There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands. When that occurs, we are victims of injustice. But that injustice happens on a horizontal plane. No one ever suffers injustice on the vertical...

An Odonian’s goal is positive, not negative. Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it’s merely destructive.

As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the...

I looked at the woman crying over the doll and felt something else. I was sick of people acting against their own interests. Mooing about how to refinance the slaughterhouse. Putting skylights in the killing...

For many, the search for Jesus is initiated from experiencing an event in life so powerful, it awakens the dragons of faith; from pain so deep, it calls on the hidden fears of the soul...

The alternative to pain may be worse. When you live with an open heart, you will inevitably get hurt. The alternative of living a life closed off from experience, however, is barren. Ironically, it also...

The author reveals a cultural change that took place when clergy were paid based on a tax on the land’s value rather than what it produced. This meant that, while parishioners could suffer through a...

We have all suffered losses and pain, but no loss is greater than a life lost holding-on to a painful past.

Only those who do not care, only those who find a way to diminish or extinguish the value of other human beings, survive wars without damage and speak of warrior honor afterward.

In a world like this with no laws, no charter of human rights, it’s the women who suffer. It’s the women who learn what it is to be tough, not the men.

There is, in fact, no safeword for chemical burns under one’s fingernails.

Desire is suffering. A simple equation, and a nice catchphrase. But flipped around, it is more troubling: suffering is desire.

To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity. It...

If you are waiting for anything in order to live and love without holding back, then you suffer.

A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.

I know for a fact that no matter where I go, the memory and the suffering of not being with you will cripple me. I will go to work, fire up my PC, only to...

Life has existential suffering; we become happy by caring.

At any rate, they were strange fellows, these bohemians. They lounged around doing nothing and told you they were working; they were frightfully miserable and yet would tell you that they were perfectly happy. They...

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of...

There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has...

There’s often a reason why people and dogs bite. It’s about self-protection. If we respect what we may not know about the suffering of others and look at them compassionately, we open the door that...

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.

I was the worst kind of fool. When I look back on that August night, changed forever by all my wounds and all my suffering, that undamaged Odd Thomas seems like a different human being...

But how to be present to another? Our hearts are so hard. We are so insensitive to the suffering of others. We must pray the Holy Spirit to change our hearts of stone into hearts...

It is important never to separate love and knowledge, compassion and wisdom. A wisdom without compassion is closed upon itself and does not bear fruit. A compassion without wisdom is a madness and a cause...

Pain and beauty, our constant bedfellows

Hamas, they are using civilians’ lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate.

God draws near to the brokenhearted. He leans toward those who are suffering. He knows what it feels like to be wounded and abandoned.

There are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn’t bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it’s hard to see, it’s...

Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and...

Towards the end of the Second World War, when I was sixteen years old, I was taken out of school and forced into the army. After a brief period of training at a base in...

Who are we aligning ourselves with? Are we aligning ourselves with the presence of God as it is abused, broken, bleeding, and mocked and scorned even now in this world? Do we take that one...

…it was inevitable I loved you – we were soul mates – for the same reason, we were fated to suffer…

I love my mother.My mother loves my dad.Those two facts are undeniable.I want my father to live.I want him to fight to live as long as he can.My mother wants to let him pass.She does...

Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all.

The world is already yours – why try to conquer it?

A life I didn’t choose chose me.

Accept the long night patiently, quietly, humbly, and resignedly as intended for your true good. It is not a punishment for sin committed but an instrument of annihilating egoism.

We come to the end of suffering, through suffering.

Toda vida, le dijo esa noche Epifanio a Lalo Cura, por más feliz que sea, acaba siempre en dolor y sufrimiento. Depende, dijo Lalo Cura. ,Depende de qué, buey? De muchas cosas, dijo Lalo Cura....

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn’t stay dry.

Followers of Jesus stake their claim on the firm belief that God will one day heal the planet of pain and death. Until that day arrives, the case against God must rely on incomplete evidence....

Death undoes us less, sometimes, than the hope that it will never come.

Reducing the price of AIDS drugs gave me so much satisfaction that I’ve been thinking what else I could do. One day, I thought, ‘Let’s look at cancer and see how we can spare cancer...

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering.

What could ever tempt me to share my pain? Why willingly increase it by coming close to another human being, inevitable causing severe damage with the sharp edges of my broken heart?

Forgiveness is about your peace of mind. When you don’t forgive, you are the one who suffers.

The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human...

The pain will always be in you — but you will not always be in pain.