Eternal Suffering Quotes

[ ... ] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness. ~ Albert Camus

Harness the imagination: Sometimes curbing her, sometimes giving her rein, for she is the whole of happiness. She sets to rights even the understanding. She sinks to tyranny, not satisfied with mere faith, but demanding works. Thus she becomes the mistress of life itself. She does so with pleasure or with pain, according to the nonsense presented. She makes people contented or discontented with themselves. By dangling before some nothing but the specter of their eternal suffering, she becomes the scourge of these fools. To others she shows nothing but fortune and romance, while merrily laughing. Of all this she is capable if not held in check by the wisest of wills. ~ Baltasar Gracian

The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options. ~ Bill Hicks

When I was seven I believed in God so I told Him I was sorry about kicking my sister and to "please not condemn me to eternal suffering in the interminable fires of Perdition for my transgressions. ~ Emma Rose Kraus

At the Lausanne missions gathering in 2010, John Piper made the statement that "we should care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering." He chose the word "care" quite carefully. He didn't want to say we should do something about all suffering, because we can't do something about everything. But we can care. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Faith - or not faith - I don't know what it is - but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul. ~ Leo Tolstoy

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else. ~ Simone Weil

Goin insane, never die, live eternal, who shall I fear? ~ Tupac Shakur

Over the past several months, Amelía's Google history had become a reference of her despair: "can't have children, reasons for infertility in women, reasons for infertility in men, discussing infertility with husband, price of surrogate mothers, signs of depression, adoption agencies, infertility support groups…" The endless searches only provided two categories of results: medical sites that took pride in listing every worst-case scenario, and blogs written by white women with phrases like "silent suffering" and "living with uncertainty," mixing in Bible verses about God's Grace, none of which filled the void or helped Aimee ignore the fact that Mother's Day was a month away and she would have to watch her family celebrate the one thing she wanted most and might never have. ~ Jake Vander-Ark

Measured over too short a span, change becomes imperceptible; people mistake today's peculiarities for eternal verities. ~ Rebecca Solnit

[ ... ] The negative turned positive, black misery sublimated into heightened consciousness, suffering into solidarity! ~ Kang Chol-Hwan

We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but thereis sorrow, and we have to accept and receive ourselves in its fires. If we try to evade sorrow, refusing to deal with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life, and there is no use in saying it should not be. Sin, sorrow, and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them. ~ Oswald Chambers

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared
to learn to draw? ~ Banksy

In these times of suffering prayer is of even more help, ~ Pope Francis

All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world. ~ Franz Kafka

What we need is evangelicals and Catholics who discern the primary demand of our time: a celebration of our heavenly participation in the eternal Word of God. Only a heavenly minded Christian faith will do us any earthly good. ~ Hans Boersma

Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long. ~ Aeschylus

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. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

That someone would want another human being to suffer, or would even tolerate the idea, for committing no crime at all but being reasonable, is truly frightening. A religion that breeds such people is a genuine plague upon the earth. ~ Richard Carrier

Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and-we must now add-generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly. ~ A. C. Bradley

Beliefs are deeper than discoveries. They are eternal." Stahl ~ Algernon Blackwood

A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve. ~ Salman Rushdie

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time - that is the basic message. ~ Pema Chodron

We have discovered that the scheme of 'outlawing war' has made war more like an outlaw without making it less frequent and that to banish the knight does not alleviate the suffering of the peasant. ~ C.S. Lewis

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Compared to other parents, remarried parents seem more desirous of their child's approval, more alert to the child's emotional state, and more sensitive in their parent-child relations. Perhaps this is the result of heightened empathy for the child's suffering, perhaps it is a guilt reaction; in either case, it gives the child a potent weapon
the power to disrupt the new household and come between parent and the new spouse. ~ Letty Cottin Pogrebin

All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation. When it comes out of meditation, creativity is sharing the joy, sharing the blissfulness that you have. Mind has no joy - it is really a wound, very painful. ~ Rajneesh

Medical judgment can be taught - laboriously, in long periods of training - but it cannot be neatly handed over as the occasion demands it. It is the irreplaceable and untransferable contribution that the healer makes to the suffering individual who would be healed. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

It seems to me that the price of eternal vigilance is liberty. ~ Alex Tabarrok

Many Christians suffer from loneliness because they are sitting instead of serving. ~ Croft M. Pentz

To remember non-attachment is to remember what freedom is all about. If we get attached, even to a beautiful state of being, we are caught, and ultimately we will suffer. We work to observe anything that comes our way, experience it while it is here, and be able to let go of it. ~ Sharon Salzberg

