Popular quotes about Suffering! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 39
If you want to understand suffering you must look into the situation at hand. The teachings say that wherever a problem arises it must be settled right there. Where suffering lies is right where non-suffering will arise, it ceases at the place where it arises. If suffering arises you must contemplate right there, you don't have to run away. You should settle the issue right there. One who runs away from suffering out of fear is the most foolish person of all. He will simply increases his stupidity endlessly.
Ajahn ChahIf 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 HanhSuffering 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.
Peter KreeftPeace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.
Ajahn ChahThe evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.
John PiperAs children, Siddhartha and Jesus both realized that life is filled with suffering. The Buddha became aware at an early age that suffering is pervasive. Jesus must have had the same kind of insight, because they both made every effort to offer a way out. We, too, must learn to live in ways that reduce the world's suffering.
Nhat HanhThere 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.
Elisabeth Kubler-RossSomebody said to me the other day, 'You know, it's really senseless, what you're doing. There's always been suffering, there will always be suffering, and you're just prolonging the suffering of these children [by rescuing them].' My answer is, 'Okay, then, let's start with your grandchild. Don't buy antibiotics if it gets pneumonia. Don't take it to the hospital of it has an accident. It's against life-against humanity-to think that way.
Audrey HepburnCompassion allows us to use our own pain and the pain of others as a vehicle for connection. This is a delicate and profound path. We may be adverse to seeing our own suffering because it tends to ignite a blaze of self-blame and regret. And we may be adverse to seeing suffering in others because we find it unbearable or distasteful, or we find it threatening to our own happiness. All of these possible reactions to the suffering in the word make us want to turn away from life.
Sharon SalzbergYou do brutal workouts to get used to suffering so suffering doesn't become a defining deal.
Greg Jackson... people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering.
Chad HarbachAttachment to being right creates suffering. When you have a choice to be right, or to be kind, choose kind and watch your suffering disappear.
Wayne DyerEveryone 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 RemenWithout compassion, true gratitude is an impossibility. If we are to feel gratitude towards another for their deeds, then we must have compassion for the suffering and self-sacrifice which they endured in carrying out those deeds. If their actions were free of suffering or sacrifice, then are they truly deserving of gratitude?
Derek R. AudetteEach creature walks a perfect earth. Each one gets the suffering and comfort that he needs. When ALL cravings and needs are satisfied, each bit of Soul, merges again with the One.The amount of joy and suffering in the world is always counterbalanced. One person's evil can terrify thousands, but one person's good can succour thousands too.
ZeinaTo love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.
Woody AllenIn the East they say suffering is avoidable and not necessary. Life is bliss! You know why? This is because wisdom, yoga and meditation are ways to avoid suffering which has not yet come.
Sri Sri Ravi ShankarIf the world is crazy, maybe it needs a few sane people in the middle of it. Why do monks lock themselves up in monasteries? What's the good of solving your personal suffering if the solution keeps you isolated from everyone else's suffering?
Tim WardThe 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.
Dalai LamaMost people wish they could erase suffering out of the dictionary. Today's culture of comfort and instant gratification has no patience for suffering - most people want to drug it, escape it, divorce it; do anything but live with it.
Joni Eareckson TadaOur Lord even gives you suffering that you might share the comfort you receive from Him with somebody who is suffering!
J. Vernon McGeeI'm not trying to be mean. You [ Nicholas Kristof] have written about climate change. You're really concerned and you've thought a lot about the suffering of people in other countries. It doesn't seem like you have thought that deeply about the suffering of your fellow Americans. You don't have the solutions say as you do for global warming. And my question is: Isn't it always easier for the elites to identify with abstractions or poor people in other countries and kind of ignore their own country men. I have noticed this. Have you noticed that?
Tucker CarlsonSuicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death, not uncommonly, is violent and grisly. The suffering of a suicidal is private and inexpressible, leaving family members, friends and colleagues to deal with an almost unfathomable kind of loss, as well as guilt. Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description.
Kay Redfield JamisonWhen someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, one allows it to spill all over the people around him or her. When you suffer, you make people around you suffer. That's very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won't spread it everywhere.
Nhat HanhSuffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. That is its purpose.
Jane RobertsHumanity 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.
Eckhart TolleIf you love, you will suffer. The only way to protect yourself against suffering is to protect yourself against love - and that is the greatest suffering of all, loneliness.
Peter KreeftPeople have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
Nhat HanhTell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
Paulo CoelhoBut 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 NietzscheYour suffering only matters if it connects you to the suffering of others, if it heals them too.
Geoffrey WoodIf we can revert to the truth, then a great deal of one's suffering can be erased, because a great deal of one's suffering is based on sheer lies.
R. D. LaingGary Greenberg is a thoughtful comedian and a cranky philosopher and a humble pest of a reporter, equal parts Woody Allen, Kierkegaard, and Columbo. The Book of Woe is a profound, and profoundly entertaining, riff on malady, power, and truth. This book is for those of us (i.e. all of us) who've ever wondered what it means, and what's at stake, when we try to distinguish the suffering of the ill from the suffering of the human.
Gideon Lewis-KrausYou must understand that if you indulge in revenge exclusively, it will come back to you, because those who are revenged upon - even if the whole world believes they deserve it - will in some way express exactly what was expressed towards them. Why perpetuate suffering, no matter how justified it may seem to be, if it only perpetuates suffering in the future for future generations?
Robert ShapiroThe doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.
Henry David ThoreauIf God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.
Timothy KellerThe whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.
Julian AssangeAnybody who witnesses the suffering of animals and has a glimmer of hope of reducing that suffering can't take the position that it's all or nothing. We have to be pragmatic. Screw the principle.
Ingrid NewkirkThe seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.
Nhat HanhThe way we treat animals is the root cause of all the human suffering in the world, from poverty, starvation, disease, and war to lack of clean air and water, not to mention all the varied forms of human emotional and spiritual suffering.
Sharon GannonI can do something about people who need me, who have been injured. So the biggest thing about being a doctor is my education and training means I can help people to reduce their suffering and that's what being a doctor is, to reduce suffering and to try to improve the life of people who have been injured.
Fiona WoodTo choose suffering makes no sense at all; to choose God's will in the midst of our suffering makes all the sense in the world.
Oswald ChambersPoverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness. A policy to reduce the loneliness of the elderly would certainly reduce suffering.
Daniel KahnemanJust take Germany and the suffering of Jews during and after the Second World War. It would be legal to ridicule and to laugh at this suffering, but since it was such a trauma on the European conscience, no one is going to do it. It is an open scar, an open wound, an open reality.
Tariq RamadanI think it's true that the 1 Percent or the elite are living in a world of, maybe, excessive privilege, and they don't fully realize how much pain and suffering, how much anxiety exists out there.
Nouriel RoubiniWhen God's children disobeyed their heavenly Father, they damaged everything. When Adam and Eve rebelled against the King of the universe, they broke the whole world. This is why there is evil and suffering. Bad things happen in a world that's broken.
Greg Koukl