quotations about suffering
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
Those who have experienced traumatic events speak about their profound realizations of the importance of kindness, the power of love and their appreciation for what remains. It appears that this level of insight often comes from suffering.
DANA LIGHTMAN
Power Optimism
Trouble's made us kin.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
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"
I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
If troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
The role of the human brain was to rationalize suffering.
MAILE MELOY
"The Proxy Marriage", The New Yorker, May 21, 2012
All suffering contorts the countenance so woefully that the pain flies to the beholder likewise.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Troubles come to us like mire and filth; but, when mingled with the soil, they change to flower and fruit.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The best fruit loads the broken bough;
And in the wounds our sufferings plow,
Immortal love sows sovereign seed.
GERALD MASSEY
"The Ballad of Babe Christabel"
Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.
RAM DASS
One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life
You have to suffer in order to be a human being who can help people understand suffering.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
SAUL BELLOW
"The Sealed Treasure", It All Adds Up
As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
Seek not life's jewels where the poppies grow,
Nor where Desire, all passion-poisoned, rears
Her luring domes, but in the heart of woe,
With shores far washed by sanctifying tears.
EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR
"Life's Jewels"
Nothing brings suffering as does
the untamed, uncontrolled unattended and unrestrained heart.
That heart brings suffering.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Anguttara Nikaya
Suffering is the crucible where real faith is born.
RAM DASS
One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life