Quotes About Suffering

I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.

Religion prescribes to every miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shows him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them.

Religion gives a dignity to distress.

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

Dear Pope, send me some hope or a rope.

Religion stalks across the face of human history, knee-deep in the blood of innocents, clasping its red hands in hymns of praise to an approving God.

I can't understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there's already so much pain in the world.

Religion all the world over offeres God as the solace and comfort for all in agony.

Persecution is as necessary to religion as pruning to an orchard.

As far as ignorance is concerned, not just Buddhism, every religion recognizes it as the source of suffering.

Religion has always been the wound, not the bandage.

But perhaps God's purpose in the world (I am only thinking aloud here) is to draw his creatures to him. And you have to admit that tragedies like this one at Virginia Tech help to do that!

Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.

The avoidance of that which causes you pain does not produce enlightenment. It produces avoidance. Religion is the avoidance of pain and suffering.

When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.

I think it is very good when people suffer. To me that is like the kiss of Jesus.

How blissful it is, for one who has nothing. Attainers-of-wisdom are people with nothing. See him suffering, one who has something, a person bound in mind with people.

O! I shall soon despair, when I shall seeThat Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me, And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

People don't believe in gods because they can't wrap their minds around the idea of someone allowing all the terrible things in the world to happen.

Religion converts despair which destroys into resignation which submits.

If there's a God why are there such things as famine and The Jerry Springer Show.

Sometimes I wonder how much of our suffering we allow or impose on ourselves simply in search of our worthiness to accept our own respect and appreciation.

What is at the base of shame or guilt? It is the consciousness of an imbalance, or of an action in the past that has caused, and probably continues to cause, suffering.

1I smiled bitterly, a defeated man pitifully begging a God in whom he had never trusted.