I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The light of love shines "in the darkness" (John 1:5), in suffering, in confusion, in all that we will never understand. Love makes darkness itself shine. This opens altogether new possibilities for dealing creatively with the shadow side of reality. Words can only serve as pointers; we must put this to the test in our own dark hours. Those who have done so, those who have suffered lovingly, have discovered the transformative power of love. ~ David Steindl-Rast

Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chroniclednever before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights. ~ Stefan Zweig

Maybe when their minds go, they're not themselves anymore. Maybe the Newt we know is gone and he's not aware of what's happening to him. So really, he's not suffering." Minho almost looked offended by the notion. "Nice try, slinthead, but I don't believe it. I think he'll always be there just enough to be screaming on the inside, deranged and suffering every shuck second of it. Tormented like a dude buried alive. ~ James Dashner

The right to a good death is a basic human freedom. The [2006-JAN] Supreme Court's decision to uphold aid in dying allows us to view and act on death as a dignified moral and godly choice for those suffering with terminal illnesses. ~ John Shelby Spong

There can be no real conflict between the two Books of the Great Author. Both are revelations made by Him to man,-the earlier telling of God-made harmonies coming up from the deep past, and rising to their height when man appeared, the later teaching man's relations to his Maker, and speaking of loftier harmonies in the eternal future. ~ James Dwight Dana

Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

He [Dalai Lama] feels, and I feel, and everyone feels the suffering and frustration of the Tibetans who long for action, who long for a militant response. But, in some ways very few of those individuals have ever been in the position of being head of state. ~ Pico Iyer

The idea of a hell that involves some kind of eternal punishment at the hands of a just and holy God is so profoundly difficult for us to handle emotionally, that the only person who would have enough authority to convince us of the reality of such a place would be Jesus Himself. ~ John Gerstner

Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings; compassion, in the first instance, is good for both; I have known it to bring compunction when nothing else would. ~ Walter Savage Landor

I'm Suze Simon," I said. "And you thought being dead was bad? Buddy, your eternal nightmare's only just begun. ~ Meg Cabot

This is the humbling truth that lies at the heart of Christianity. We love to be our own saviors. Our hearts love to manufacture glory for themselves. So we find messages of self-salvation extremely attractive, whether they are religious (Keep these rules and you earn eternal blessing) or secular (Grab hold of these things and you'll experience blessing now). ~ Timothy Keller

Perhaps your hunger to belong is always active and intense because you belonged so totally before you came here. This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible heritage. You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered. This is also the secret root from which all longing grows. Something in you knows, perhaps remembers, that eternal belonging liberates longing into its surest and most potent creativity. This is why your longing is often wiser than your conventional sense of appropriateness, safety and truth ... Your longing desires to take you towards the absolute realization of all the possibilities that sleep in the clay of your heart; it knows your eternal potential, and it will not rest until it is awakened. ~ John O'Donohue

Human life holds the glorious potential of granting us immortality if we use it to redirect our love from the ephemeral to the eternal. ~ Chaitanya Charan Das

It's necessary to use suffering. Otherwise, one is used by it. ~ Natalie Clifford Barney

Ask the majority of Christians what they consider the greatest evil from which Christ freed humanity and they will say: from Hell, from eternal fire, from punishment in the next world. As a corollary to this they think that salvation is something that someone else can achieve for us. The word hell, which is seldom met in the Holy Scriptures, has done much harm to Christianity as a result of false interpretations. People run away from external hell which they are made to fear most of all. The salvation that man needs most and that which gives him freedom is redemption from the evil within his soul. There is something far worse than external punishment. It is the sin of the soul being in rebellion against God; the soul, endowed with God's strength, yielding itself to the force of bestial instinct; the soul which exists before God, yet fears the threats and fury of men, preferring human glory to its own peaceful awareness of virtue. There is no fate worse than this. And it is this that the unrepentant person carries with him to the grave. And it is this we ought to fear.

To gain salvation, in the highest meaning of the word, means to raise your fallen spirit, cure the sick soul, give it back its freedom of thought, conscience and love. In this lies the salvation for which Christ died. It is for this salvation that we have been given the Holy Spirit, and it is towards this salvation that the Christian teaching should be directed. ~ William Ellery Channing

The reward of suffering is experience.

~ Aeschylus

The self as the essence of individuality is unitemporal and unique; as an archetypal symbol it is a God-image and therefore universal and eternal. ~ Carl Jung

There will never be peace on Earth until we have peace within ourselves. We have to be able to look deeply into the nature of our suffering - to touch, embrace and hold it - before we can touch peace. ~ Arnold Kotler

Accept your symptoms, don't complain of them; immerse yourself in your suffering. ~ Franz Kafka

By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property. ~ Cato The Younger