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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"Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, suffer the pain. Your desires must be disciplined And what you want to happen in time, sacrificed."
"The only way love punishes in by suffering."
"Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms."
"There's no way that I know of to avoid pain absolutely, but suffering is the interpretation we choose to place on the pain we encounter."
"...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his soul."
"Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do."
"Your suffering is my suffering and your happiness is my happiness."
"I do not perceive even one other thing, O monks, that when undeveloped and uncultivated entails such great suffering as the mind. The mind when undeveloped and uncultivated entails great suffering."
"Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity."
"Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual."
"The child is much more spiritually elevated than is usually supposed. He often suffers, not from too much work, but from work that is unworthy of him."
"Great souls suffer in silence."
"It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge."
"Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?"
"So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear."
"Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself."
"There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."
"I have always been interested in how you can depict suffering without being heavy-handed."
"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering."
"The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least."
