Quotes About Suffering

Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.

He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and "Hurrah for Karamazov" and kindness. He

And yet even from this—from evil—there will finally come good in some way; in some way that we may never understand or even see." Merrin paused. "Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness," he brooded. "And perhaps even Satan—Satan, in spite of himself—somehow serves to work out the will of God.

God was alien and cruel,

He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. In

He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and "Hurrah for Karamazov" and kindness.

Y, sin embargo, incluso de esto, del mal, vendrá el bien. De algún modo. De algún modo que nunca podremos entender, ni siquiera ver.

MY BROTHER HURTS. I SHARE HIS PAIN. I MEET GOD IN HIM.

The arms of pain crush time as they will

And dreamed about death in the staggering particular, death as if death were still never yet heard of while something was ringing, she gasping, dissolving, slipping off into void while thinking over and over, I am not going to be, I will die, I won't be, and forever and ever, oh, Papa, don't let them, oh, don't let them do it, don't let me be nothing forever and melting, unraveling, ringing, the ringing—

all-good, like the vain, capricious, cruel God of Job? With all of eternity at His disposal, what fiendish new tortures might He not devise? A limited

much for tea time and pleasantries. Who are you? What is it that you want from us? To suffer like you did on the cross? Well, we're doing it.

And inwardly raged at this portion of his being that so frequently rendered him helpless in the face of someone's plea; that he could not control; that lay coiled within him like a length of rope, always ready to fling itself out to rescue at the call of someone else's need. It gave him no peace. Not even in sleep.

Henri Nouwen (2005) observed that "anyone who willingly enters into the pain of a stranger is truly a remarkable person," and we agree

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. ~William Ralph Inge

Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.

To be or not to be that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them, end them.

Hanging and Riving goes by destiny.

Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

Beggars mounted run their horse to death.

The sun's o'ercast with blood: fair day, adieu!Which is the side that I must go withal?I am with both: each army hath a hand;And in their rage, I having hold of both,They whirl asunder and dismember me.

Just death, kind umpire of men's miseries.

One fire burns out another's burning,One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.