Quotes About Suffering

Sein heisst in der Klemme sein.

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.

We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is linked to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

Geschwätz ist jede Konversation mit einem, der nicht gelitten hat.

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.

When there is no hope in the future, the present appears atrociously bitter.

Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her along to the bitter end of the miserable existence she'd made for herself. They never even knew what she did die of. Some spoke of a chill. But the truth was that she died from poverty, from the filth and the weariness of her wretched life.

I still own my heart, which I know because it hurts so much.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.

Sleep not, dream not; this bright dayWill not, cannot last for aye;Bliss like thine is bought by yearsDark with torment and with tears.

Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,How could I seek the empty world again?

And that White Sustenance—Despair—

For each ecstatic instantWe must an anguish payIn keen and quivering ratioTo the ecstasy.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes.

And the worst thing, the unsurvivable thing, is understanding that there exist people who know in their flesh the truth of all this. They know it because they created it, created hell with their bare hands and then just kept on living, kept on as though they never stopped the world.

All you have to do is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.

Negro life is in fact as debased and impoverished as our theology claims.

Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain.

All women had been cursed from the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men.

And I tell you something else, don't none of you forget it: I know a lot of people done took their own lives and they're walking up and down the streets today and some of them is preaching the gospel and some is sitting in the seats of the mighty. Now, you remember that. If the world wasn't so full of dead folks maybe those of us that's trying to live wouldn't have to suffer so bad.

We had known each other for many years; starved together, worked together, loved each other, suffered each other, made love; and yet the most tremendous consummation of our love was occurring now, as she patiently, in love and terror, held my hand.