Quotes About Suffering

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

But if the want of those things which are necessary for the support of the living, as food and clothing, though painful and trying, does not break down the fortitude and virtuous endurance of good men, nor eradicate piety from their souls, but rather renders it more fruitful, how much less can the absence of the funeral, and of the other customary attentions paid to the dead, render those wretched who are already reposing in the hidden abodes of the blessed!

Death was originally proposed as an object of dread, that sin might not be committed; now it must be undergone that sin may not be committed, or, if committed, be remitted, and the award of righteousness bestowed on him whose victory has earned it.

I panted after honors, gains, marriage; and thou deridedst me. In these desires I underwent most bitter crosses, Thou being the more gracious, the less Thou sufferedst aught to grow sweet to me, which was not Thou.

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden."

The Apostle says: I make up in my flesh what is lacking to the sufferings of Christ (Col. 1:24). I make up, he tells us, not what is lacking to my sufferings, but what is lacking to the sufferings of Christ; not in Christs flesh, but in mine. not in Christ's flesh, but in mine. Christ is still suffering, not in His own flesh which He took with Him into heaven, but in my flesh, which is still suffering on earth.

It is the law of this life: sacrifice and joy go side by side

If God causes you to suffer much it is a sign that He has great designs for you and that He certainly intends to make you a saint. And if you wish to become a great saint, entreat Him yourself to give you much opportunity for suffering; for there is no wood better to kindle the fire of holy love than the wood of the cross, which Christ used for His own great sacrifice of boundless charity.

You must accept your cross; if you bear it courageously it will carry you to heaven.

Without the interior light of grace I would have undoubtedly pitied myself, but in the midst of darkness I found myself divinely illumined.

My only consolation lies in not having any here below.

Can a victim of love find anything her Spouse sends terrible?

A person is said to be patient…because he acts in a praiseworthy manner by enduring things which hurt him here and now and is not unduly saddened by them.

The dark shadow of crime spreads right and left, from the Penitentiary and the Workhouse, over all the institutions, the Asylum, the Alms-House and Charity Hospital; so that, in the minds of the people at large, all suffer alike from an evil repute." Being poor had become a character trait that needed "correction," like the impulse to steal or cheat. The Christian impulse to help the needy had been tamped down and replaced with an inclination to punish them.

Some people imagine that nuclear war will mean instant and painless death. But for millions this will not be the case. The accounts of the injured at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of the doctors who tried to tend them, witness to the horrors and torments which would be magnified thousands of times over in the kinds of attack we analyse here. . .

Even the masochists tell everything when tortured. From sheer gratitude.

TRUTH #1: Work is suffering. The ability to boss other people around destroys much of human decency.

TRUTH #2: Desire is the root of suffering. It is the desire to achieve, to live, to make things tolerable and pleasant, and even better, that creates untold pain in the lives of men and women. Want nothing, and you shall not be disappointed.

Above all, the divine love is salvific: It seeks the lost, suffers with the afflicted, and redeems the fallen.

Depression is the price we pay for our imagination and intelligence.

But theoretical, imagined suffering is not what distresses a man and destroys his peace of mind. Only what you have seen with pitying eyes can really shake you.

Being beautiful in itself, youth needs no transfiguration: in its abundance of strong life it is drawn to the tragic, and is happy to let melancholy suck sweetly from its still inexperienced bloom, and the very same phenomenon accounts for the readiness of young people to face danger and reach out a fraternal hand to all spiritual suffering

In the last analysis it seems likely that they were wiser than I, all those friends in Vienna, because they suffered everything only when it really happened, whereas I had already suffered the disaster in advance in my fantasy, and then again when it became reality.

There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness ...; and the other, the only kind that counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.