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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"Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered."
"I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection."
"I do oppose My patience to his fury, and am arm'd To suffer, with a quietness of spirit, The very tyranny and rage of his."
"Suffer love; a good epithet! I do suffer love, indeed, for I love thee against my will."
"I see men's judgments are A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike."
"O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer!"
"Where the greater malady is fixed, The lesser is scarce felt."
"Not without hope we suffer and we mourn."
"To care only about your pain and suffering, and disregard the emotional toll of others is hypocritically sub-human."
"The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it."
"We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory."
"Temporal punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by some after death, by some both here and hereafter, but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But not all who suffer temporal punishments after death will come to eternal punishments, which are to follow after that judgment."
"I will not live an instant that I do not live in love. Whoever loves does all things without suffering, or, suffering, loves his suffering."
"Do not fret under such assistance as is needful; therein lies one great grace of poverty. It were overambitious to aim at being poor without suffering any inconvenience, in other words, to have the credit of poverty and the convenience of riches."
"The damned are in the abyss of Hell, as within a woeful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments, in all their senses and members, because as they have employed all their senses and their members in sinning, so shall they suffer in each of them the punishment due to sin."
"No matter who you are, the thought of so much suffering and degradation must cause you to shudder at the sight of a veil or cassock, those two shrouds of human invention."
"There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom."
"Suffering is the main condition of the artistic experience."
"Earth's a howling wilderness, Truculent with fraud and force."
"Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdom which cannot help itself."
