Popular quotes about Suffering! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 11
Use all your suffering for meditation, and soon you will come to know that the suffering disappears because the energy starts moving inwards. It is not moving to the periphery, to the suffering, you are not feeding your suffering. It looks illogical, but this is the whole conclusion of all the mystics of the world: that you feed your suffering and you enjoy it in a subtle way, you don't want to be wellโthere must be some investment in it.
RajneeshIf we take the time to look deeply, we see that understanding and compassion arise from suffering. Understanding is the understanding of suffering, and compassion is the kind of energy that can transform suffering. If suffering is not there, we have no means to cultivate our understanding and our compassion. This is something quite simple to see
Nhat HanhAnd Christ, through His own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling spirit.
Pope John Paul III do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
Anne Morrow LindberghSuffering is an oxymoron. There is unfathomable peace and satisfaction in suffering for Christ. It is as though you have searched endlessly for your purpose in life and now found it in the most unexpected place: In the death of your flesh. It is certainly a moment worth of laughter and dance. And in the end it is not suffering at all. The apostle Paul recommended that we find joy in it. Was he mad?
Ted DekkerMy heart is afraid that it will have to suffer, the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. Tell your heart that the fear of suffering s worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with Eternity.
Paulo CoelhoIf the Lord should give you power to raise the dead, He would give much less than He does when he bestows suffering. By miracles you would make yourself debtor to Him, while by suffering He may become debtor to you. And even if sufferings had no other reward than being able to bear something for that God who loves you, is not this a great reward and a sufficient remuneration? Whoever loves, understands what I say.
Saint John ChrysostomThe Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.
Milan KunderaMilitary necessity does not admit of cruelty - that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, . . . nor of torture to extort confessions.
Abraham LincolnSuffering without understanding in this life is a heap worse than suffering when you have at least the grain of an idea what it's all for.
Mary Ellen ChaseSuffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering and self-mastery.
Spencer W. KimballAll around the United States of America - in the cities and the counties - our public education is suffering and has been suffering. Cuts, cuts, cuts.
Bill Cosbywhat is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. itโs how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.
Mark TwainPeople talk about apathy, especially in developed countries. We're kind of lulled into these tranquil lives, and we are pursuing our own thing and there is so much suffering on a mass scale around the world that you kind of become fatalistic. You might think suffering is inevitable, you kind of lose your sense of moral urgency. But there is always something you can do for someone in the world.
Khaled HosseiniWe cannot deny that people are suffering, and they are making that suffering known at the ballot box.
Nina TurnerEveryone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.
Rachel Naomi RemenSuffering is above, not below. And everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise.
Antonio PorchiaNo one suffers so much as he [the genius] with the people, and, therefore, for the people, with whom he lives. For, in a certain sense, it is certainly only "by suffering" that a man knows. If compassion is not itself clear, abstractly conceivable or visibly symbolic knowledge, it is, at any rate, the strongest impulse for the acquisition of knowledge. It is only by suffering that the genius understands men. And the genius suffers most because he suffers with and in each and all; but he suffers most through his understanding. . . .
Otto WeiningerPeople drink to numb the pain and suffering. I think it's the pain and suffering that drive you to become an artist. The art itself should be the pain, sort of exorcising every demon and making you feel like you're a person that matters.
Marilyn MansonThere is no physical punishment in chess; suffering goes on inside the mind. You defend a bad position for hours, you suffer. You lose, you suffer like in any other sport. Suffering euphoria comes when the opponent blunders in a winning position, but it is undeserved.
Lubomir KavalekLiving the same sorrows three times was a suffering, but it was a suffering to relive even the same joys. The joy of life is born from feeling, whether it be joy or grief, always of short duration, and woe to those who know they will enjoy eternal bliss.
Umberto EcoSuffering is part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter or ennoble us. It can ennoble us and become a spirituality of transformation when we find meaning in it.
Desmond TutuIf one woman is suffering, then we are all suffering, and we need to put a voice to that.
Annie LennoxWomen are young at politics, but they are old at suffering; soon they will learn that through politics they can prevent some kinds of suffering.
Nancy AstorYet and still, Peter Norman took into account that the aboriginals were suffering just as much in Australia as Blacks in the United States were suffering.
John CarlosI think the person who has had more experience of hardships can stand more firmly in the face of problems than the person who has never experienced suffering. From this angle then, some suffering can be a good lesson for life.
Dalai LamaIf I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering on both sides of this ghastly struggle somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.
Dorothy DaySuffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. Itโs a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities โ not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.
Lance ArmstrongYou need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people.
David LynchAnybody who's had to contend with mental illness - whether it's depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever - actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering.
Kay Redfield JamisonIn some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Viktor E. FranklThe intelligence displayed by many dumb animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery. The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness toward their companions in suffering. Many animals show an affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for man which are not broken without great suffering to them.
Ellen G. WhiteMany people in the throes of suffering, disappointment, and despair, feel utterly stuck in their circumstances. They see no hope beyond their day-to-day drudgery of disability routines; but when hurting families place themselves under the shower of God's mercy, suddenly the clouds part. They realize there's hope, life, and even joy beyond their suffering.
Joni Eareckson TadaFor me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.
Paul FarmerSuccess and suffering are vitally and organically linked. If you succeed without suffering, it is because someone suffered for you; if you suffer without succeeding, it is in order that someone else may succeed after you.
Edward JudsonWhen we do not reject our suffering, or add anything to it, pain is simply pain. It is what we add to our pain that turns it into suffering.
Brenda ShoshannaBut not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of suffering : that is great, that belongs to greatness.
Friedrich NietzscheI saw the suffering and I let myself feel itโฆ I saw the injustice and was compelled to do something about it. I changed from being a nun who only prayed for the suffering world to a woman with my sleeves rolled up, living my prayer.
Helen PrejeanI find it difficult to feel responsible for the suffering of others. That's why I find war so hard to bear. It's the same with animals: I feel the less harm I do, the lighter my heart. I love a light heart. And when I know I'm causing suffering, I feel the heaviness of it. It's a physical pain. So it's self-interest that I don't want to cause harm.
Alice WalkerMy children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
Adrienne RichHumans will always endure suffering - even accepting the fact that we're going to die will cause us suffering, and from that stems a little pessimism and negativity that all of us are susceptible to.
Jason MrazOne of the few times I'm hit emotionally is when I listen to the tapes sadists make of torturing their victims. There the person is currently suffering, you can hear them suffer, and that calls out for an empathic response. But when they're dead, when they're no longer suffering, when it's over, it's hard to feel empathetic for the corpse.
Park DietzPeople associate hard work and overload with stress. But, like suffering, stress is complicated. Bad stress is stress that a system can't endure without suffering damage. It is unplanned, uncontrolled, allows no time for rest and recovery, and exceeds the capacity of the system to adjust to it. As the popular phrase suggests, it burns people out and, over time, it can decimate an entire workforce.
Edward Hallowell