Quotes About Suffering

There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human being who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.

I often wonder if I am entitled to be as happy as I am, given the amount of suffering in the world.

instead of allowing the enormity of the world's sufferings to make me unhappy, I have allowed it to increase the depth of my gratitude for the blessed life that I have been allowed to lead. You can look at the amount of suffering in the world and become bitter (this world stinks), cynical (nothing matters, it's all just a roulette game), or hedonistic (with all this suffering, I'll rack up all the fun I can) – or you can be grateful for your blessings.

In all my studies of happiness, one of the most significant conclusions I have drawn is that there is little correlation between the circumstances of people's lives and how happy they are. A moment's reflection should make this obvious to anyone. We know people who have a relatively easy life and who are essentially unhappy, and we know people who have suffered a great deal but maintained a relatively high level of happiness.

Suffering is no guarantee of empathy and the decent behavior it engenders. When people emerge from pain and oppression, they have two options: they can use their anger over their suffering to legitimize their oppression of others; or they can use the memory of their pain to empathize with others. Suffering ennobles only those who want to be ennobled by it.

If we identify having fun with happiness, we will identify the opposite of fun, pain, with unhappiness. However, because no happiness is possible without pain, the attempt always to avoid it by having fun as much as possible makes happiness impossible

No one can rationally believe doing God's will guarantees one will, for example, never develop cancer or die in an earthquake. If that were the case, we would have to draw the irrational and cruel conclusion that anyone who dies prematurely was being punished by God—or the equally irrational conclusion that all those who live long and healthy lives have lived God-centered lives.

Many people seem to want this epitaph: "I led as painless a life as possible." But the purpose of life is not to avoid pain. That is the purpose of an animal's life—but animals cannot know happiness.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People and his lectures.

The believer has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.

Half the people in our asylums may be suffering from a physical lesion of the brain but the others are unaccountably insane. The real reason is demoniac possession brought about by looking upon terrible things that they were never meant to see.

When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death.

The dilemma is awesome. But it has to be faced. Should you battle on, take the pain, endure the indignities, and await the inevitable end, which may be days, weeks, or months away? Or should you take control of the situation and resort to some form of euthanasia, which in its modern-language definition has come to mean "help with a good death"?

The self or wealth, which is greater? Gain or loss, which is more painful?

This part of Kant's view is, I believe, a profound truth. We can be morally responsible in several other ways, or senses, but no one could ever be responsible, I believe, in any way that could make them deserve to suffer. Nor, I believe, does anyone deserve to be less happy.

For there is a time in the tide of the heart, when Arrived at its anchor of suffering, a grave Or a bed, despairing in action, we ask O God, where is our home?

How one suffered for one's children — all their upsets a hurt; all their joys a triumph. 'And

Discovering more joy does not, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.

If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You're going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It's like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.

Transformation begins in you, wherever you are, whatever has happened, however you are suffering. Transformation is always possible. We do not heal in isolation. When we reach out and connect with one another—when we tell the story, name the hurt, grant forgiveness, and renew or release the relationship—our suffering begins to transform.

In each of us, there is an innate ability to create joy out of suffering, to find hope in the most hopeless of situations, and to heal any relationship in need of healing.

I would love to know who killed my father. So would my brother." Her next words stunned me and left me breathless. "We want to forgive them. We want to forgive, but we don't know who to forgive.

D'ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arms-my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten.

I think perhaps the greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help. Not in having no one for whom to care? Fraser paused before answering; he might have been weighing the position of the pieces on the table. That is emptiness, he said at last, softly. But no great burden