Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and grief! He who has not seen the things of this world, and the heart of men in this...

What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of...

I am willing without further exercise in pain to open my heart. And this needs no doctrine or theology of suffering. We love apocalypses too much, and crisis ethics and florid extremism with its thrilling...

When confronted with suffering that won’t go away or with even a minor problem, we instinctively focus on what is missing,…not on the Master’s hand. Often when you think everything has gone wrong, it’s just...

The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.

Help me to get my eyes off my suffering and onto you, God.

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives...

Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An...

Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.

Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure.

Through spiritual maturity you will see new ways to avoid unnecessary suffering; wiser ways to endure unavoidable hardships with grace, and opportunities to turn your pain into lessons of service and healing for others.

When someone is suffering, there is a deep, visceral reaction in the core of our being, a flood of empathy and a frightfully desperate compulsion to give aid.

They” hate us because they feel–and “they” are not wrong–that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do...

Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.

Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way

There always comes, I think, a sort of peak in suffering at which either you win over your pain or your pain wins over you, according as to whether you can, or cannot, call up...

Suffering is not increased by numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.

It is easy to tell the toiler How best he can carry his packBut no one can rate a burden’s weightUntil it has been on his back

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

Judged by the normal standards of human affairs, the lives of men and women of God may look overburdened with suffering, and even inconclusive.

The purpose of suffering is to contain the light of your desire until you see yourself in everything.

No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with so many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Our willingness to suffer for the sake of the perception of freedom is remarkable.

How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify,...

suffering is a misunderstood pain

It’s easy to thank God and to be happy when you live a sheltered life and have no concept of suffering; Suffer and then do all of the above.

The animals feel that this urgency is mutual. Their own suffering has made them aware of human suffering. More frequent contact with us has sensitized them to what troubles us. They feel our anxiety and...

Although psychology and pedagogy have always maintained the belief that a child is a happy being without any conflicts, and have assumed that the sufferings of adults are the results of the burdens and hardships...

When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship – when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He...

Few suffer more than those who refuse to forgive themselves.

The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.

It is often simply from lack of creative imagination that we do not go far enough in suffering.

Don’t be a zombie for anyone, if your oppressor likes zombies, cinemas are not located in mars.

Those who are in pain – most of the world’s populations at any given moment – do not do a lot of thinking, speaking, or writing about suffering. All their energy goes into surviving. That...

‘Freedom.’ He pauses a moment to reflect on the F-word. ‘Sometimes I think it’s an idea that enslaves us. We’re never free from hungering for the notion that we can even have freedom. When perhaps...

There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different...

Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all this. I think work is the best....

Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to...

All mental unhappiness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.

Long you must suffer, knowing not what,until suddenly out of spitefully chewed fruit your suffering’s taste comes forth in you.Then you will love almost instantly what’s tasted. No one will ever talk you out of...

There is pain and suffering in this world, but there is also joy, and not just suffering here and joy there, but suffering and joy in the very same place.

You will bring yourself the suffering you need to bring yourself so that you may awaken.

Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from...

… It was the knowing that there had been a happier time, a place of joy and peace and security, that made the sudden absence of it all so agonizing… Not the agony of what...

Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly...

I alone knew what I had suffered. I alone knew what it felt like to be alive but dead.

God only knows the torment of the suffering soul and only he can take away the pain.

Even though life is hard, never make your life miserable, stressed and out weighed, you will burry yourself in stress.

By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness – the desire to see...