Quotes About Suffering

When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha.

but what grieved him most was his inability to love these people as Christ had loved them.

I tell you the truth - for a long, long time these farmers have worked like horses and cattle; and like horses and cattle they have died. The reason our religion has penetrated this territory like water flowing into dry earth is that it has given to this group of people a human warmth they never previously knew. For the first time they have met men who treated them like human beings. It was the human kindness and charity of the fathers that touched their hearts.

But the scrawny, powerless man with his arms outstretched on the cross had at some point reclaimed Otsu. Still, that doesn't change the fact that I won. With startling rapacity God had merely picked up a man I discarded.

I hope it doesn't get worse. But even if it gets worse, I won't regret it. I would rather be dead than live in the factory anymore. Not much difference as they just want you to work to death anyway. And you can't even think there or talk. but I have to think. I have to talk. I have to talk about what I think.

We mourn His suffering when, instead, we should mourn the reason He suffered.

Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

we are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay..., from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men... This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other. (p77)

It is that we are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.

Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men.

Thus we arrive at the singular conclusion that of all the information passed by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life -- it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any.

All that is to live in endless song Must in life-time first be drown'd.

Religion interferes with this play of selection and adaptation by forcing on everyone indiscriminately its own path to the attainment of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in reducing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world by means of delusion; and this presupposes the intimidation of the intelligence.

Nonostante tutte le approssimazioni e anticipazioni nel mondo circostante, fu nello spirito di un uomo ebreo, Saulo di Tarso, che per la prima volta si affacciò l'idea: «Siamo così infelici perché abbiamo ucciso Dio Padre».

Niemals sind wir ungeschützter gegen das Leiden, als wenn wir Lieben. Niemals hilfloser unglücklich, als wenn wir das geliebte Objekt oder seine Liebe verloren haben.

Three sources of suffering: the superior power of nature, the frailty of our bodies, and the inadequacy of the institutions that regulate people's relations with one another in the family, the state and society.

O sofrer nos ameaça a partir de três lados: do próprio corpo, que fadado ao declínio e à dissolução, não pode sequer dispensar a dor e o medo, como sinais de advertência; e, por fim, das relações com os outros seres humanos.

Thus we may perhaps be forced to become reconciled to the idea that it is quite impossible to adjust the claims of the sexual instinct to the demands of civilization; that in consequence of its cultural development renunciation and suffering, as well as the danger of extinction in the remotest future, cannot be avoided by the human race.

No dudo que para el Destino sería más fácil que para mí curarla, pero ya se convencerá usted de que adelantamos mucho si conseguimos transformar su miseria histérica en un infortunio corriente.

No stronger impression arises from the resistances during the work of analysis than of there being a force which is defending itself by every possible means against recovery and which is absolutely resolved to hold on to illness and suffering.

Another question: why do people often find animal suffering harder to accept than the suffering of other human beings?

This would explain much of human suffering, according to my ex, who was being less playful than you might think. He really did believe that's how it was: each of us languaging on, our meaning clear to ourselves but to nobody else. Even people in love? I asked, smilingly, teasingly, hopefully. This was at the very beginning of our relationship. He only smiled back. But years later, at the bitter end, came the bitter answer: People in love most of all. —

Even worse. Making vivid, interesting characters out of those girls and women? Mythologizing and novelizing their suffering? No." The man gives an exaggerated sigh. "I know this argument, and I don't buy it. If everyone felt the way you do, the world would remain ignorant about things it has every good reason to know. Writers have to bear witness, it's their vocation. Some would say the writer has no higher calling than to bear witness to injustice and suffering.