Butterfly Suffering Quotes

There's a lot of pointing. A festival of pointing and at very close range to other people's eyes, given the width of the space. Also detracting from the exhibit's potential tranquility is the display cabinet of pinned specimens along one wall. I found this disturbing from the start. You don't see a whole lot of stuffed polar bears in the polar bear exhibit at the zoo, for instance. And butterflies have phenomenal vision so it's not like they can't see the mass crucifixion in their midst. I was offended on behalf of the butterflies and thus pleased with my offense. Let the empathizing begin! This volunteering thing was working already. I am a good person, hear me give! ~ Sloane Crosley

If you wake up for a moment and look around at life, you will observe that nothing here lasts, nothing works out. There are no happy endings. All accomplishments are washed away by death or by the next moment. ~ Frederick Lenz

Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of the their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

As a group, housewives to-day suffer more from social isolation and loss of purpose than any other social group, except, perhaps, the old. ~ Alva Myrdal

A few have heeded our words,' Adam comforted, placing his arm about her, but in his face Shaina read such suffering as she had never seen upon a human countenance. ' Man born into sinfulness no longer finds the things of God appealing. It requires a long, slow miraculous turning to bring him once more into tune with His Maker, and few will submit to the process because it is so much easier to simply enjoy the bounties of the earth and gratify every impulse. And upon us both rests the burden of this knowledge--the sordidness of man, his cruelty, his greed. All our legacy to those for whom God planned so much. ~ June Strong

My friends back home call me a warrior. In fact I'm a butterfly-faced warrior. ~ DeeDee Trotter

And then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain but to fill it with his or her presence ... ~ Annie Lamott

The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrollable way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us and it is the poor people of the world who will suffer most ~ David Attenborough

Always beneath or above concrete events, I remain a prisoner of this alternative: the world as a real object that dominates me and devours me (like Judith) in suffering and in fear, or else the world as a pure fantasy which dissolves in my hands, which I destroy (like Lucrece thrusting home the dagger) without ever succeeding in possessing it. Perhaps, above all, the question for me is to escape this dilemma by finding a way in which the world and myself--object and subject--confront each other on an equal footing, as the matador stands before the bull. ~ Michel Leiris

He reached for her and she went willingly into his arms. He kissed her deeply, feeling the waves of shivers washing through her. Even as his mouth claimed hers, his hands were everywhere. Tracing the length of her spine, squeezing the curve of her butt, sliding up her hips to her waist.

There was a confidence to Duncan, a sureness that allowed her to relax. His strength made her want to surrender, because being around him was inherently safe.
<...>'Don't make me hit you. I have a great jab."

"You have a sad excuse for a jab. It would be like being attacked by a butterfly.'

"I was calm and rational," she told him.

"You were a girl. Admit it."

"I could hit you right now."

"You could and no one would notice. Especially not me. ~ Susan Mallery

Even our behavior and emotions seem to have been shaped by a prankster. Why do we crave the very foods that are bad for us but have less desire for pure grains and vegetables? Why do we keep eating when we know we are too fat? And why is our willpower so weak in its attempts to restrain our desires? Why are male and female sexual responses so uncoordinated, instead of being shaped for maximum mutual satisfaction? Why are so many of us constantly anxious, spending our lives, as Mark Twain said, "suffering from tragedies that never occur"? Finally, why do we find happiness so elusive, with the achievement of each long-pursued goal yielding not contentment, but only a new desire for something still less attainable? The design of our bodies is simultaneously extraordinarily precise and unbelievably slipshod. It is as if the best engineers in the universe took every seventh day off and turned the work over to bumbling amateurs. ~ Randolph M. Nesse

Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned. ~ Honore De Balzac

Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. The events that had, as it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god at other times known as blind Circumstance. That his few minutes of hope, between the reading of the first and second letters, had carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the immensity of his suffering now. The sun blazing into his face would have shown a close watcher that a horizontal line, which had never been seen before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead. His eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares. ~ Thomas Hardy

Grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief. ~ Jesmyn Ward

Butterfly was certainly a vehicle for me, and if it died, it still would have served its purpose, in spades. We never expected it to give me the visibility it has given me. It was just a small thing as a vehicle, and suddenly the whole world knew about it. ~ Pia Zadora

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

There is a secret a person with great knowledge discovers along the path to truth. That is, the more doors you open to understanding the world, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end - we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit? ~ Suzy Kassem

Hast thou attuned thyself to the suffering of humanity, O candidate for light? ~ H. P. Blavatsky

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. ~ Paul Brunton

It happens like this.

