Quotes About Suffering

Only when we have carved you into pieces can you be whole again.

But do not make the mistake, Seraphina, of supposing that suffering ennobles anyone.

I was feverish; I couldn't keep down food. Orma stayed by me the entire time, and I suffered the illusion that behind his skin—behind everyone's—was a hollow nothingness, an inky black void. He rolled up my sleeve to look at my arm, and I shrieked, believing he would peel back my skin and see the emptiness beneath it.

That must be a wretched existence, forced to lie when you don't want to.

If I know something, I am not a victim. Victims don't know the meaning of their suffering. I am an enemy or a collaborator, not a victim.

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson.

In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.

Suffering shapes the life force, sometimes into anger, sometimes into blame and self-pity. Eventually it may show us the wisdom of embracing and loving life.

Perhaps we are no longer a kind people. More and more, we seem to have become numb to the suffering of others and ashamed of our own suffering. Yet suffering is one of the universal conditions of being alive. We all suffer. We have become terribly vulnerable, not because we suffer but because we have separated ourselves from each other.

Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough.

Understanding the suffering is beyond me. Understanding the healing is, too. But in this moment, I am here. Use me.

If I love you more than you love me, I'm as good as dead. Yet I can't make myself take it back. I can't just walk away from you, because every time you pass by me without smiling, without touching my hand, or at least making eye contact, it feels like I'm dying inside.

She loved deeply, far more deeply than many a one who could fearlessly proclaim himself a lover. Since this is a hard and sad truth for the telling; those whom nature has sacrificed to her ends--her mysterious ends that often lie hidden--are sometimes endowed with a vast will to loving, with an endless capacity for suffering also, which must go hand in hand with their love.

Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation – one point of light. The most perfect Being of all had cried for light in His darkness – even He, the most perfect Being of all.

The doctors cannot make the ignorant think, cannot hope to bring home the sufferings of millions; only one of ourselves can someday do that...It will need great courage but it will be done, because all things must work toward ultimate good; there is no real wastage and no destruction.

The grey of a bitter, starved-looking morning. The town like a mortally wounded creature, torn by shells, gashed open by bombs. Dead streets - streets of death - death in streets and their houses; yet people still able to sleep and still sleeping.

Everybody has nightmares," she answered. "To paraphrase John Irving, you don't get to pick them. They pick you." "True enough.

inconceivable pain he was about to inflict on people he loved. Claire had been hurt—Layla was dead, for God's sake—because of

Smuggling poems out of prison in the soles of mt shoes i'm way past finding salvation in the arms of a woman, I look out my window and see burning flowers and starving armies but when I look up into the night sky I see the souls of dead heroes

if you're not guilty how come you're bleeding?

Hell was made for Christians, which is why they seek to make earth like it.

Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you.

It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful... it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.

People are terrible. They can bear anything. Anything! People are hard and brutal. And everyone is disposable. Everyone! That's the lesson.