SUFFERING QUOTES III
quotations about suffering
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone,
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But it has trouble enough of its own.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Solitude"
The poet, no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting--since our present lot appears
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Pain and suffering is a really ghoulish metric. You can't quantify a life. Any effort to do that is, of course, futile. But because our civil justice system, such as it is, only talks about money, that's the exercise we have to engage in.
DAVID B. RANKIN
"When cops kill, paying their victims' families can be a cold, calculating process", Business Insider, June 28, 2017
Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is no suffering if you don't want anything.
ELIF BATUMAN
The Idiot
Never a tear bedims the eye
That time and patience will not dry.
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, October 19, 1940
Mortal! that cull'st the flowers of life,
Think not to escape the thorn.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"The Thorn of Life"
Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.
RAM DASS
One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life
The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished, and glorified through the furnace of tribulation.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Pain and illness, the deaths of those one loves, and discomforts and disappointments mar the happy norm, but they do not alter the fact that happiness is the norm, nor affect the tendency of the continuum to restore it, to heal it, after any disturbance.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
The Continuum Concept
Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Suffering is suffering. It doesn't matter if you are addicted to porn on the internet or you're codependent or you're addicted to gambling or if you're addicted to The Real Housewives of Atlanta. You're suffering, and that's what gets us into trouble.
SEAN BROOK
"Sean Brock Opens Up About Rehab and Sobriety to NYT", Eater Charleston, July 5, 2017
Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.
ELIE WIESEL
Night
Alas! fond child,
How are thy thoughts beguil'd
To hope for honey from a nest of wasps?
Thou may'st as well
Go seek for ease in hell,
Or sprightly nectar from the mouths of asps.
The world's a hive,
From whence thou canst derive
No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings:
But case thou meet
Some petty-petty sweet,
Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
A heart is that which opens
To trouble's thousand ways;
An unseen arrow wounds it,
To halt through all its days.
An evil eye may scatter blight,
A flitting mite may sting;
No wonder that a heartache
Is such a common thing!
CAROLINE SPENCER
"Heartache"
Trouble's made us kin.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
You have to suffer in order to be a human being who can help people understand suffering.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist