Quotes About Suffering

Now this, monks, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; seperation from what is pleasing is suffering... in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

We have tried everything to get rid of suffering. We have gone everywhere to get rid of suffering. We have bought everything to get rid of it. We have ingested everything to get rid of it. Finally, when one has tried enought, there arises the possibility of spiritual maturity with the willingness to stop the futile attempt to get rid of it and, instead, to actually experience suffering. In that momentous instant, there is the realization of that which is beyond suffering, of that which is untouched by suffering. There is the realization of who one truly is.

The poor, you know, have a way of solving problems...they have a tremendous capacity for suffering. And so when you build a vehicle to get something done, as we've done here in the strike and the boycott, then they continue to suffer - and maybe a little bit more - but the suffering becomes less important because they see a chance of progress; sometimes progress itself. They've been suffering all their live.s It's a question of suffering with some kind of hope now. That's better than suffering with no hope at all.

Suffering is not blessed because it is suffering but because it is [Christ's]. Suffering is not the context that explains the cross; the cross is the context that explains suffering.

To reconcile conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of both sides. If we take sides, it is impossible to do the work of reconciliation. And humans want to take sides. That is why the situation gets worse and worse. Are there people who are still available to both sides? They need not do much. They need do only one thing: Go to one side and tell all about the suffering endured by the other side, and go to the other side and tell all about the suffering endured by this side. This is our chance for peace. But how many of us are able to do that?

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

Attachment has to do with suffering, so it's really close to Buddhism, because Buddhism wants to relieve you from suffering; you're supposed to escape from suffering.

Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil… Our hope… is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.

I think we start suffering as soon as we come out of the womb. I think that people tend to stereotype. When they think of suffering, they think of abuse - physical abuse, emotional abuse, poverty, that kind of thing. There's different levels of suffering. I don't think that it has to do with how much money you have - if you were raised in the ghetto or the Hamptons. For me it's more about perception: self-perception and how you perceive the world.

Husbands are not Christ. But they are called to be like him. And the specific point of likeness is the husband's readiness to suffer for his wife's good without threatening or abusing her. This includes suffering to protect her from any outside forces that would harm her, as well as suffering disappointments of abuses even from her. This kind of love is possible because Christ died for both husband and wife. Their sins are forgiven. Neither needs to make the other suffer for sins. Christ has borne that suffering. Now as two sinful and forgiven people we can return good for evil.

You do brutal workouts to get used to suffering so suffering doesn't become a defining deal.

People 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.

The striking thing about the Precious Blood is the bond it establishes between love and suffering in our experience, a bond that has become so close that we have come to think of suffering accepted with joy as the most authentic sign of love with any depth at all.

The real thing is that you are suffering from your expectations. When they are not fulfilled - and they are never going to be fulfilled - frustration arises, failure arises, and you feel neglected, as if existence does not care for you. Drop expectations for the future. Remain open, remain available to whatsoever happens, but don't plan ahead. Don't make any psychological, fixed ideas about the future - that things should be like this - and much more suffering will disappear.

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance - it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.

The facts of our lives, when we are able to know them, will free us from the torment we are in. When we can bear reality thoroughly, suffering is over. Pain may exist, but it is only pain. Suffering is what we add to pain.

A God who did not abolish suffering-worse , a God who abolished sin precisely by suffering-is a scandal to the modern mind.

I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect; the value of all values.

...But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.

Suffering is the greatest treasure on earth; it purifies the soul. In suffering, we learn who our true friend is.

The Laws of Reasoning consist of the ground, the path, and the result. ...Suffering is in the mind. How we perceive happiness determines our suffering or not.

I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it.

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. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

Above all we must not wish to cling to our suffering. Suffering surely deepens us and enhances our person, but we must not desire to become a deeper self than God wills. To suffer no longer can be a beautiful, perhaps the ultimate sacrifice.

Personally, I'm afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I'm also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn't an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can't understand why everyone isn't like them.

There's a lot of pain and suffering out there. I think there needs to be more joy, and love, and orgasms in the world. We are a pleasure-negati ve society. Suffering is much more acceptable. And I want to tell women that they are sexually powerful beings, but they often don't get in touch with it because they are socialized to please men.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

Many 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.

Thirdly, even if we assume that the world is governed by purpose, we need only add that this purpose - or, if there are several, at least one of them - is not especially intent on preventing suffering, whether it is indifferent to suffering or actually rejoices in it.

Humanity as a whole has already gone through unimaginable suffering, mostly self-inflicted, the culmination of which was the 20th century with its unspeakable horrors. This collective suffering has brought upon a readiness in many human beings for the evolutionary leap that is spiritual awakening.

Live with it. You live with pleasure, don't you? Why don't you live with suffering completely? Can you live with it in the sense of not escaping from it? What takes place? Watch. The mind is very clear, sharp. It is faced with the fact. The very suffering transformed into passion is enormous. From that arises a mind that can never be hurt. Full stop. That is the secret.

Suffering is nothing. It's all a matter of preventing those you love from suffering.

Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don't ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.

The whole movement of happiness, unhappiness, happiness, unhappiness, could be called unhappiness. You're suffering because your state of mind is in flux, moving back and forth. The ego's happiness is really a form of suffering, because it cannot live without unhappiness.

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

The best test to know whether an entity is real or fictional is the test of suffering. A nation cannot suffer, feel pain or fear, or has no consciousness. Even if it loses a war, the soldier suffers, the civilians suffer, but the nation cannot suffer. Similarly, a corporation cannot suffer, when it loses its value, it doesn't suffer. All these things, they're fictions. If people bear in mind this distinction, it could improve the way we treat one another and the other animals. It's not a good idea to cause suffering to real entities in the service of fictional stories.

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

Writer's block is a myth. I never see the gardeners suffering from gardening block.

I make a distinction between Buddhism with a Capital 'B' and buddhism with a small 'b'. Sri Lanka has the former, in which the state uses Buddhism as an instrument of power, so there are even Buddhists monks who say the Tamils should be eliminated. Thai Buddhists are not perfect either. Some Thai Buddhist monks have compromised with the kind and possess cars and other luxuries. In many Buddhist countries, the emphasis is on being goody-goody, which is not good enough. I am for buddhism with a small 'b' which is non-violent, practical and aims to eliminate the cause of suffering.

You don't want the United States to become South America, where you have a super collection of rich people at the tippy-top of society, they are surrounded by barbed wire living in McMansions with security guards, and the rest of the society is suffering, and you've got a broken educational system and a broken government.

We are suffering from a believism that never has believed, and a receivism that never has received, and it leads to deceivism.

However, when we are depressed, being reminded of other people's suffering only serves to increase our self-hatred.

With all of the people in the world and all of the suffering and all of the things that people are forced to do for lack of other alternative, the fact that I had a subsidized education and got to go right into a life of playing music for a living, what a stupidly fortunate place to be.

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.

And he never judges someone else's suffering.

Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.

Pain and suffering are the dark strands through the tapestry of your life, providing the shadows that give depth and dimension to the masterpiece God is fashioning within you.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.