quotations about suffering
When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
BERTOLT BRECHT
"When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain"
No man ever grows to a full man's estate without the ministration of suffering.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Learn to bear suffering, and it shall bear thee.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan.
THOMAS GRAY
Odes on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
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
Affliction is a spiritual physic for the soul, and is compared to a furnace, for as gold is tried and purified therein, so men are proved and either purified from their dross, and fitted for good uses, or else entirely burnt up and undone forever.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Suffering of sentient beings is like decay; it fertilizes the growth of their souls.
ANNE RICE
Memnoch the Devil
One does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.
WILLIAM STYRON
Darkness Visible
Trouble's made us kin.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
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
Misery loves company, particularly when she is herself the hostess, and can give generously of her stores to others.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
"The Spectre Cook of Bangletop"
Suffering is as God's letter. Open it and read it. Many a one will find that he is titled, or that there is an inheritance laid up for him.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
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"
In this house of suffering
I gotta let some joy in
BAD BRAINS
"House of Suffering"
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.
C. S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
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
Still to the sufferer comes, as due from God, a glory that to suffering owes its birth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
But when that we speak of suffering, we do not speak of a dull and neglected suffering, but of a wise and industrious suffering, which draweth and contriveth use and advantage out of that which seemeth adverse and contrary; which is that properly which we call accommodating or applying. Now the wisdom of application resteth principally in the exact and distinct knowledge of the precedent state or disposition, unto which we do apply; for we cannot fit a garment except we first take measure of the body.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning