Quotes About Suffering

Sometimes we can offer a cure, sometimes only a salve, sometimes not even that. But whatever we can offer, our interventions, and the risks and sacrifices they entail, are justified only if they serve the larger aims of a person's life. When we forget that, the suffering we inflict can be barbaric. When we remember it the good we do can be breathtaking.

He looked like the victim of a forceps delivery.

Speaking] is never without fear; of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now, that if I were to have been born mute, and had maintained an oath of silence my whole life for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.

A choice of pains. That's what living was all about.

what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority

There are no new pains.

The cockroach who is dying and the woman who is blind agree not to notice each other's shame.

And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective.

Is this pain and despair that surround me a result of cancer, or has it just been released by cancer? I feel so unequal to what I always handled before, the abominations outside that echo the pain within.

I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.

Ah, what is then this earthly life, But grief, affliction and great strife? E'en when fairest it has seemed, Nought but pain it can be deemed.

PASTOR. Violence aside now, admit that he suffers from fixed ideas. DOCTOR. I think your ideas are even more fixed, pastor! PASTOR

Og la oss ikke anklage Herren om vi ser små uskyldige barn lide. Ingen kan vite hvorfor, men den guddommelige rettferdighet lar oss ane at det er på grunn av forbrytelser begått før ankomsten til denne verden.

conhece a vida e os homens através do sofrimento, e os despreza com esse forte e nobre desdém que tem origem na profunda convicção da relativa nulidade de tudo, inclusive o próprio eu.

Forse è un destino assumere su di noi le altrui sofferenze, e che, in più, ciò accada proprio quando in solitudine si cerca di sottrarsene.»

I been wading in the water. I been walking all over the River Jordan. But what it get me, huh? I done been baptized with blood of the lamb and the fire of the Holy Ghost. But what I got, huh? My enemies all around me picking the flesh from my bones. I'm chocking on my own blood and all you got to give me is salvation?

Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity.

I couldn't help but think, This car is taking me to a mental hospital and my mother is treating it like open-mic night at a Greenwich Village café.

I was not living but actively dying.

Pain is interesting. I dislike it immensely but I've never experienced pain and boredom at the same time. Even when I had unending and severe pain in my lower back for several years I was never bored by the pain, though it exhausted me.

I read The Old Man and the Sea but my eyelids bled from the toothpicks that I used to keep them open.

When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.

As if one's capacity for pain had anything to do with life's apportionment of agonies, Mr. Kimmelbrod thought. Such idiocy.

But you see, the measure of hell you're able to endure is the measure of your love.