Motivational Quotes

Suffering

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

- Joseph Addison

Best Quotes about Suffering

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

Williams, Tennessee

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

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

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

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

Beecher, Henry Ward

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

Aristotle

To perceive is to suffer.

Aristotle

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

Aeschylus

Suffering is the ancient law of love; there is not quest without pain; there is no lover who is not also a martyr.

Suso, Heinrich

10.

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

Lynd, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

Faulkner, William

13.

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

Joseph Addison

14.

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

Proust, Marcel

15.

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

Gurdjieff, George

16.

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

Renard, Jules

17.

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

Armour, Richard

18.

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

Thomas Merton

19.

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

20.

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

Carrel, Alexis

21.

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

22.

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

Blackstone, Sir William

23.

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

Helen Keller

24.

One must really have suffered oneself to help others.

Mother Teresa

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Donne, John

28.

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

Victor Hugo

29.

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

Herodotus

30.

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

31.

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

32.

It is the lot of man to suffer.

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Edgar Allan Poe

34.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

35.

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

Oscar Wilde

36.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

37.

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

Claudius

38.

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

Isodore Duncan

39.

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

Wilde, Oscar

40.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Sontag, Susan

45.

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

46.

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

Flack, Roberta

47.

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

Bible

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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.