Quotes About Suffering

per capire cosa vuol dire che la verità si concede solo all'orrore, e che per raggiungerla abbiamo dovuto passare da questo inferno, per vederla abbiamo dovuto distruggerci l'un l'altro, per averla abbiamo dovuto diventare belve feroci, per stanarla abbiamo dovuto spezzarci di dolore. E per essere veri abbiamo dovuto morire. Perché? Perché le cose diventano vere solo nella morsa della disperazione?

Death, just like life, has it's secret pains and lust. All in that to know them.

There was so much suffering in Africa that it was tempting just to shrug your shoulders and walk away. But you can't do that, she thought. You just can't.

those who have a great deal to complain about are so often silent in their suffering, while those who have little to be dissatisfied with are frequently highly vocal about it.

Telling a person with toothache that there are others with greater toothache than their own was no help at all.

Africa was full of people in need of help and there had to be a limit. You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. That principle allowed you to deal with the suffering you saw. That was your suffering. Other people would have to deal with the suffering that they, in their turn, came across.

Everybody who consulted her was, in their way, hurting--even this rich man with his big Mercedes-Benz and his expensive cuff-links. Human hurt was like lightning; it did not choose its targets, but struck, with rough equality and little regard to position, achievement, or moral desert.

This had happened because she had been able to make that sudden imaginative leap that lies at the heart of our moral lives: the ability to see, even for a brief moment, the world as it is seen by the other person. It is this understanding that lies behind all kindness to others, all attempts to ameliorate the situation of those who suffer, all those acts of charity by which we make our lives something more than the pursuit of the goals of the unruly ego.

People caused harm to others because they were of malevolent disposition, that was shear human wickedness. something that has always existed and always would.Some people it seemed derived pleasure from inflicting suffering on others...

As a child she had believed that wrongs would always be righted, that somehow the world would not let the innocent suffer, but now she realised that this was not true. Old oppressors were replaced by new ones, from another distant place or from right next door. Old lies were replaced by new ones, backed up by old threats.

Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel's private theory of moral proximity, the basis of those obligations that came into existence when we found ourselves close enough to others to be able to witness or feel their needs, or when we were in some other way linked to their plight. We could not deal with all the suffering or need in the world, but we could—and should—deal with that sliver of suffering that was reasonably close to us.

The physical world—the world of stone and brick—is indifferent to our suffering, to our dramas, she thought. Even a battlefield can be peaceful, can be a place for flowers to grow, for children to play; the memories, the sadness, are within us, not part of the world about us.

She knew as well as anyone that the world could be a place of trial and sorrow, that there was injustice and suffering and heartlessness - there was enough of all that to fill the great Kalahari twice over, but what good did it do to ponder that and that alone? None, she thought.

You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. That principle allowed you to deal with the suffering you saw. That was your suffering. Other people would have to deal with the suffering that they, in their turn, came across.

They sang that song which distills all the suffering and the hope of Africa; that song which had inspired and comforted so many, "Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika," God Bless Africa, give her life, watch over her children.

There were people like that, he thought; people for whom one wanted only happiness because that is what they deserved, but who were destined to be denied it because the gods, and the world, were unfair. The queue for happiness was not well ordered, he thought; it stretched out and wound round corners, and sometimes, it seemed, the end was so hard to see.

Contemplating this vast human suffering, you might be tempted to shrug your shoulders, but you could not.

Political scandals, economic disaster, suffering in all its familiar forms—these were the daily staple of a disaster-prone, uneasy planet.

Attacks on political correctness, in her view, were often made by those who had never suffered insult or known what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap.

Mutluluk için doÄŸmad?m ben; Ruhum yabanc?d?r buna; Fayda yok yetkin halinizden: Ben lay?k deÄŸilim ona. Ä°nan?n(vicdan bir güvence) Evlilik büyük bir iÅŸkence. Size duysam da s?cakl?k, SoÄŸuk tutar al??kanl?k; AÄŸlars?n?z: o yaÅŸlar benim Dokunmaz hiç yüreÄŸime, Döndürür beni deliye. Hangi gülleri,karar verin, Hymenaios bize haz?rlar Belki de çok uzun y?llar!

La, sotto i giorni nubilosi e brevi, Nasce una gente a cui 'l morir non dole. Petr.64

we are willing to lose ourselves in another as we exchange fates with one whom we love but on whom our heart is nevertheless impaled.

You're not likely to err by practicing too much of the cross.