Quotes About Suffering

It ate at whatever was warm nearby, and then the coldness settled in permanently. You learned to live with it

Non mi fu mai dato di vedere un animale in cordoglio di sé. Un uccelletto cadrà morto di gelo giù dal ramo senza aver provato mai pena per se stesso.

Suffering is above, not below. And everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise. —Antonio Porchia

It's incredible to me how blithely even intelligent people sometimes toss around terms like "transcendence" and "crucifixion." The words move us on paper. They feel noble upon the tongue. But when they cease to be sounds and begin to caress the flesh and bones, when they leave the page and get physical, there is little that even the best of us woudn't do to escape them.

There were some crucial things Vera's parents were forgetting about crosses, was what Peter said. One was that Jesus was nailed to His by enemies, not by Mary and Joseph. And another, he said, was that it killed Him. Christ's cross killed Him. We've got to remember what crosses are, Peter said. They're not just decorations on steeples. They're murder weapons, he said, the same as guns, or gas chambers, or electric chairs.

In this fallen world, Christians are not called to a life where all choices lead to comfort or safety. We are called to a life of commitment to the One who loves us enough to die for us. The Bible often tells us this commitment will mean trouble and pain. We must draw encouragement from the words of Jesus when He said, "Do

There is a sermon in the fact that the gates are pearl. [Because] heaven is entered through suffering and travail, through redemption and blood, through the agony of the cross. A pearl is a jewel made by a little animal that is wounded. Without the wound, the pearl is never formed.5

God, I love You for making me suffer like this. It is Your will. You know the best for me. And I just praise You for loving me enough to allow me to experience this. In all things, including this, I give thanks.

Quite often the Lord uses the adversity in our lives as a lens through which He can be seen! In the process of it all, He is developing our character so that we can be worthy reflectors of His glory. Paul teaches us that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trials and suffering can the soul be strengthened.

If Jesus had to suffer, why would we think ourselves exempt? After all, as He explained, "a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master" (Matthew 10:24).

Sometimes it is only through pain that we become who God wants us to be.

Psychologist Carl Jung, in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul, wrote, "About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be described as the general neurosis of our time."3 Jung wrote those words in the early part of the twentieth century, but with every passing year and decade their truth has become even more glaring. Holocaust

Out of the suffering of God's people have come some of the greatest triumphs. When circumstances look darkest, God has the opportunity to shine the brightest.

grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it's true. You don't have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined. As Erich Fromm says, "To spare oneself from grief at all costs can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability

I could blame everyone else for not feeling the pain I felt, or I could feel my own grief without any expectations about how anyone else should feel. I could have gratitude for whatever kindness people extended to me, while recognizing that they could not be expected to share my feelings. This was my tragedy, not theirs. I thought of the Auden poem "Musée des Beaux Arts," about suffering "while someone else is eating or opening a window.

suffering could make a person "splendid"—more able to appreciate the range of human existence and emotions.

Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?

you'd think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it's painful.

Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world.

She stays in the same spot, anchored by the profound, desperate loneliness of a bad relationship.

In my kind of falling, there's no landing. There's only hitting the ground. Hard. Dead, or wanting to be dead. So the whole time you're falling, it's the worst feeling in the world. Because you feel you have no control over it. Because you know how it ends.

I hope suffering don't exist.

but the truth is that I don't feel like I can carry anyone but myself right now. The streets are empty. I am empty. Or, no--I am full of pain. It's my life that's empty.

It was so much easier when I don't want anything. Not getting want you want want can make you cruel.