Quotes About Suffering

Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all? Pierre asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!

Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?

Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and commonplace–and most horrifying.

She began to wish he would die; yet she did not want him to die because then his salary would cease. And this irritated her against him still more. She considered herself dreadfully unhappy just because not even his death could save her,

My brother's death: wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and painful dying.

Ca era dimineata ori seara, vineri ori duminica ? ii era totuna; era la fel, aceeasi durere surda, chinuitoare, care nu-l lasa o clipa; mereu constiinta vietii care se stinge fara putinta de impotrivire, dar care mai dainuie; moartea care se apropia, cumplita si hada ? numai ea singura era realitatea, iar celelalte toate...minciuna. La ce bun sa mai tii socoteala zilelor, saptamanilor, ceasurilor ?

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!

War is the most painful act of subjection to the laws of God that can be required of the human will.

Their daughter came in in full evening dress, her fresh young flesh exposed (making a show of that very flesh which in his own case caused so much suffering), strong, healthy, evidently in love, and impatient with illness, suffering, and death, because they interfered with her happiness. Fyodor

They say sufferings are misfortunes, but if I was asked whether I would stay as I was before I was taken prisoner, Or go through it all again, I would say, "For God's sake, let me be a prisoner again". For me, when our lives are knocked off course, we imagine everything in them is lost. But it is only the start of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal. A great deal still to come.

He suddenly felt that the very thing that had once been the source of his suffering had become the source of his spiritual joy, that what had seemed insoluble when he condemned, reproached and hated, became simple and clear when he forgave and loved.

And yet our existence is so organized that every personal enjoyment is purchased at the price of human suffering contrary to human nature.

There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness

There had been in his past, as in every man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences.

In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God spare her that.

She repeated continually, "My God! my God!" But neither "God" nor "my" had any meaning to her.

A man who does not understand the benefit of suffering does not live a clever and true life.

It never occurred to my mind that possibly poor Ilinka was suffering far less from bodily pain than from the thought that five companions for whom he may have felt a genuine liking had, for no reason at all, combined to hurt and humiliate him.

I only know this, that she thanks God for all her tribulations, and, above all, because her husband is dead.

The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's highest happiness.

Ah, don't grieve, little falcon,' he said with that tenderly melodious gentleness with which old Russian women speak. 'Don't grieve, little friend: you suffer an hour, you live an age! So it is, my dear. And we live here, thank God, with no offense. There's bad people, and there's good

Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.

And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?

So at least it seemed to Vronsky, just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his sore finger on everything.