Quotes About Suffering

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.

Alzheimer's is a horrible thing. Some people are naive about it. They think, 'Oh it's just your memory,' but my mother was in terrible pain. Your body closes down. She didn't know if she'd eaten or if she wanted to eat. She couldn't remember how to walk. Towards the end, she didn't know us. It came gradually, then it got worse.

You're always asking yourself, are you doing the best for your child? And other parents let you know if you're not, just not in a direct way. There's a sense of competition, which is ridiculous because you know deep down you're all suffering.

There is nothing remotely dignified about sorting through rotting trash to find something to feed your child, or asking someone for money because you have none (anyone who has contrived to give people money before they had to ask will never forget the look of gratitude in their eyes).

This is why Alzheimer's is such a terrible disease: the body of the person you love is there, but they've gone - your husband is gone - and they become your child, and you have to look after them as you would a child.

I think any parent can imagine how difficult it would be to watch your child suffer.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self-righteous, bullying laziness.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts. You can break this spell, but it takes training just like it takes training to defend yourself against a physical assault.

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.

If I remember the suffering of my childhood and youth, it could make me sad. But if one thinks of the benefits, it is precisely because of these sufferings since I was small that I have become a man. I have become a person who thinks, who has feelings, because I have suffered.

In August 1914, my father was called to war and then taken prisoner. He died in captivity in Germany on March 27, 1915. My youth - indeed, my entire life - was deeply marked by this, directly and indirectly.

War is horrible because it strangles youth.

'Acceptance' is a tricky word. Acceptance about what life is bringing us in a spiritual sense is one thing; but acceptance when there's injustice in the world is completely another.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.

Faced with the choice of enduring a bad toothache or going to the dentist, we generally tried to ride out the bad tooth.

What I really tried to do with Helen was make her show this sad side of her. She was married off at 16, was so young and living in this castle that can't leave because of how she looks, and married to a man she hates and three times her age.

This howling mouth, this head which rolls back and tries to escape.

The surface cells on my eyes don't root back into my eyeball like a normal person's do. Instead, they want to pull off. At night, the surface of my eye was actually adhering to my eyelid. Once that happened, any movement would cause a tear and trigger nearly indescribable pain.

Being away a lot on tour means that my family has to suffer an inordinate amount of overcompensation, as I return home with skewed ideas of what counts as quality time. I will force everyone into a cinema trip, insistent that three hours in the dark in silence is the perfect way for us all to re-engage.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

'The Taking' is the closest thing to a 'concept' record that I have ever been involved with. Pain, loss, triumph, and redemption. Life. Bring it.