Motivational Quotes

Suffering

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

- Aeschylus

Best Quotes about Suffering

No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing.

Claudius

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Seneca

But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

G. K. Chesterton

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

La Fontaine, Jean De

If you learn from your suffering, and really come to understand the lesson you were taught, you might be able to help someone else who's now in the phase you may have just completed. Maybe that's what it's all about after all...

Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.

Jose Marti

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

Carrel, Alexis

Crying is the refuge of plain women, but the ruin of pretty ones.

Oscar Wilde

10.

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

Bertrand Russell

11.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer

Blackstone, Sir William

12.

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery.

Mansfield, Katherine

13.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

Maugham, W. Somerset

14.

Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time -- is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.

Pavese, Cesare

15.

It is good for me that I was afflicted that I may learn Thy statutes. [Psalms 119:71]

Bible

16.

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

Beecher, Henry Ward

17.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Orwell, George

18.

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

Bradley, Francis H.

19.

I have found that it don't really matter if you're brought up fine or rough, but that it helps to have someone to spill your sorrows to.

Erica Eisdorfer

20.

It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering.

Lynd, Robert

21.

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.

Donne, John

22.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

23.

So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world.

Isodore Duncan

24.

I felt despair. Though it seems to me now there's two kinds of it: the sort that causes a person to surrender and then the sort I had which made me take risks and make plans.

Erica Eisdorfer

25.

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.

Renard, Jules

26.

Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime -- I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful. I agree that it's hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It's no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

27.

The salvation of the world is in man's suffering.

Faulkner, William

28.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

29.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Edgar Allan Poe

30.

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

Aeschylus

31.

How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.

Mencken, H. L.

32.

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

Henri-FrÚdÚric Amiel

33.

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

Hesse, Hermann

34.

One must really have suffered oneself to help others.

Mother Teresa

35.

To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide.

Pavese, Cesare

36.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

Wilde, Oscar

37.

We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.

Freud, Sigmund

38.

Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

We all choke.

Strange, Curtis

40.

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away blessed be the name of the Lord.

Bible

41.

There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

42.

The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.

Herodotus

43.

Great artists suffer for the people.

Gaye, Marvin

44.

I have not yet met with a sorrow that could not be borne, nor with one who's passing did not leave me stronger.

Kathryn L. Nelson

45.

It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.