SUFFERING QUOTES III
quotations about suffering
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone,
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But it has trouble enough of its own.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Solitude"
The poet, no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Pain and suffering is a really ghoulish metric. You can't quantify a life. Any effort to do that is, of course, futile. But because our civil justice system, such as it is, only talks about money, that's the exercise we have to engage in.
DAVID B. RANKIN
"When cops kill, paying their victims' families can be a cold, calculating process", Business Insider, June 28, 2017
There is no suffering if you don't want anything.
ELIF BATUMAN
The Idiot
Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.
HOMER
The Odyssey
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting--since our present lot appears
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.
RAM DASS
One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life
Mortal! that cull'st the flowers of life,
Think not to escape the thorn.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"The Thorn of Life"
Affliction is a spiritual physic for the soul, and is compared to a furnace, for as gold is tried and purified therein, so men are proved and either purified from their dross, and fitted for good uses, or else entirely burnt up and undone forever.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
All suffering contorts the countenance so woefully that the pain flies to the beholder likewise.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Alas! fond child,
How are thy thoughts beguil'd
To hope for honey from a nest of wasps?
Thou may'st as well
Go seek for ease in hell,
Or sprightly nectar from the mouths of asps.
The world's a hive,
From whence thou canst derive
No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings:
But case thou meet
Some petty-petty sweet,
Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Suffering is suffering. It doesn't matter if you are addicted to porn on the internet or you're codependent or you're addicted to gambling or if you're addicted to The Real Housewives of Atlanta. You're suffering, and that's what gets us into trouble.
SEAN BROOK
"Sean Brock Opens Up About Rehab and Sobriety to NYT", Eater Charleston, July 5, 2017
Nothing brings suffering as does
the untamed, uncontrolled unattended and unrestrained heart.
That heart brings suffering.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Anguttara Nikaya
There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, October 19, 1940
I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
Pain and illness, the deaths of those one loves, and discomforts and disappointments mar the happy norm, but they do not alter the fact that happiness is the norm, nor affect the tendency of the continuum to restore it, to heal it, after any disturbance.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
The Continuum Concept