Quotes About Suffering

Modern books on pain make a sharp contrast. Their authors assume that the amount of evil and suffering in the world cannot be matched with the traditional view of a good and loving God. God is thus bumped from a "friend of the court" position to the box reserved for the defendant. "How can you possibly justify yourself, God?" these angry moderns seem to say.

Perhaps the greatest way to give suffering people time is being patient with them — giving them room to doubt, cry, question and work out strong and often extreme emotions.

Not until history has run its course will we understand how "all things work together for good." Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

the parents of a severely disabled child have no end in sight.

Wounded people who have been broken by suffering and sickness ask for only one thing: a heart that loves and commits itself to them, a heart full of hope for them.

In his list of fruits of the Spirit, Paul includes one that we translate with the archaic word "long-suffering." We would do well to revive that word, and concept, in its most literal form to apply to the problem of long-term pain.

a suffering person needs: love, and not knowledge and wisdom.

Shame and suffering, as St. Bernard says, are the two ladder-uprights which are set up to heaven, and between those two uprights are the rungs of all virtues fixed, by which one climbs to the joy of heaven… In these two things, in which is all penance, rejoice and be glad, for in return for these, twofold blisses are prepared: in return for shame honour; in return for suffering, delight and rest without end.

Kindness and pain, joy and suffering are twins in this fallen world.

God does not make the way smooth for those He loves. He sends hardships to try them. Those that God loves the best are those who suffer the worst.

I have to say that I am much less impressed by crucifixion now that I am in childbirth. It is really not possible that anything could hurt more than this. I grieve for the suffering of Our Lord, of course. But if He had tried a bad birth He would know what pain is.

She doesn't realize yet though men go to war it is the women who suffer--perhaps more than anyone.

To do one man's bidding to please another man and get nothing for yourself but heartbreak

Father William has sent the Host in the Monstrance from the chapel and they put it on my prie dieu so I can fix my eyes on the body of the Lord. I have to say I am much less impressed by crucifixion now that I am in childbirth. It is really not possible that anything could hurt more than this. I grieve for the suffering of Our Lord, of course. But if He had tried a bad birth He would know what pain is.

She did not realize, when her father claimed the throne and her brother won it, that a price must always be paid for power, and it will be paid by her as well as the rest of us. She doesn't realize yet that though men go to war it is women who suffer—perhaps more than anyone.

Ne postoji ništa što ?ovek može u?initi nego da podnosi. Možete besneti ili možete plakati, ali na kraju ?ete nau?iti kako to podnosti.

All this is always for nothing," he says. "Don't you understand that yet? Every death is a pointless death; every battle should have been avoided.

Recognition of the political-economic forces that impose patterns of suffering is the foundation for an applied critique of policy and services that persecute oppositional, marginalized populations in the name of morality

She could no longer hear the birds. She tried to concentrate on the pain instead—old Moonscar had told her there was a way, somewhere, of using pain as a ladder to climb above pain. It was a very dark way…she could tell only that the blade seemed to be cutting an angle.

C'est la pratique de la torture qui permet de distinguer à coup sûr l'homme de l'animal.

Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.

At any rate, they got the lead out—but paid a hideous price.

And the worst of it was, Irene could not claim with any certainty that this savage retribution was wrong. She had always thought other people would and should suffer for their callousness, but had never realized that she was as guilty as they and deserved similar treatment.

Grief is not necessarily any prettier than death, and the grief-stricken do not wander like lambs grateful for the shepherd's guidance. They can be more like wounded wolves, snapping at those who would help them.