Suffering famous quotes
04-23-2025
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We must never forget that Christ did not suffer just during His three years of public ministry or the last few days of His life when He was crucified. No, He suffered throughout His life on earth. He who was without sin lived daily with the corruption and sinfulness of lost humanity.
-- A. B. Simpson -
Hitler suffered acutely from meteorism; perhaps he did not suffer so acutely as those around him, since meteorism is uncontrolled farting, a condition exacerbated by Hitler's strictly vegetarian diet.
-- A. N. Wilson -
Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.
-- A. S. Byatt -
Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
-- Abba Eban -
posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.
-- Abigail Adams -
...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
-- Abraham Verghese -
God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
-- Abraham Verghese -
A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering.
-- Ada Leverson -
I suffer from and enjoy an incredibly vivid dream life. A lot of times there is a sort-of narrative and other times they are just funhouses of non-linear imagery and other scary stuff.
-- Adam Rapp -
I think one of the defining moments of adulthood is the realization that nobody's going to take care of you. That you have to do the heavy lifting while you're here. And when you don't, well, you suffer the consequences.
-- Adam Savage -
Ecology more important than saving animals from slavery??? Humans suffer the raping of the earth but animals suffer DOUBLY: the raping of the earth PLUS their own raping by humans. They are innocent/they are not the ones who raped the earth/they enrich it for us all from the tiniest microscopic beings to the largest ones.
-- Adela Popescu -
What we suffer from today is an excess of education.
-- Adolf Hitler -
If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated suffering.
-- Adoniram Judson -
The sight or sound of perfect things causes a certain suffering.
-- Adrienne Monnier -
To work and suffer is to be at home. All else is scenery ...
-- Adrienne Rich -
When we start to suffer, it tells us something very valuable. It means that we are not seeing the truth, and we are not relating from the truth. It's a beautiful pointer. It never fails.
-- Adyashanti -
When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you're holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?
-- Adyashanti -
Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.
-- Aeschylus -
Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
-- Aeschylus -
It is a light thing for whoever keeps his foot outside trouble to advise and counsel him that suffers.
-- Aeschylus -
Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.
-- Agatha Christie -
If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life.
-- Agatha Christie -
The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and women can ever be severed; that what brings sufferings to the one can leave the other unscathed.
-- Agnes Repplier -
A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.
-- Agnes Repplier -
the human soul, by once suffering as much as it is capable of, purchases a strange and terrible immunity to all the rest of life's sorrows.
-- Agnes Sligh Turnbull -
Hatred, revenge, bitterness - these are negative emotions. The person harbouring those emotions suffers more.
-- Ahmed Kathrada -
If we can trust the sufferings of Christ for our sake then we can trust Christ when we suffer for His sake.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer -
Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn't cause suffering.
-- Ajahn Chah -
If we see suffering then we don't have suffering.
-- Ajahn Chah -
When we sit in meditation and hear a sound, we think, 'Oh, that sound's bothering me.' If we see it like this, we suffer. But if we investigate a little deeper, we see that the sound is simply sound. If we understand like this, then there's nothing more to it. We leave it be. The sound is just sound, why should you go and grab it? You see that actually it was you who went out and disturbed the sound.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Just know what is happening in your mind - not happy or sad about it, not attached. If you suffer see it, know it, and be empty. It's like a letter - you have to open it before you can know what's in it.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.
-- Ajahn Chah -
We don't meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.
-- Ajahn Chah -
If you want a chicken to be a duck, and a duck to be a chicken, you will suffer.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Things are simply the way they are. They don't give us suffering. Like a thorn: Does a sharp thorn give us suffering? No. It's simply a thorn. It doesn't give suffering to anybody. If we step on it, we suffer immediately. Why do we suffer? Because we stepped on it. So the suffering comes from us.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Do not be a bodhisattva, do not be an arahant, do not be anything at all. If you are a bodhisattva, you will suffer, if you are an arahant, you will suffer, if you are anything at all, you will suffer.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Peace 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 Chah -
If you see certainty in that which is uncertain, you are bound to suffer
-- Ajahn Chah -
We don't have a major problem right now in our country, and life is normal. Things like unemployment, which the youth are suffering from, and the rate of inflation - these are chronic conditions and we have to solve them.
-- Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -
Without hope of reward Provide help to others. Bear suffering alone, And share your pleasures with beggars.
