quotations about suffering
One must cast off old agonies as a snake casts off its skin--only to grow a new set and accept all of their limitations.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
You know, my dear, you're wrong that suffering ennobles people.... It simply makes one cross.
GREGORY BENFORD
"Nooncoming", In Alien Flesh
Let a man live but two or three years without Affliction, and he is almost good for nothing.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Sometimes the only way around suffering is to go straight through it.
ANONYMOUS
To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan.
THOMAS GRAY
Odes on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
Some people seem to be born to suffer.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
Easter
Suffering is as God's letter. Open it and read it. Many a one will find that he is titled, or that there is an inheritance laid up for him.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Complete success alienates a man from his fellows, but suffering makes kinsmen of us all.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Learn to bear suffering, and it shall bear thee.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Suffering is a lesson the Soul needs in order to get to its Beloved. Joy is too.
RAM DASS
One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life
Misery loves company, particularly when she is herself the hostess, and can give generously of her stores to others.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
"The Spectre Cook of Bangletop"
Birth, death, and suffering all bring us to the very edge of what our minds can understand.
RAM DASS
One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life
Still to the sufferer comes, as due from God, a glory that to suffering owes its birth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering.
ADA LEVERSON
Bird of Paradise
One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
The suffering's here
The wait is gone
The streets are filled
With a hollow song
Got a new death
It lurks outside
Follows me home
DANZIG
"End of Time"
The wound is the place where light enters you.
RUMI
attributed, Wild Essence: Return to the Peace & Freedom of Your Inner Wilderness
Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American
War, pain and suffering is a form of cleansing that will shock people awake.
ISMAIL ROYER
"Fourteen years ago, he was a convicted jihadist. Now he's fighting radical Islam steps from the White House.", Washington Post, July 7, 2017