Quotes About Suffering

Well, if there's a hell like this place then there has to be a heaven somewhere.

Sometimes the things we do to numb the pain, only creates more pain.

The scenery changes but the pain remains.

I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.

I longed for the day when her soul would be taken into the depths of hell

Compassion is not pity, not even empathetic pity. There is arrogance and haughty pride in pitying others. Compassion is when we are confronted with another's suffering and we suffer with them. Their pain is ours. We are motivated to relieve their suffering. When we feel true compassion we help those who suffer, not as a cathartic release, but because it breaks our heart that they are hurting. I have not always known or believed these things, but I am thankful that I do now.

If we suddenly become successful almost effortlessly, then people are envious. It really annoys them that we didn't have to go through all kinds of anguish, pain, and suffering to get there. Their mind believes that such anguish is the cost that must be paid for success.

Suffering is to cyclists what poll data are to politicians; they rely on it to tell them how well they are doing their job.

Submit to being called a neurotic. You belong to that splendid and pitiable family which is the salt of the earth. All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and they only who have founded religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be conscious of how much it owes to them, nor above all of what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it. —MARCEL PROUST, Guermantes Way, Vol. I

We say an unconditional yes to the given of life that our needs will not always be met and also to the first noble truth of Buddhism, that life includes unsatisfactoriness.

It took just such evil and painful things for the great emancipation to occur," Nietzsche said. He is also the one who said that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

All major religious traditions accept that suffering and death are simply part of life. The deep radicalism of humanitarian action is its belief that people are not made to suffer.

After Sarajevo, after Srebrenica, we know what "Never again!" means. "Never again'' simply means "Never again'' will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940's. That is all it means.

14. God and Suffering Question: Why did God kill my father and we suffered because we became orphans? If God is all good and almighty, why do we observe earthquakes and babies diagnosed with terminal illnesses? Why do bad things happen if God wants the best for us?

They were all helpless. They didn't ask to be born and they didn't ask to die. They were made to. But why, in between, did there have to be such pain? Perhaps humankind was more amusing that way. Perhaps they provided entertainment

I would miss having Nic in my life. I would miss his funny phone messages and his humor, the stories, our talks, our walks, watching movies with him, dinners together, and the transcendent feeling between us that is love. I would miss all of it. I miss it now. And here it sinks in: I don't have it now. I have not had it whenever Nic has been on drugs. Nic is absent, only his shell remains. I have been afraid - terrified - to lose Nic, but I have lost him.

At my worst, I even resented Nic because an addict, at least when high, has a momentary respite from his suffering. There is no similar relief for parents or children or husbands or wives or others who love them.

It may be true that suffering builds character, but it also damages people

Ha Jin writes: 'Some great men and women are fortified and redeemed through their suffering, and they even seek sadness instead of happiness, just as Van Gogh asserted, 'Sorrow is better than joy,' and Balzac declared, 'Suffering is one's teacher.' But these dicta are suitable only for extraordinary souls, for the select few. For ordinary people like us, too much suffering can only make us meaner, crazier, pettier, and more wretched

I see Nic on the plane. I see him as he is - frail, opaque, ill - my beloved son, my beautiful boy. "Everything," I say to him. "Everything." Fortunately there is a beautiful boy. Unfortunately he has a terrible disease. Fortunately there is love and joy. Unfortunately there is pain and misery. Fortunately the story is not over.

This is the way that misery does love company: People are relieved to learn that they are not alone in their suffering, that they are part of something larger, in this case, a societal plague [drugs]--an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families.

The miracles do not cancel out evil, but I accept evil in order to participate in the miraculous.

At my worst, I even resented Nic because an addict, at least when high, has a momentary respite from his suffering. There is no similar relief for parents or children or husbands or wives or others who love them. Nic

I pray even as the news in the papers makes my prayer seem insignificant in scale and wholly selfish. There is a devastating hurricane and flooding and suicide bombers and crashes and tsunamis and terrorism and cancer and war—endless and brutal war—disease and famine and earthquakes and everywhere there is addiction, and today the heavens must be overwhelmed with the noise of all the prayers. Here is one more. Please God heal Nic. Please God heal Nic. The