-- Akkineni Nagarjuna -
I don't know where we got the notion that God wants us to suffer. Every living thing tends toward the good or we would have been gone a long time ago.
-- Al Jarreau -
The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers.
-- Al Pacino -
In God, there is no sorrow or suffering or affliction. If you want to be free of all affliction and suffering, hold fast to God, and turn wholly to Him, and to no one else. Indeed, all your suffering comes from this: that you do not turn toward God and no one else.
-- Al-Ghazali -
Everyday hundreds of people came to the hospital... dying, and I have to introduce life into them again... my duty was to compete with death.
-- Ala Bashir -
Testosterone Poisoning: … Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’
-- Alan Alda -
If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
-- Alan Lightman -
I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.
-- Alan Paton -
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
-- Alan Perlis -
If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.†We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.
-- Alan Watts -
Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.
-- Albert Bandura -
When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.
-- Albert Camus -
It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.
-- Albert Camus -
The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.
-- Albert Camus -
... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.
-- Albert Camus -
Men cry because things are not what they ought to be.
-- Albert Camus -
A writer cannot put himself today in service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it.
-- Albert Camus -
Who taught you all this, doctor?" The reply came promptly: "Suffering.
-- Albert Camus -
The world I live in is loathsome to me, but I feel one with the men who suffer in it
-- Albert Camus -
A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings.
-- Albert Einstein -
Enjoying the joys of others and suffering with them-these are the best guides for man.
-- Albert Einstein -
Needing leads to bleeding - to almost all inevitable suffering.
-- Albert Ellis -
Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.
-- Albert Pike -
My own experience of over 60 years in biomedical research amply demonstrated that without the use of animals and of human beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans but also among [other] animals.
-- Albert Sabin -
A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might be used to reduce suffering rests on the shelf,
-- Albert Sabin -
There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature, unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
Your soul suffers if you live superficially.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
In fact, this is a blackmail of the terrorists at the expense of the suffering of the hostages.
-- Alberto Fujimori -
Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?
-- Aldous Huxley -
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Righteous is the one who was able to demonstrate compassion in face of human suffering.
-- Aleksander Kwasniewski -
We know enough to stand here in truth - facing pain, cry and suffering of those who were murdered here. Face to face with the victims' families who are here today. Before the judgment of our own conscience.
-- Aleksander Kwasniewski -
... the inexorable lesson of centuries: suffering must be borne; there is no way out.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
We are full of words whose true meaning we haven't been taught, and one of those words is suffering. Another is the word death. We don't know what they mean, but we use them, and this is a mystery.
-- Alessandro Baricco -
The web of life, love, suffering and death unites all beings.
-- Alex Grey -
The Russian people are suffering from economic fatigue and from disillusionment with the Allies! The world thinks the Russian Revolution is at an end. Do not be mistaken. The Russian Revolution is just beginning.
-- Alexander Kerensky -
It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.
-- Alexander Pope -
Through every generation of the human race there has been a constant war, a war with fear. Those who have the courage to conquer it are made free and those who are conquered by it are made to suffer until they have the courage to defeat it, or death takes them.
-- Alexander the Great -
I suppose he'll just have to do," she amended. "You'll have to suffer in silence with your male model...I feel for you." "Oh, stop it, Molly.
-- Alexandra Adornetto -
Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great; it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.
-- Alexandra David-Neel -
Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.
-- Alfred Adler -
In the investigation of a neurotic style of life, we must always suspect an opponent, and note who suffers most because of the patient's condition. Usually this is a member of the family.
-- Alfred Adler -
There are women who do not like to cause suffering to many men at a time, and who prefer to concentrate on one man: These are the faithful women.
-- Alfred Capus -
Reason may cure illusions, but not suffering.
-- Alfred de Musset -
Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man...
-- Alfred de Musset -
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
-- Alfred Hitchcock -
Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.
-- Alfred Jarry -
I think I have fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides, and I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths [...] I can see much to admire in all religions [...] But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth.
-- Alfred Russel Wallace -
That's the penalty we have to pay for our acts of foolishness - someone else always suffers for them.
-- Alfred Sutro -
The families of the killed and disappeared are entitled to the right to know what happened to their loved ones, and to adequate reparation for the suffering endured.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind.
-- Alice Meynell -
The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.
-- Alice Miller
