Motivational Quotes

Suffering

To perceive is to suffer.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Suffering

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

I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Renard, Jules

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

Blackstone, Sir William

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

Henri-FrÚdÚric Amiel

I've suffered from all of the hang-ups known, and none is as bad as the telephone.

Armour, Richard

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

Mansfield, Katherine

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

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.

10.

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

11.

We all choke.

Strange, Curtis

12.

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

13.

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

14.

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

Bible

15.

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

16.

For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

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

18.

To perceive is to suffer.

Aristotle

19.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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

21.

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

Sontag, Susan

22.

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

Claudius

23.

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

Donne, John

24.

Great artists suffer for the people.

Gaye, Marvin

25.

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

La Fontaine, Jean De

26.

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it in full.

Proust, Marcel

27.

The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

Weil, Simone

28.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

It is the lot of man to suffer.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

You can't drown your sorrows, they always float to the surface.

32.

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man -- that is, the more divine -- the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.

Unamuno, Miguel De

33.

You do not have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

Ciardi, John

34.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Edgar Allan Poe

35.

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

Aeschylus

36.

A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

Joseph Addison

37.

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

Beecher, Henry Ward

38.

If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.

Victor Hugo

39.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Flack, Roberta

40.

In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day.

Camus, Albert

41.

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.

Kafka, Franz

42.

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...

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Carrel, Alexis

46.

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

Jose Marti

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.

Seneca