Quotes About Suffering

But lying in the critical care unit—an abdomen distending more and more with each passing hour, tubes running in and out of a body refusing to function, and a pain pump set to deliver the highest doses but still not relieving the pain—will make death look quite appealing.

When we think the process of longsuffering is unbearable, we must remember it would be deadly for God to put us up on that solid rock before we are strong, firm, and steadfast. And it would be cruel for Him to require us to sing before we have a song.

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

Humility can't be bought at a bargain price. It's the long working of grace upon grace within the hurts of our hearts. Humility

I think C. S. Lewis said it best: "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."1

Brokenness is what must happen before God can put the pieces back together in the way He can shine through the best.

We must invite God into our pain to help us survive the desperate in-between.

C. S. Lewis said it best: "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.

It's hard when we are living in that space where our head knows God can do anything, but our heart is heavy because He's not doing what we are hoping for.

When His timing seems questionable, His lack of intervention seems hurtful, and His promises seem doubtful, I get afraid. I get confused. And left alone with those feelings, I can't help but feel disappointed that God isn't doing what I assume a good God should do.

Labour is the purgatory of the erring.

When we read tales of atrocity, we all want to be the one who stood firm, who would not bend, who shouted the truth in the face of the dictator. Vsevolod Meyerhold came as close as anyone to achieving this. It is important to know of the full horror of his sacrifice. It is easy for all to imagine we are heroes when we are sitting in our kitchens, dreaming of distant suffering. - Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

Out in the palace gardens, groundskeepers buried statues in the dirt. As Justice and Peace were entombed together, a workman wrote on one flank "We'll come back for you." The grave was covered with leaves to conceal it. - Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

A gull planed steeply over their heads, a precarious flash of white against the windy blue sky. The short, hacking cry of a baby seemed to merge seamlessly for a moment with the gull's repetitive wail, as if they were one species. One species, Falkender thought, raucous and scavenging; one species calling out in pain. To be human is to be mixed and miscegenated like this. To be lost.

The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance.

There is living and there is death," the Emperor said. "Pain is irrelevant unless it leads to the latter.

To be a decent writer you must have both empathy and imagination. While these attributes aid your art, they can plague your soul. You don't simply suffer your own sadness, experience your own longing and worry about your own wife and children, you are burdened with experiencing the emotional states of multitudes of others you don't know.

The hardest thing to give up in the world is hope. And of every relationship we have, the one between a mother and child is the most profound. It is, therefore, the most difficult one to accept when it is broken.

When we read tales of atrocity, we all want to be the ones who stood firm, who would not bend, who shouted the truth in the face of the dictator ... It is easy for us all to imagine we are heroes when we are sitting in our kitchens, dreaming of distant suffering.

We believe that the body hath its rights — to move in a reasonable ambit — to raise, to lower its limbs — but across the face of this earth, there are every day those who suffer unforgivable torments, strapped or chained, confined in boxes or in the holds of ships. May the Lord remind me of this always as I walk free upon paths, and may I thus always give thanks unto Him for the strange, small gifts of gesture, of simple tasks done with requisite care and sphere of action.

its heart, it is a story about the power of music and its meanings — a story of secret messages and doublespeak, and of how music itself is a code; how music coaxes people to endure unthinkable tragedy; how it allows us to whisper between the prison bars when we cannot speak aloud; how it can still comfort the suffering, saying, "Whatever has befallen you — you are not alone.

It is as if there is no syntax, no grammar, that can contain their suffering. Only a list of things perceived.

Just within the limits of besieged Leningrad, there where days when more than ten thousand people died. Over the course of January and February alone, there were roughly two hundred thousand deaths. We cannot know the numbers exactly. All authority in the city had broken down. No one recorded deaths anymore. No one removed the bodies from the streets.