"One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else--closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps this person carries within them an angel--one sent to you for some higher purpose; to teach you an important lesson or to keep you safe during a perilous time. What you must do is trust in them--even if they come hand in hand with pain or suffering--the reason for their presence will become clear in due time."

Though here is a word of warning--you may grow to love this person but remember they are not yours to keep. Their purpose isn't to save you but to show you how to save yourself. And once this is fulfilled; the halo lifts and the angel leaves their body as the person exits your life. They will be a stranger to you once more.

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It's so dark right now, I can't see any light around me.
That's because the light is coming from you. You can't see it but everyone else can. ~ Lang Leav

I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver's mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell's Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold win ~ Roberto Bolano

When a butterfly flutters its wings in one part of the world, it can eventually cause a hurricane in another. ~ Edward Norton Lorenz

If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine genetic "fitness" (i.e., which person fits within the triangle, and who lives outside it), then the question that confronts our current era is what happens when this power devolves to the individual. It is a question that requires us to balance the desires of the individual - to carve out a life of happiness and achievement, without undue suffering - with the desires of a society that, in the short term, may be interested only in driving down the burden of disease and the expense of disability. And operating silently in the background is a third set of actors: our genes themselves, which reproduce and create new variants oblivious of our desires and compulsions - but, either directly or indirectly, acutely or obliquely, influence our desires and compulsions. Speaking at the Sorbonne in 1975, the cultural historian Michel Foucault once proposed that "a technology of abnormal individuals appears precisely when a regular network of knowledge and power has been established." Foucault was thinking about a "regular network" of humans. But it could just as easily be a network of genes. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

If you have not confronted true horrors, understood evil, suffered hopelessness and despair, found faith, and made yourself completely accountable for your own choices, actions and outcomes, then I can guarantee that any acceptance you pretend to have will be as brittle and temporary as a snowball in the middle of summer. ~ Graeme Rodaughan

I am committed to cultivating loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. ~ Nhat Hanh

My church [Catholisism] is hurting from arrogance and from its indifference to the suffering of children that were abused and the inclination of the leadership to protect the institution, rather than the children. ~ Mark Shields

Our Obligations are...
to smile when happy;
to give meaning to this life;
to try to give a little more than we have taken;
to honor our Father for his kindness;
to not ignore those suffering or in need;
and to try to make this world a slightly better place before we leave it. ~ Jose N Harris

NO MUD, NO LOTUS Both suffering and happiness are of an organic nature, which means they are both transitory; they are always changing. The flower, when it wilts, becomes the compost. The compost can help grow a flower again. Happiness is also organic and impermanent by nature. It can become suffering and suffering can become happiness again. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing. ~ Ba Jin

It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can never see the world in the same way again. ~ Karen Armstrong

As the floods of God
Wash away sin city
They say it was written
In the page of the Lord
But I was looking
For that great jazz note
That destroyed
The walls of Jericho
The winds of fear
Whip away the sickness
The messages on the tablet
Was valium
As the planets form
That golden cross Lord
I'll see you on
The holy cross roads
After all this time
To believe in Jesus
After all those drugs
I thought I was Him
After all my lying
And a-crying
And my suffering
I ain't good enough
I ain't clean enough
To be Him
The tribal wars
Burning up the homeland
The fuel of evil
Is raining from the sky
The sea of lava
Flowing down the mountain
The time will sleep
Us sinners by
Holy rollers roll
Give generously now
Pass the hubcap please
Thank you Lord ~ Joe Strummer

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor. ~ Alexis Carrel

He who wants to succeed should learn how to fight, to strive and to suffer. You can acquire a lot in life, if you are prepared to give up a lot to get it. ~ Bruce Lee

Today you are standing in a position that would please the friend and would anger the enemy and all the infidels. You will be victorious against the enemies and you are causing them to suffer. ~ Saddam Hussein

Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world. ~ George Friedman