Quotes About Suffering

In those days, my mother was in an especial ill humor. My father had begun to prefer his draughts to her, and her venom over it fell to me.

Their whispers choked me, turned the food in my mouth to ash. I pushed away my plate and sought out corners and spare halls where I might sit undisturbed, except for the occasional passing servant. My narrow world narrowed further: to the cracks in the floor, the carved whorls in the stone walls. They rasped softly as I traced them with my fingertip.

He is a connoisseur of pain.

My hands were cut almost to blood by jagged shards of rock. My feet left stains where they stepped. The pain was welcome, ordinary and clean. So easy to bear it was laughable.

If he turned gray, then he did. I would not go on anymore weaving my cloths by day and unraveling them again at night, making nothing.

all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

I remembered how in all the stories of my childhood the women were always hanging themselves.

was like any dull ass who has ever loved someone who loved another. I thought: if only she were gone, it would change everything.

Everything they reach for slips from their grasp." A chill shivered across my skin. "How do they bear it?" "As best they can.

All those years of pain and wandering. Why? For a moment's pride. He would rather be cursed by the gods than be No one.

In our day, death was preferable.

You are weak and blind, and it is worse because you choose it.

His eyes opened. "Name one hero who was happy." I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.

E dopotutto forse il dolore più grande è quello di chi viene lasciato da solo sulla terra. Non credi?

But why did the madness come?" "The gods wished to punish him," Chiron answered.

Il dolore più grande è quello di chi viene lasciato da solo sulla terra.

War breeds many sins (…)

Tell me a hero who was happy. -There isn't.

There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles," Chiron said. "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth, when another is gone. Do you think?

You have eked out ten more years of life, and I am glad for you. But the rest of us -" His mouth twists. "The rest of us are forced to wait for your leisure. You are holding us here, Achilles.

Sotto i rami spogli soffrivamo insieme, io per l'uomo che avevo conosciuto, e lui per l'uomo che non era riuscito a conoscere.

Patroclo —dice—, Patroclo, Patroclo. Lo repite una y otra vez hasta que la palabra es solo un sonido. Ulises se arrodilla y le insta a comer y beber. Le invade una ira feroz al oír eso y está a punto de matarle, pero para eso debería dejarme y no puede. Me sujeta con tanta fuerza que casi noto el latido de su corazón, como el aleteo de una mariposa. Es un eco, el último jirón de mi espíritu aún sujeto a mi cuerpo. Un suplicio.

Tell me," he said, "who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?" "A happy one, of course." "Wrong," he said. "A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.

How many times would I have to learn? Every moment of my peace was a lie, for it came only at the gods' pleasure.