If the Lord gives us liberty, perhaps he'll give you back your daughter; at any rate, I'll be like a daughter to you. I know I'll never see my poor old mother again! I shall love you, Cassy, whether you love me or not!
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
there have been times when I have thought, if the whole country would sink, and hide all this injustice and misery from the light, I would willingly sink with it.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
George was taken home, and put to the meanest drudgery of the farm. He had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed,—indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the man could not become a thing.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
Pity him not! Such a life and death is not for pity! Not in the riches of omnipotence is the chief glory of God; but in self-denying, suffering love! And blessed are the men whom he calls to fellowship with him, bearing their cross after him with patience. Of such it is written, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe