Quotes About Suffering

In 1950, at Orange, a train full of Far East wounded had been stopped by the Communists who had insulted and struck the men lying on the stretchers. A Paris hospital advertising for blood donors had specified that their contribution would not be used for the wounded from Indo-China. At Marseilles, which could now be seen looming over the horizon, they had refused to disembark the coffins of the dead.

Oh, the shame that I suffer now . . . the shame of a vanquished King." And those were the last words of Henry Plantagenet.

And there he lay in his bed, a broken man, worn out by a way of life which had been thrust upon him because of the antics of a wayward pig.

Nature was more merciful than men, providing for those who suffered great pain such blessedness as fainting; but men were cruel and brought their victims out of faints that the pain might start again. (On being tortured/The Tower.)

Est-ce un malheur si grand que de cesser de vivre?

Quand tu sauras mon crime, et le sort qui m'accable, Je n'en mourrai pas moins, j'en mourrai plus coupable

Her body was tortured with something it could not let out.

They did not say it was a punishment on womankind. This was because men were the rulers and women had to suffer for their sins.)

To think that men and women had actually had sex together—had actually done things. Or, rather, men had done things. It was the men who did them, the women who had them done. Men who had the pleasure, women all the suffering.

If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.

A man can suffer like a pagan, like the damned, or like a saint. If he wishes to suffer with Christ, he must try to suffer like a saint. For then, suffering is of benefit to our own souls, and applies the merits of the Passion to those of others: "I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His Body, which is the Church."10

Au fond, ce que j'aimais, c'était ce secret, cette douleur. Et la honte. Cette espèce de... dégradation. Comme quand on picole, tu vois? On savoure chaque gorgée et en même temps, on sait qu'on est en train de se détruire, de tomber un peu plus bas à chaque verre.

Karim s'adossa au mur, pris d'un vertige. Puis il scruta sa montre. Il avait bien tué deux heures. Mais ces heures l'avaient tué en retour.

Leurs cheveux pouvaient bien grouiller de poux, leurs gencives saigner, leurs ventres crier dans le vide, ils avaient l'éclatante santé des rêveurs.

Pain was the only sign to her that she was alive and could feel emotion.

The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.

I have been stabbed, shot, burned, bitten, beaten unconscious too many times to count, and even staked. None of those held a candle to the pain I felt at seeing his mouth on hers.

As Rebeca reveals what scraps of story she does have to Luca, he starts to understand that this is the one thing all migrants have in common, this is the solidarity that exists among them, though they all come from different places and different circumstances, some urban, some rural, some middle-class, some poor, some well educated, some illiterate, Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican, Indian, each of them carries some story of suffering on top of that train and into el norte beyond.

Less than two weeks ago, dirt on the floor in her hallway was a thing that could annoy her. It's unimaginable. The reality of what happened is so much worse than the very worst of her imaginary fears had ever been. But it could be worse still.

It seems impossible that good people – so many good people – can exist in the same world where men shoot up whole families at birthday parties and then stand over their corpses and eat their chicken.

Ángela has been a nurse in this city long enough to know that the pain of the family often eclipses the pain of the patient.

Hell is wet and cold and black and lost. Her brain tap-dances and contracts,

Every one of them, once or twice at least, every one of them despairs. The only thought that sustains them is the notion that each moment they endure this misery is one less moment they have yet to endure.

Pero no te preocupes, mi reina del alma—tu sufrimiento será breve.