quotations about suffering
Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it's merely destructive.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
LATIN PROVERB
When I am pained, I find the old theory of the uselessness of communicating the circumstances of it, singularly untenable.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1, 1845
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
The taste of life disappears.
The flavour of all the years.
Breath is flying away.
Life is ending today.
No more suffering.
WAR AGAINST SLEEP
"Suffering"
What is there? I know first of all that I am. But who am I? All I know of myself is that I suffer. And if I suffer it is because at the origin of myself there is mutilation, separation. I am separated. What I am separated from -- I cannot name it. But I am separated.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
Most people don't mind suffering in silence as long as everyone else knows about it.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
Brothers, I see a meaning in this pain and suffering; I see God therein. The hour is sent to us for trial. Let us meet the test.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Jeremiah: a drama in nine scenes
Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world of anyone is to reach God.
ANNE RICE
Memnoch the Devil