Motivational Quotes

Suffering

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

Best Quotes about Suffering

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

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

Faulkner, William

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

La Fontaine, Jean De

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

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

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

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

Claudius

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

10.

One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

11.

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

12.

What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.

Seneca

13.

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

Aristotle

14.

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

Seneca

15.

To perceive is to suffer.

Aristotle

16.

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

Carrel, Alexis

17.

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

18.

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

Gurdjieff, George

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

Sontag, Susan

21.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

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

Victor Hugo

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

Herodotus

27.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Edgar Allan Poe

28.

It is the lot of man to suffer.

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

Beecher, Henry Ward

30.

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

Bible

31.

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

32.

Great artists suffer for the people.

Gaye, Marvin

33.

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

34.

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

Renard, Jules

35.

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

Joseph Addison

36.

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

Armour, Richard

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.

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

Donne, John

39.

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

40.

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

Isodore Duncan

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

44.

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

Aeschylus

45.

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

Williams, Tennessee

46.

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

47.

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

48.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

49.

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.

50.

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