Motivational Quotes

Suffering

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

- Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

Best Quotes about Suffering

Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time -- is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.

Pavese, Cesare

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Edgar Allan Poe

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Sontag, Susan

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

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

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

Seneca

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

Carrel, Alexis

You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.

Artaud, Antonin

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Armour, Richard

14.

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

15.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer

Blackstone, Sir William

16.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

17.

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

Wilde, Oscar

18.

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

Donne, John

19.

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

20.

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

21.

To perceive is to suffer.

Aristotle

22.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

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

24.

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

Henri-FrÚdÚric Amiel

25.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Orwell, George

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

Renard, Jules

28.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Flack, Roberta

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

Faulkner, William

32.

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

Aristotle

33.

What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.

Seneca

34.

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it in full.

Proust, Marcel

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 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

37.

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

La Fontaine, Jean De

38.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Isodore Duncan

42.

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

Victor Hugo

43.

For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.

Carlyle, Thomas

44.

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

45.

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

Gurdjieff, George

46.

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

Herodotus

47.

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

Lynd, Robert

48.

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.