Quotes about suffering

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich on suffering
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"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 on suffering
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"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 on suffering
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"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 on suffering   

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

Proust, Marcel on suffering
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"A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea."

Renard, Jules on suffering   

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

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur on suffering
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"What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember."

Seneca on suffering   

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

Seneca on suffering   

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

Sontag, Susan on suffering   

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon on suffering   

"We all choke."

Strange, Curtis on 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 on suffering
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"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 on suffering   

"If you learn from your suffering, and really come to understand the lesson you were taught, you might be able to help someone else who's now in the phase you may have just completed. Maybe that's what it's all about after all..."

Unknown, Source on suffering
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"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 on suffering   

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

Unknown, Source on suffering   

"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 on suffering   

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

Wilde, Oscar on suffering
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"I can sympathize with everything, except suffering."

Wilde, Oscar on suffering   

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

Williams, Tennessee on suffering
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"Most of our suffering lies in retrospection or anticipation; pain itself is very brief."

Durant, William J. on suffering   

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."

Gibran, Kahlil on suffering