If suffer we must, let’s suffer on the heights.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Take heart. Suffering, when it climbs the highest, lasts but a little time.
—Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Poet
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
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.
—Richard Burton (1925–84) Welsh Actor
Do you want a sign that you’re asleep? Here it is: you’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there’s falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.
—Anthony de Mello (1931–87) Indian-born American Theologian
The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.
—Herodotus (c.485–425 BCE) Ancient Greek Historian
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.
—Helen Keller (1880–1968) American Author
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
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
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 Poet
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
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
Pain is part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbearable, and we need to be taught that.
—Harold Kushner (b.1935) American Jewish Religious Leader, Priest
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
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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
Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.
—Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) English Poet
The mind grows sicker than the body in contemplation of it’s suffering.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.
—F. H. Bradley (1846–1924 ) British Idealist Philosopher
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
A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.
—Georges Gurdjieff (1877–1949) Armenian Spiritual Leader, Occultist
For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust
—Brennan Manning (1934–2013) American Theologian, Author
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
You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
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 Sportsperson
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of Heaven.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
The salvation of the world is in man’s suffering.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
—Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) American Surgeon, Biologist
We need to suffer that we may learn to pity.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38) English Poet, Novelist
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