Motivational Quotes

Suffering

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

- Claudius

Best Quotes about Suffering

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

Oscar Wilde

One must really have suffered oneself to help others.

Mother Teresa

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

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

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

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

Renard, Jules

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Seneca

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

Victor Hugo

10.

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

La Fontaine, Jean De

11.

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

Joseph Addison

12.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Henri-FrÚdÚric Amiel

16.

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

17.

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

Jose Marti

18.

What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.

Seneca

19.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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

21.

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

Gurdjieff, George

22.

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

Bible

23.

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

Carrel, Alexis

24.

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

Ciardi, John

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Lynd, Robert

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Hubbard, Elbert

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.

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

Aeschylus

35.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

36.

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

Armour, Richard

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

40.

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

41.

Great artists suffer for the people.

Gaye, Marvin