Quotes About Suffering

Were all slaves so thin—underfed, overworked, and taught that most things hurt?

In the 2020s, when these people were sick, starving, or trying to keep warm, they had no time or energy to look beyond their own desperate situations.

You're so young. It seems almost criminal that you should be so young in these terrible times.

They say we have no business wasting time or money in space when there are so many people suffering here on Earth, here in America.

everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn't believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.

I had only to move my fingers a little a jab them into the soft tissues, gouge away his sight and give him more agony than he was giving me.

She believed in a literal acceptance of everything in the Bible. Yet, when things got to be too much for her, she decided to trade pain for eternal pain in the hereafter. How could she do that? Did she really believe in anything at all? Was it all hypocrisy?

Or maybe she just went crazy because her God was demanding too much of her. She was no Job. In real life, how many people are?

Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism's insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes ("To everything there is a season"), change is part of life, of existence, of the common wisdom. But I don't believe we're dealing with all that that means. We haven't even begun to deal with it.

If everyone could feel everyone else's pain, who would torture? Who would cause anyone unnecessary pain?

Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.

Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.

Some pains are physical, and some pains are mental, but the one that's both is dental.

And Golgotha," he utters, barely audibly, "is, among other things, death for the sins of others. Also, you could say, a way of tidying up, of leaving things clean. Someone has to do it when too much stuff piles up. A way of purifying the system, according to the law of large numbers: many, many small Calvaries...

Oh, Star Maker, even if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest. Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so, it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right.

Humanity also suffered; though, save in the regions near the seat of war, it was in general only the children and the old people who suffered greatly.

Yet most of these worlds were really no worse than our own. Like us, they had reached that stage when the spirit, half awakened from brutishness and very far from maturity, can suffer most desperately and behave most cruelly.

Every time you wish the sky was something happening to your heart, you lose twice.

Entre los artículos almacenados en el "Canadá" que más dolorosamente me impresionaron, había una fila de coches de niño, que me trajeron al pensamiento a todos los desgraciados párvulos que los alemanes habían ejecutado. Otra sección emocionante era la destinada a los zapatos de niños y juguetes, que siempre estaba bien abastecida

So long had it been since we had eaten civilized provisions that we could not identify it. After much reflection I realized that it was simply bread spread with lard or grease.

En alguna parte de la tierra, más allá de las alambradas de púas, los hombres libres se estrechaban la mano y levantaban sus vasos para desear a los demás un feliz Año Nuevo... Pero en Birkenau, las ratas estaban cebándose en la carne de los niños de Europa

The human psyche evolved in order to defend itself against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible for us to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.

Sometimes it's as if I'm composed of nothing but symptoms of illness, I am a phantom built out of pain.

But it also crossed my mind that in spite of all, in spite of our fragility and ignorance, we have an incredible advantage over the stars – it is for us that time works, giving us a major opportunity to transform the suffering, aching world into a happy and peaceful one.