Quotes About Suffering

As we see, the priority stays with creatively changing the situation that causes us to suffer. But the superiority goes to the "know-how to suffer," if need be.

the most painful part of the beatings is the insult which they imply.

While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was brought home to us: we really had nothing now except our bare bodies—even minus hair; all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom.

I'd like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don't know. It doesn't last, and it's good for nothing. You break your neck simply living.

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.

The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.

there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables

Ce n'est rien de mourir, C'est affreux de ne pas vivre.

These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while.

Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.

So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you shall not have a week, a day, an hour, free from oppression. You shall not be able to lift anything without agony. Every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become difficult. Life will become monstrous about you. To come, to go, to breathe, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight.

That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.

In this way, his unhappy soul struggled with its anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being, in whom all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity come together, He too, while the olive trees trembled in the fierce breath of the Infinite, had brushed away the fearful cup that appeared before him, streaming with shadow and running over with darkness, in the star-filled depths. (pg. 236)

a mother who loses her child can no longer believe in God

When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness.

Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.

Suffering engenders passion; and while the prosperous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill-constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and sets to work to examine society. The examination of hatred is a terrible thing.

I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.

Oh, to lie side by side in the same tomb, hand in hand, and to gently touch a finger-tip from time to time in the darkness, would suffice for my eternity. You who suffer because you love, love more than ever. To die for love is to live by it.

The soul that loves and suffers is in the sublime state.

there is a point, moreover, at which the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confounded in a single word, Les Miserables; whose fault is it? And then, is it not when the fall is lowest that charity ought to be greatest?