Quotes About Suffering

The pain and the suffering that I went through made me an activist. It made me stronger; it made me more compassionate.

Having children, entering the realm of parents and parenthood, changes our relationship to the world in ways we could not have anticipated and might not have signed up for. Before I had children, for example, I believed strongly in the nobility of suffering.

I am struck by how casually we as a nation react to the carnage in Iraq.

Back when George W. Bush was identifying his Axis of Evil, it struck me that a longer and more instructive list could be compiled of the Axis of the Humiliated (or Insulted and Injured, to borrow from Dostoevsky).

In 1989, my father died after a prolonged struggle with Alzheimer's disease. All four of his siblings followed him into the shadow lands of that fascinating, maddening affliction.

I clearly remember the pain of partition; the whole of Delhi was seeing the struggle of refugees. We stayed near Roshanara Bagh, and the whole city appeared like a refugee camp.

Music is a mysterious phenomenon - it seems both to magically overwhelm and sublimate our suffering, but also to starkly dignify the struggles of our daily life.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

Often the people with the biggest smiles can be struggling the most.

Suffering makes me hungry. Suffering allows me to put some hurt in my opponent. It's a good thing.

I was a happy-go-lucky gothic girl who had an optimistic spirit cos I was suffering a lot at home.

North Koreans are forced to work at state jobs in a moribund economy. Countless parents watch their children go to bed hungry. Many North Korean families feel they have no option but to try to escape.

For too long, this country has been suffering a great moral and oral decay in spirit and incisors.

It is axiomatic that the Cross we get is the one we most dislike: we would choose any other. But it is equally true that the Cross which is ours is the one Christ wants us to bear.

The British people have a global outlook, they are generous, and when they see suffering and injustice they are motivated to act.

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.

When we're suffering, we kind of have this notion that we kind of should stop living and we should just focus on his how to 'get over it,' how to just 'get to the other side.'

The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.

The cup of Ireland's misery has been overflowing for centuries and is not yet half full.

But maybe that's how it is with art. You suffer, and in the end, everyone thinks it's cool.

A brief note on the legend of Pandora's Box: Ever wondered why bundled in with all the torrents, and suffering of man kind the Gods put hope down there at the bottom, answer because in certain circumstances hope can be the worst torment of them all.

Het potsierlijk gemorste lopend voedsel, de drinkbeker voor kleuters in de handen van een huilende negentigjarige, de onbehandelbare pijnen, de stoma's, de urinezakjes hangend aan een kapstok naast het bed dat je niet meer verlaat, de nooit eindigende tragikomedie van de ontlasting. Dat ganse bittere repertoire van kots en kak.

Ik had gedacht dat ik hem zomaar mocht opslaan in duizend lege beelden en toch vrijuit kon gaan. Maar hier en nu, in dit compartiment, in deze voortdenderende trein, schokten de duizend beelden over elkaar heen en vielen trillend samen. Hun collectieve leegte was zo smartelijk dat ik die moest vullen. Tot elke prijs. Als ik dat niet deed, zo voelde ik, zou ik ten onder gaan. Want het was een leegte die niemand kon verdragen.

De kou die lippen kunnen voelen veroorzaakt zoveel meer pijn dan wat blote handen kunnen verdragen.