SUFFERING QUOTES III

quotations about suffering

Suffering quote

Pain and suffering is a really ghoulish metric. You can't quantify a life. Any effort to do that is, of course, futile. But because our civil justice system, such as it is, only talks about money, that's the exercise we have to engage in.

DAVID B. RANKIN

"When cops kill, paying their victims' families can be a cold, calculating process", Business Insider, June 28, 2017


Mortal! that cull'st the flowers of life,
Think not to escape the thorn.

WILLIAM B. TAPPAN

"The Thorn of Life"

Tags: William B. Tappan


Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone,
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But it has trouble enough of its own.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Solitude"

Tags: Ella Wheeler Wilcox


This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting--since our present lot appears
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe.

JOHN MILTON

Paradise Lost

Tags: John Milton


The poet, no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus

Tags: Alfred Austin


Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.

ST. AUGUSTINE

The City of God

Tags: St. Augustine


There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, October 19, 1940

Tags: Cesare Pavese


Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

ELIE WIESEL

Night

Tags: Elie Wiesel


The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished, and glorified through the furnace of tribulation.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


Never a tear bedims the eye
That time and patience will not dry.

BRET HARTE

"The Lost Galleon"

Tags: Bret Harte


Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.

RAM DASS

One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life


All suffering contorts the countenance so woefully that the pain flies to the beholder likewise.

JAMES VILA BLAKE

Essays


A heart is that which opens
To trouble's thousand ways;
An unseen arrow wounds it,
To halt through all its days.
An evil eye may scatter blight,
A flitting mite may sting;
No wonder that a heartache
Is such a common thing!

CAROLINE SPENCER

"Heartache"

Tags: Caroline Spencer


Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.

SAUL BELLOW

"The Sealed Treasure", It All Adds Up

Tags: Saul Bellow


There is no suffering if you don't want anything.

ELIF BATUMAN

The Idiot


Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Suffering is suffering. It doesn't matter if you are addicted to porn on the internet or you're codependent or you're addicted to gambling or if you're addicted to The Real Housewives of Atlanta. You're suffering, and that's what gets us into trouble.

SEAN BROOK

"Sean Brock Opens Up About Rehab and Sobriety to NYT", Eater Charleston, July 5, 2017


I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The Unquiet Grave

Tags: Cyril Connolly


You know, my dear, you're wrong that suffering ennobles people.... It simply makes one cross.

GREGORY BENFORD

"Nooncoming", In Alien Flesh

Tags: Gregory Benford