Suffering quotes
4.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside suffering — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The world remains beset by so much human suffering, poverty and deprivation. It is in your hands to make of our world a better one for all, especially the poor, vulnerable and marginalised."
"Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others."
"We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness and strength so we can help transform the situation."
"You can't tear up everything just to get the dollar out of it without suffering as result. It is a travesty to burn our woods and thereby burn up the fertilizer nature has provided for us. We must enrich our soil every year instead of merely depleting it. It is fundamental that nature will drive away those who commit sin against it."
"One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer."
"All artists as a type seem to suffer a great deal, but then so do miners."
"Without our suffering, our work would simply be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption."
"Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things."
"Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can."
"Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them."
"Death remains about the one certain fact in the lives of each one of us, and there will be suffering, sorrow, and sadness next week as there was last week."
"It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit."
"It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to accept suffering as free, responsible men."
"I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most."
"The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly."
"What you’re believing in the moment creates your suffering or your happiness."
"Not only do we suffer from racism and sexism, but we also suffer from ageism. And that is that once you reach a certain age, you're not allowed to be adventurous, you're not allowed to be sexual and I think that's rather hideous. [...] I mean, is there a rule? Are you just supposed to die when you're 40?"
"To stop suffering, stop greediness. Greediness is a source of suffering."
"The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides."
"We aren't really called to save the world-not even to save one person; Jesus does that. We are just called to love with abandon. We are called to enter into our neighbors' sufferings and love them right there."
