Suffering Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone that has produced all the elevations of humanity so far?

Friedrich Nietzsche

The most conspicuous thing about suffering is, as W.H. Auden once observed, its banality. The day is green, the sun is shinging, someone is eating, or opening a window, the torturer's horse is scatching its innocent behind on a tree, and in a mere second someone we love is dead.

Michael Jackson

What actually fills you with indignation as regards suffering is not suffering in itself but the pointlessness of suffering.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I have not lost the hope that the masses will refuse to bow to the Moloch of war but they will rely upon their own capacity for suffering to save their country's honour.

Inner darkness, which we call ignorance, is the root of suffering. The more inner light that comes, the more darkness will diminish. This is the only way to achieve salvation or nirvana.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.

William Wordsworth

They call war an art, but it isn't. It largely consists in outwitting people, robbing widows and orphans, and inflicting suffering on the helpless for one's own ends - and that's not art: that's business.

Kenneth Roberts (author)

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts--obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.

Jacob Bronowski

In recent years our knowledge of modern technology has increased considerably, and as a result we have witnessed remarkable material progress, but there has not been a corresponding increase in human happiness. There is no less suffering in the world today, and there are no fewer problems. Indeed, it might be said that there are now more problems and greater dangers than ever before.

Those who die, merely suffering the woes of life like cats and dogs, are they men?

Swami Vivekananda

The architect who always talks shop is probably suffering from an edifice complex.

The bud, though plucked, would not be withered, only transplanted to a fitter soil to ripen and blow beneath a brighter sun; and though I might not cherish and watch my child's unfolding intellect, he would be snatched away from all the suffering and sins of earth; and my understanding tells me this would be no great evil; but my heart shrinks from the contemplation of such a possibility, and whispers I could not bear to see him die.

The point to be grasped from the saintly tradition is that to love animals is not sentimentality (as we know it) but true spirituality. Of course there can be vain, self-seeking loving, but to go (sometimes literally) out of our way to help animals, to expend effort to secure their protection and to feel with them their suffering and to be moved by it-these are surely signs of spiritual greatness.

The coming years will prove increasingly cynical and cruel. People will definitely not slip into oblivion while hugging each other. The final stages in the life of humanity will be marked by the monstrous war of all against all: the amount of suffering will be maximal.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

John Stuart Mill

We are now suffering the evils of a long peace. Luxury, more deadly than war, broods over the city, and avenges a conquered world.

Conscious of my own weakness, I can only seek fervently the guidance of the Ruler of the Universe, and, relying on His all-powerful aid, do my best to restore Union and peace to a suffering people, and to establish and guard their liberties and rights.

George B. McClellan

It is not rude to turn off your telephone by switching it on to an answering machine, which is cheaper and less disruptive than ripping it out of the wall. Those who are offended because they cannot always get through when they seek, at their own convenience, to barge in on people are suffering from a rude expectation.

When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.

Those of us who witness the degraded state of the environment and the suffering that comes with it cannot afford to be complacent. We continue to be restless. If we really carry the burden, we are driven to action. We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!

Wangari Maathai

Generalizations are worthless. Every person has a different story. Each one of them was brought low by a specific, personal demon. When you think this way, the conditions in the street become unbearable. You are in touch with the individual humanity of homeless people and can't block out their suffering by blaming a "global condition".

Elizabeth Swados

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

Honoré de Balzac

When people are suffering, they usually hurt the people closest to them, because those are the only ones left around.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded... sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

George Saunders