Quotes About Suffering

O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me. (Jer. 20:7)

And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:25–27)

No one yet grasped that your mortal punishment would bring our eternal peace, that your fatal wounding would secure our everlasting healing, and that your being crushed would lead to our being cherished by the thrice holy God (Isa. 53).

Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46)

I want to enter more fully into the fellowship of sharing in your sufferings, living out the birth pangs of new-creation life in this broken world, which groans for its release from the bondage to decay—a release that is sure to come (Rom. 8:18–25). Our labors in you are not in vain, Jesus (Phil. 3:10–11).

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet. 4:12–13 NIV)

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isa. 53:5 NIV)

How we long for the day when words like cancer, dementia, and heart disease will no longer appear in our vocabulary. Until that day, we unabashedly and earnestly pray for healing, and we trust you for all-surpassing peace and more-than-sufficient grace.

I am grateful that you brought me to Jesus but clueless about how you actually change your sons and daughters—I suffered much under the hands of bad theologies, man-centered remedies, and Christless formulas.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. (2 Cor. 4:7–10)

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!" (Matt. 16:22 NIV)

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. (Ps. 119:71 NIV)

Jesus, I praise you for your tender mercies and measureless sacrifice. For you gladly took the appointment of wrath on the cross—sustaining the judgment we deserve, enduring the suffering for our sins, paying the penalty we owe. And you did it all so that whether we are "awake or asleep"—alive or dead—we might be with you.

SEAMUS: It's the civilians that suffer, when there's an ambush they don't know where to run. Shot in the back to save the British Empire. Shot in the breast to save the soul of Ireland. I believe in the freedom of Ireland and that England has no right to be here, but I draw the line when I hear the gunmen blowing about dying for the people when it's the people that are dying for the gunmen. With all due respect to the gunmen, I don't want them to die for me.

We want what the woman wanted in the prison queue in Leningrad, standing there with cold and whispering for fear, enduring the terror of Stalin's regime and asking the poet Anna Akhmatova if she could describe it all, if her art was equal to it.

Only the very stupid or the very deprived can any longer help knowing that the documents of civilization have been written in blood and tears, blood and tears no less real for being very remote.

No windfall or good fortune comes to mortals That isn't paid for in the coin of pain.

Terrible times. I managed to come through But I never healed. My whole life has been Just one long cruel parody.

Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured.

We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?

Riegger's Dichotomy sounded as though a pack of rats were being slowly tortured to death while, from time to time, a dying cow moaned.

War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.

Ahhhhhhhh. There is nothing natural about natural childbirth. It is as close to a freak accident as anything I can think of. Why I picked a time like this to go off drugs?

The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.