Quotes About Suffering

At morning assembly we were read the words of Cyprian of Carthage: 'Let us on both sides of death always pray for one another.' Then we bowed our heads and beseeched God to protect our troops, and to send us peace and plentiful rain, and to grant us an ample harvest. But God remained pretty meager with his miracles: the dead stayed dead, the war went on, the rain either came too early and too strong or not at all, and the harvest depended in whether or not we'd had eelworm and blight.

Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.

What I've loved most after you, is myself: that is, my dignity and that strength which made me superior to other men. That Strength was my life. You've broken it with a word, so I must die.

If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.

It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!

Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.

There are people who are willing to suffer and swallow their tears at leisure, and God will not doubt reward them in heaven for their resignation; but those who have the will to struggle strike back at fate in retaliation for the blows they receive. Do you intend to fight back at fate, Valentine? That's what I came here to ask you. -Maximilien Morrel

Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.

One always hurries towards happiness, Monsieur Danglars, because when one has suffered much, one is at pains to believe in it.

Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

Pain, anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed.

Starvation! exclaimed the abbe, springing from his seat. Why, the vilest animals are not suffered to die by such a death as that. The very dogs that wander houseless and homeless in the streets find some pitying hand to cast them a mouthful of bread; and that a man, a Christian, should be allowed to perish of hunger in the midst of other men who call themselves Christians, is too horrible for belief. Oh, it is impossible - utterly impossible!

It was clear that Mme Danglars was suffering from one of those nervous irritations which women are often unable to explain even to themselves.

Sometimes salvation is found in agony.

There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathise with the sufferer in a great catastrophe.

We shine like those fires and those stars; we sigh like those waves; we suffer like those great ships, which are worn out in ploughing the waves, in obeying the wind which urges them towards an end, as the breath of God blows us towards a port. Everything likes to live, Raoul; and everything is beautiful in living things.

He told himself that it was the enmity of man, and not the vengeance of heaven, that had thus plunged him into the deepest misery.

If a man has tortured and killed your father, your mother, your sweetheart, in short, one of those beings who leave an eternal emptiness and a perpetually bleeding wound when they are torn from your heart, do you think society has given you sufficient reparation because the blade of the guillotine has passed between the murderer's trapezius and his occipital bone, because the who made you undergo long years of mental and emotional suffering has undergone a few seconds of physical pain?

I am he whom you sold and dishonored — I am he whose betrothed you prostituted — I am he upon whom you trampled that you might raise yourself to fortune — I am he whose father you condemned to die of hunger — I am he whom you also condemned to starvation, and who yet forgives you, because he hopes to be forgiven - I am Edmund Dantes!

it is a cruel thing to be forced to say, but, already used to misfortune, I must habituate myself to shame.

A man is always endowed by Heaven with too much for his own happiness, and just enough to make him miserable.

Oh, Mercédès, I have spoken your name with sighs of melancholy, with groans of pain and with the croak of despair. I have spoken it frozen with cold, huddled on the straw of my dungeon. I have spoken it raging with heat and rolling around on the stone floor of my prison. Mercédès, I must have my revenge, because for fourteen years I suffered, fourteen years I wept and cursed. Now, I say to you, Mercédès, I must have my revenge!

You who weep for pleasures fled, While dragging on a life of care, All your woes will melt in air, If to god your tears are shed, You who Weap!

Oh, count, have pity upon me. I am so unhappy.' 'I have known a man much more unfortunate than you, Morrel.' Impossible! 'Alas,' said Monte Cristo, 'it is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!