Quotes About Suffering

A slave was supposed to be like the Holy Ghost—don't see it, don't hear it, but it's always hovering round on ready.

There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness.

You forgive what you can, when you can. That's all you can do. To forgive does not mean overlooking the offense and pretending it never happened. Forgiveness means releasing our rage and our need to retaliate, no longer dwelling on the offense, the offender, and the suffering, and rising to a higher love. It is an act of letting go so that we ourselves can go on.

The day life turned into nothing this world could fix

Sometimes things of magnitude settle over you with excruciating slowness. Say you break your ankle and don't feel it hurting till you've walked another block.

I didn't see why loving someone had to have so much agony attached to it. It felt like a series of fresh cuts in the skin of my heart

I think every pain in this world wants to be witnessed

People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel…but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.

People with profound human needs and suffering do not, as I have half-imagined and half-wished, travel in a boat separate from mine. In ways I have scarcely appreciated, we are all in the same boat, and I can't be unavailable to their suffering without jeopardizing my own soul.

Look at you child, look what he's done to you, she said. My knees had been tortured like this enough times in my life that I'd stopped thinking of it as out of the ordinary; it was just something you had to put up with from time to time, like the common cold. But suddenly the look on Rosaleen's face cut through all that. Look what he's done to you.

He learned well, and his suffering didn't harden him. It's always a marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead.

It has been a day of suffering for you," he said, and the words opened a ravine of sadness in me. My eyes glazed, a sob creeping up the back of my throat.

every pain in this world wants to be witnessed

Don't look away. Terrible things will happen now. Unbearable things. Bear it anyway.

I took a deep breath and gazed up at him. "Jesus." His head slumped toward his shoulder and I saw he was looking at me. He didn't speak, nor did I, but I told myself later that everything that had ever passed between us was present then, that it was hidden somewhere among the suffering

I was crying for the vast imbalance, the heart that had been lost, the rejection of the earth and body, the oppression and diminishment of things considered feminine. It was a suffering with, a despair I felt on behalf of something much larger than myself.

I let my fingers brush the inside of his elbow. Then I dampened the towel and wiped the dirt and blood from his hands, arms, chest, and face, from the coils of his ears and the creases in his neck, all the while falling and falling, slamming into myself, into the boundless pain.

everything that had ever passed between us was present then, that it was hidden somewhere among the suffering.

Already that morning missus had taken her cane stick to me once cross my backside for falling asleep during her devotions. Every day, all us slaves, everyone but Rosetta, who was old and demented, jammed in the dining room before breakfast to fight off sleep while missus taught us short Bible verses like "Jesus wept" and prayed out loud about God's favorite subject, obedience. If you nodded off, you got whacked right in the middle of God said this and God said that.

Were women the only ones with hearts large enough to hold such anguish?

Most everyone has a private torment, some voracious badger that gnaws at them without ceasing, and this was Father's.

He didn't speak, nor did I, but I told myself later that everything that had ever passed between us was present then, that it was hidden somewhere among the suffering.

Noise was on her list of slave sins, which we knew by heart. Number one: stealing. Number two: disobedience. Number three: laziness. Number four: noise. A slave was supposed to be like the Holy Ghost—don't see it, don't hear it, but it's always hovering round on ready.

Most everyone has a private torment, some voracious badger that gnaws at them without ceasing