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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"I'll put it this way, there was no C.P. Kennedy, there was no Dwight Dickham, we never went in the courtroom. That was the script I got. The affliction that the judge is suffering from was completely different."
"Each one of us reaps what we ourselves have sown. These miseries under which we suffer, these bondages under which we struggle, have been caused by ourselves, and none else in the universe is to blame. God is the least to blame for it."
"It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us."
"The establishment of the world community will surely exact a price – and who can tell what that price may be? – in toil, suffering and blood."
"Nations are born out of travail and suffering"
"An institution that suffers from a plethora of leaders is surely in a bad way."
"Who can enjoy enlightenment and remain indifferent to suffering in the world? This is not in keeping with the Way. Only those who increase their service along with their understanding can be called men and women of Tao."
"Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians."
"Just as a line drawn on water with a stick will quickly vanish and will not last long; even so, brahmins, is human life like a line drawn on water. It is short, limited, and brief; it is full of suffering. One should do good and live a pure life; for none who is born can escape death."
"Through its imperialist system Britain brought about untold suffering of millions of people. And this is an historical fact. To be able to admit this would increase the respect, you know, which we have for British institutions."
"Man must suffer to be wise."
"The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process"
"We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering."
"Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself."
"Envy is a horrible thing. It is unlike all other kinds of suffering in that there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than merely painful, it is disgusting."
"A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit."
"One must laugh and weep, love, work, enjoy and suffer, in short vibrate as much as possible in all his being."
"If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim."
"A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions."
"You are treading the path to your greatness: no one shall follow you here! Your passage has effaced the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility."
