Suffering Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering... since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Cruel though it may sound, we must see to it that the patient's suffering, to a degree that is in some way or other effective, does not come to an end prematurely. If, owing to the symptoms having been taken apart and having lost their value, his suffering becomes mitigated, we must re-instate it elsewhere in the form of some appreciable privation; otherwise we run the danger of never achieving any improvements except quite insignificant and transitory ones

We too must suffer all the suffering around us. We all have not one body, but we have one way of growing, and this leads us through all anguish, whether in this or in that form. Just as the child develops through all the stages of life right into old age and to death (and fundamentally to the earlier stage the later one seems out of reach, in relation both to desire and to fear), so also do we develop (no less deeply bound up with mankind than with ourselves) through all the sufferings of this world. There is no room for justice in this context, but neither is there any room either for fear of suffering or for the interpretation of suffering as a merit.

How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were tobegin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!

Henry David Thoreau

Whether we like it or not, we have all been born into this world as part of one great human family. Rich or poor, educated or uneducated, belonging to one nation or another, to one religion or another, adhering to this ideology or that, ultimately each of is just a human being like everyone else. We all desire happiness and do not want suffering.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

But a mother is like a broomstick or like the sun in the heavens, it does not matter which as far as one's knowledge of her is concerned: the broomstick is there and the sun is there; and whether the child is beaten by it or warmed and enlightened by it, it accepts it as a fact in nature, and does not conceive it as having had youth, passions, and weaknesses, or as still growing, yearning, suffering, and learning.

George Bernard Shaw

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Reason has to be strengthened by suffering, and suffering opens the eyes of understanding.

My method is conversion, not coercion, it is self-suffering, not the suffering of the tyrant. I know that method to be infallible.

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down.

The inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires,--the soldiery and the priesthood.

Henry David Thoreau

The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art — nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh.

There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.

The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice.

Real suffering bravely borne, melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering. And there lies the key to Satyagraha.

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.

The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.

Theodore Roosevelt

We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you....Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of the multitude who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank.

John F. Kennedy

Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.

There is superstition in science quite as much as there is superstition in theology, and it is all the more dangerous because those suffering from it are profoundly convinced that they are freeing themselves from all superstition.

Theodore Roosevelt

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.

Martin Luther King, Jr.