Suffering Quotes - Page 29

• Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Sacrifice

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• Remember this: all suffering comes to an end. And whatever you suffer authentically, God has suffered from it first.

  Meister Eckhart

  Firsts, Remember, Ends

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• When 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 Hanh

  People, Doe, Natural

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2001). “Anger”, p.22, Penguin

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• If you have high self-esteem, you might still know times of emotional suffering, but less often and with faster recovery-your resilience is greater.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Self Esteem, Recovery, Emotional

  Nathaniel Branden (1998). “Nathaniel Brandens Self-Esteem Every Day: Reflections on Self-Esteem and Spirituality”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• I have never heard enough classical music to be able to enjoy it; & the simple truth is, I detest it. Not mildly, but will all my heart. To me an opera is the very climax & cap-stone of the absurd, the fantastic the unjustifiable. I hate the very name of opera - partly because of the nights of suffering I have endured in its presence, & partly because I want to love it and can't.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Hate, Humorous

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• One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Fighting, White, People

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• The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Pain, Doe, Flesh

  Saint Ignatius of Loyola (2012). “The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola”, p.40, Courier Corporation

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• People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better.

  John Forbes Nash

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  "Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession" by René J. Muller, (p. 62), 2013.

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• In today's world, people experience two types of poverty: the poverty caused by lack of food, clothing and shelter, and the poverty caused by lack of love and compassion. Of these two, the second type needs to be considered first because if we have love and compassion in our hearts, then we will wholeheartedly serve those who suffer from lack of food, clothing and shelter.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Heart, Compassion, Two

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• Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression. The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment. The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment.

  Herbert Hoover

  Life, Science, Animal

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• Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me.

  Van Morrison

  Art, Sadness, Common

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• We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer - and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply.

  Tom Van Vleck

  Agony, Water, Black

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• Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

  Zoroaster

  Worry, Anxiety, Soul

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• I call it suffering and pain, they call it entertainment.

  Ray Davies

  Art, Pain, Media

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• Because of our youthful population, we suffer from unemployment in Iran. We need more universities and more job opportunities for the young.

  Shirin Ebadi

  Jobs, Opportunity, Iran

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• Not a few patients, however, suffering from certain forms of mental disorder, regain a high degree of insight into their mental condition in what might be termed a flash of divine enlightenment.

  Clifford Whittingham Beers

  Enlightenment, Degrees, Might

  Clifford Whittingham Beers (2015). “A Mind That Found Itself”, p.61, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Buddha nature is not something that we possess, nor is it something we can be. It is the nature of things, just as they are. To realize our buddha nature, to live in accord with this awakening, is the truth that alleviates suffering in the world.

  Geoffrey Shugen Arnold

  World, Awakening, Realizing

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• I am, I must confess, suspicious of those who denounce others for having too much sex. At what point does a healthy amount become too much? There are, of course, those who suffer because their desire for sex has become compulsive; in their case the drive (loneliness, guilt) is at fault, not the activity as such. When morality is discussed I invariably discover, halfway into the conversation, that what is meant are not the great ethical questions but the rather dreary business of sexual habit, which to my mind is an aesthetic rather than an ethical issue.

  Edmund White

  Sex, Loneliness, Ethical Questions

  "States of Desire: Travels in Gay America". Book by Edmund White, 1980.

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• A foul-mouthed oaf, a drunken laborer lying in a drain, a beaten wife with blackened eyes and torn clothes, cannot be made romantic to a child who sees how other children suffer from bad-tempered parents, from drunken fathers to termagant mothers.

  Joyce Cary

  Mother, Children, Father

  Joyce Cary (1953). “Except the Lord: A Novel”, New York : Harper

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• Man is the individualised expression or reflection of God imaged forth and made manifest in bodily form. How is it, then, I hear it asked, that man has the limitations that he has, that he is subject to fears and forebodings, that he is liable to sin and error, that he is the victim of disease and suffering? There is but one reason. He is not living, except in rare cases here and there, in the conscious realisation of his own true Being, and hence of his own true Self.

  Ralph Waldo Trine

  Faith, Reflection, Men

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• I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Selfish, Men, Suffering Of Others

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

  Greil Marcus

  Country, America, Promise

  "Greil Marcus: a life in writing". Interview with Simon Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2012.

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• Important as economic unification is for the recovery of Germany and of Europe, the German people must recognize that the basic cause of their suffering and distress is the war which the Nazi dictatorship brought upon the world.

  James F. Byrnes

  War, Recovery, Europe

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• It is often said that having gone through any kind of suffering tends to makes you appreciate life more and live more in the present. I'm not sure how universal or long-lasting these effects really are.

  Julian Baggini

  Long, Appreciate, Gone

  "An unequivocal 'no'" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2010.

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• We can take suffering to be an opportunity to learn and to grow. But if we are honest, we should remember that this is making the best of a bad job, and that minimising suffering takes priority over optimising its outcome.

  Julian Baggini

  Jobs, Opportunity, Priorities

  "An unequivocal 'no'" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2010.

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