Motivational Quotes

Suffering

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

- Jose Marti

Best Quotes about Suffering

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

But penance need not be paid in suffering...It can be paid in forward motion. Correcting the mistake is a positive move, a nurturing move.

Barbara Hall

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

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

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Edgar Allan Poe

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

Carrel, Alexis

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.

Seneca

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

14.

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.

15.

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

Isodore Duncan

16.

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

Blackstone, Sir William

17.

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

18.

Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

Faulkner, William

20.

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

Claudius

21.

A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.

Gurdjieff, George

22.

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

Lynd, Robert

23.

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

La Fontaine, Jean De

24.

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

Herodotus

25.

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

26.

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

Henri-FrÚdÚric Amiel

27.

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

Oscar Wilde

28.

Great artists suffer for the people.

Gaye, Marvin

29.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

30.

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

Proust, Marcel

31.

It is the lot of man to suffer.

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

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

Armour, Richard

33.

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

Donne, John

34.

You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.

Artaud, Antonin

35.

Oh, fear not in a world like this, and thou shalt know erelong, know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

36.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

Helen Keller

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

We all choke.

Strange, Curtis

41.

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

Aeschylus

42.

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

43.

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

Wilde, Oscar

44.

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

Bible

45.

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

46.

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

Ciardi, John

47.

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

48.

Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.

Williams, Tennessee

49.

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

Victor Hugo

50.

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

Sontag, Susan