Suffering quotes
4.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside suffering — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just."
"Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror."
"A prudent mind can see room for misgiving, lest he who prospers should one day suffer reverse."
"Through suffering we have endured the assaults of time; reverses have ever been our beginning; and out of the depths God has gathered us to his heart."
"The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: - let such a one be dismissed!"
"Images have been reproached for being a way of watching suffering at a distance, as if there were some other way of watching."
"It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades."
"Sometimes wisdom comes from suffering, and sometimes suffering comes from wisdom."
"At some point, you no longer feel pain. Sensation disappears and reason is dulled, until you lose all grasp of time and place."
"Suffering is a big informer, a big catalyst for creation. You take your sadness, your despair, your sense of injustice, and you put it in your work."
"Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering."
"Nanda broke down every barrier and won his way to freedom not by brag, not by bluster, but by the purest form of self-suffering."
"He who is attached to things will suffer much."
"We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treason not least; but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda."
"Perhaps love is a compelling necessity imposed on man by God that has something to do with suffering"
"I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering."
"I felt like I had to be conscious of myself as a girl for the first time. I had to be more feminine. I had to look a certain way. And it's something that you want to suffer in silence, but I would go onto movie sets and they would bring out bras that were basically binders, because there were continuity problems between months."
"We scornfully decline, because of one whom we love and who will some day be of so little account, to see another who is of no account to-day, with whom we shall be in love to-morrow, with whom we might, perhaps, had we consented to see her now, have fallen in love a little earlier and who would thus have put a term to our present sufferings, bringing others, it is true, in their place."
"Not everyone is lucky enough to understand how delicious it is to suffer."
"I teach about suffering and the way to end it"
