Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become love. That is the mystery.
—Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand-born British Author
Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.
—Les Brown
Take heart. Suffering, when it climbs the highest, lasts but a little time.
—Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Playwright
As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.
—Richard Burton (1925–84) Welsh Actor
There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man—that is, the more divine—the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.
—Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) Spanish Educator, Philosopher, Author
To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
We learn from our mistakes, and the amount we learn is in direct proportion to the amount we suffer from having made the mistakes.
—Tommy Prothro (1920–95) American Football Coach
What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Suffering is part of the divine idea.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
Do you want to be right more than you want to know the truth? It’s the truth that set me free. Acceptance, peace, and less attachment to a world of suffering are all effects of doing The Work. They’re not the goals. Do The Work for the love of freedom, for the love of truth.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning.
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004) American Psychiatrist
To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide.
—Cesare Pavese (1908–50) Italian Novelist, Poet, Critic, Translator
The experiences of camp life show that a man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even in the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to life.
—Viktor Frankl (1905–97) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist
One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.
—Ben Okri (b.1959) Nigerian Novelist, Poet, Short-Story Writer
All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.
—Marshall Rosenberg (1934–2015) American Psychologist, Peace Advocate
If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.
—Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) English Poet
Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet
Rather suffer than die is man’s motto.
—Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Playwright
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer
—William Blackstone (1723–80) English Judge, Jurist, Academic
The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust
—Brennan Manning (1934–2013) American Theologian, Author
If suffer we must, let’s suffer on the heights.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life—knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one’s own suffering.
—Robert Wilson Lynd (1879–1949) Irish Essayist, Critic
No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.
—Charles Spurgeon (1834–92) English Baptist Preacher