Quotes About Suffering

I regularly made an effort to remember one of the most important lessons from my training: There's no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn't be ranked, because pain is not a contest. Spouses often forget this, upping the ante on their suffering—I had the kids all day. My job is more demanding than yours. I'm lonelier than you are. Whose pain wins—or loses?

You want to mute the pain? You'll also mute the joy.

You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

There's a difference between pain and suffering,

joy isn't pleasure; it's anticipatory pain.

But if I live in the present, I'll have to accept the loss of my future. Can I sit through the pain, or do I want to suffer?

but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

I've sat with patients who describe their grief as "monstrous" and "unbearable"; one patient, quoting something she heard, said it made her feel "alternately numb and in excruciating pain.

Even though I'm the one who should be holding her hand, even though she's the one with the missing appendages and a massive infection, she's reassuring me. And though this could make a great story line on ER, in that millisecond, I know I won't be working on that show much longer. I am going to medical school.

You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much.

You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering

Suicides do not end their lives because they are weak, mentally ill, or depressed - though certainly they may be all those things. They are in blinding, all-consuming psychic pain, and perhaps on that final poisonous day they can find no reason not to.

As I listen to the stories about those who suffered and ended their lives it seems to me that it isn't as if they wanted to die, but more that they wished to feel better and didn't know how.

To experience pain may not be a choice, but to suffer is a cognitive decision

We may have to face God's truth about our pain--it is real, but we must be careful not to get God and life mixed up. God does not cause the pain and sorrow. He suffers with us and desires to comfort us as only he can.

Grief made you selfish; engulfed as you were in your own pain, it was hard to remember the others were suffering too.

Having to pretend nothing was wrong, when everything was wrong, was excruciating.

Maybe he should kill himself and put them all out of their misery.

Regardless of the cause of depression, one factor remains constant: depression always centers on death and pain.

Jobs are a part of life. Maybe you've heard of the concept. It's called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money. Like those Japanese game shows, only without all the glory.

Pain is a byproduct of life. That's the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That's true for everyone. But if you don't face the pain and the suck, you don't ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Wait. You don't understand. I just wanted it to stop. Wanted the hurting to stop. I smoothed a bloodied lock of hair from her eyes and felt very tired as I said, The only people who never hurt are dead. The light died out of her eyes, her breath slowing. She whispered, barely audible, I don't understand. I answered, I don't either. A tear slid from her eye and mixed with the blood. Then she died.

Hospital waits are bad ones. The fact that they happen to pretty much all of us, sooner or later, doesn't make them any less hideous.