Quotes About Suffering

On the cross, God subverted everything we intuitively understand about power … For many of us, coming to terms with the thought that great blessings come through great suffering is a tough pill to swallow.

Physician of the Iron Age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear -- And struck his finger on the place, And said -- Thou ailest here, and here.

And amongst us one,Who most has suffered, takes dejectedlyHis seat upon the intellectual throne.

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair.

So, loath to suffer mute,We, peopling the void air,Make Gods to whom to imputeThe ills we ought to bear.

Tis the gradual furnace of the world, In whose hot air poor spirits are upcurl'd Until they crumple, or else grow like steel- Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring- Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel, But takes away the power- this can avail, By drying up our joy in everything, To make our former pleasures all seem stale. - Tristram and Iseult

Tis not the times, 'Tis not the Sophists vex him: There is some root of suffering in himself, Some secret and unfollow'd vein of woe, Which makes the times look black and sad to him. Empedocles on Etna: Act I, Scene I

No individual life can be truly prosperous, passed . . . in the midst of men who suffer.

And these, all labouring for a lord, Eat not the fruit of their own hands: Which is the heaviest of all plagues, To that man's mind, who understands. - The Sick King in Bokhara

The moral of the story: The guy who is starving you may sincerely be trying to feed you, but his best efforts might not be enough. In the end, if you are penned in, you can be killed by simple starvation and neglect, requiring no directly malign intention by your captors. Starvation just happens naturally when insufficient food is coming

From suffering I have learned this: That whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole unless she embrace the very same love which wounded her. — Mechtild of Magdeburg

Who we thought we were dies when a beloved dies. And it takes a while for a new self to rise, often haltingly, from the ashes of our ravaged hearts.

The wretchedness of the condition was perhaps best conveyed by the old saying that those suffering from seasickness believe they will die on the first day, are sure they will on the second, and hope they will on the third.

So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.

Those that multiply gods multiply griefs to themselves; for, whoever thinks one God too little, will find two too many, and yet hundreds not enough.

When sufferings begin to abound, consolations are given in more abundantly, 2 Cor. 1:5.

Trouble will drive those to God who have said to him, "Go away

drove them at length to the most barbarous and inhuman methods of suppressing them, by the murder of their children.

There is a way to acknowledge the great suffering of others without diminishing our own suffering.

He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.

Fantastic tyrant of the amorous heart. How hard thy yoke, how cruel thy dart. Those escape your anger who refuse your sway, and those are punished most, who most obey.

Let's just call things what they are. When a man's love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.

Factory farming isn't just killing: It is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature. It is not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to them.

In any case I just cannot imagine attaching so much importance to any food or treat that I would grow irate or bitter at the mention of the suffering of animals. A pig to me will always seem more important than a pork rind. There is the risk here of confusing realism with cynicism, moral stoicism with moral sloth, of letting oneself become jaded and lazy and self-satisfied--what used to be called an 'appetitive' person.