Suffering Pain Quotes

There is a distinction I am beginning to make in my living between pain and suffering. Pain is an event, an experience that must be recognized, named and then used in some way in order for the experience to change, to be transformed into something else, strength or knowledge or action.

Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain. When I live through pain without recognizing it self-consciously, I rob myself of the power that can come from using that pain, the power to fuel some movement beyond it. I condemn myself to reliving that pain over and over and over whenever something close triggers it. And that is suffering, a seemingly inescapable cycle. ~ Audre Lorde

Our heavenly Father understands our disappointment, suffering, pain, fear, and doubt. He is always there to encourage our hearts and help us understand that He's sufficient for all of our needs. When I accepted this as an absolute truth in my life, I found that my worrying stopped. ~ Charles Stanley

The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer. ~ Thomas Merton

O Seeker, pain and suffering make one aware of God. ~ Rumi

His heart ached in such a familiar way, and the very familiarity of it pained him. ~ Iris Murdoch

You feel your strength in the experience of pain. ~ Jim Morrison

Whatever pain and suffering you've experienced in your life has been a blessing at least in this one regard: you now know some true things that you couldn't have learned any other way. ~ Eric Maisel

When pain and suffering come upon us, we finally see not only that we are not in control of our lives but that we never were. ~ Timothy Keller

We are not naturally intelligent, or happy. In fact, every day it is harder to remain intelligent. It seems often that people get intelligent through pain, but you can't be sure because nobody really can say, "I've been suffering." ~ Francesco Clemente

As we rely on God, and trust his Spirit to mold us in his image, true hope takes shape within us, "a hope that does not disappoint."We can literally become better persons because of suffering. Pain, however meaningless it may seem at the time, can be transformed. Where is God when it hurts? He is in us - not in the things that hurt - helping to transform bad into good.We can safely say that God can bring good out of evil; we cannot say that God brings about the evil in hopes of producing good. ~ Philip Yancey

Death is a stage. A transience. A passage to a later life. If Kanya meditates on this idea long enough, she imagines that she will be able to assimilate it, but the truth is that Jaidee is dead and they will never meet again and whatever Jaidee earned for his next life, whatever incense and prayers Kanya offers, Jaidee will never be Jaidee, his wife will never be returned, and his two fighting sons can only see that loss and suffering are everywhere.
Suffering. Pain is the only truth. But it is better for young ones to laugh a while and feel the softness, and if this desire to coddle a child ties a parent to the wheel of existence so be it. A child should be indulged. This is what Kanya thinks as she rides her bicycle across the city toward the Ministry and the housing that Jaidee's descendants have been placed in: a child should be indulged. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

We are misery-making machines! Homo sapiens has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is humankind's collective GDP. ~ Henry Rollins

The whole point of Heaven is to relieve us of the suffering, pain, death and tears brought into the world by the evil of humanity. That is why God says that in Heaven there will be no more sorrow, pain, death or crying. ~ David Berg

When faced with emotional pain, I become still for hours, sometimes days, doing absolutely nothing. It helps me get to the truest source of my suffering. ~ Romany Malco

The avoidance of that which causes you pain does not produce enlightenment. It produces avoidance. Religion is the avoidance of pain and suffering. ~ Frederick Lenz

Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live. ~ M. Scott Peck

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God. ~ Thomas Merton

Mme de Franval, indulgent and sweet-natured as ever, and always happy when anything brought her closer to a man who was dearer to her than her own life, went along with all the desires of that treacherous husband, anticipated them, served them, and shared them without exception, not daring to make the most of the moment, as she should have done, to persuade that barbarian to treat her better, and not plunge his unhappy wife every day into an abyss of pain and suffering. ~ Marquis De Sade

A tremendous amount of needless pain and suffering can be eliminated by ensuring that health insurance is universally available. ~ Daniel Akaka

Becoming less focused on the past and future and not resisting the moment is how to overcome fear, physical pain, and all suffering. ~ Lee L Jampolsky

And yet she hadn't the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance. ~ Nella Larsen

Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game-interest, contest, activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

The Gospel frees us to speak honestly about the reality of pain, confident that nothing is riding on our ability to cope with or fend off suffering. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

The Bible doesn't sugarcoat pain and suffering; it gives you something to move past it. ~ Jud Wilhite

When we behold the face of God, all memories of pain and suffering will vanish. Our souls shall be totally healed. ~ R.C. Sproul

All of the pleasures of this present physical life can be continued into the next life as well, since we will have a body which is similar to our present physical body, but so much more glorious and wonderful and supernatural. We will be able to eat, drink, be merry and have fun without ever suffering pain or sickness or weariness or death. ~ David Berg

I always call that the year it rained in my life. That was one of Maud's euphemisms. There were rainy years, fertile years and sunshine years. The rainy ones were when your life cycles brought losses of some sorts. Fertile years were years of learning and growing and reaching out. Sunshine years were few and far between, but when they came, she told me to soak myself with their happy radiance. They were reward years to her, and they made up for all the suffering, pain and growth we'd persevered through. ~ Lindsay McKenna

Those who worship and adore the Lord through the Guru's Word forget all their pain and suffering. ~ Guru Gobind Singh

It is attachment to desire, not desire itself, that is the underlying cause of practically all of our pain and suffering. ~ Rod Stryker

Doctors have been exposed-you always will be exposed-to the attacks of those persons who consider their own undisciplined emotions more important than the world's most bitter agonies-the people who would limit and cripple and hamper research because they fear research may be accompanied by a little pain and suffering. ~ Rudyard Kipling

I can manage my own pain. I can drink. I can go to the doctor and get a prescription. I can exercise. I can write a story about it. I've done it a million times! But I don't want to see the people I love tortured and suffering. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The pain that we feel when we are making love with someone is that we know it will end. It's that paradoxical response of joy and suffering. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Pointless, needless suffering pain? I don't suppose it would help if I told you that is the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and the mortal passes away ~ Cassandra Clare

Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life. ~ Angelina Jolie

Please choose the way of peace.. In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause. ~ Mother Teresa

Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting. It is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself; who exists save Him? The individual suffers because he perceives duality. It is duality which causes all sorrow and grief. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. ~ Anandamayi Ma

When you suffer and lose, that does not mean you are being disobedient to God. In fact, it might mean you're right in the center of His will. The path of obedience is often marked by times of suffering and loss. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Birthed in a riotous sea of heat and violence, this world was never good, never peaceful, never without suffering, pain and anxiety. There was never an armistice between all living and not-so living things, nor can evidence be found to suggest there ever was - or still is - a loosely balanced war tumbling across Creation with the advantage swinging between the forces of light and happiness, and those of darkness and misery. Fire has always burned flesh, water has always drowned babies, and Creation has only ever exhibited but one impulse, one motive, one direction: towards increasing complexity, where complexity - across all systems, animate and inanimate - corresponds precisely to the degree and depth of potential suffering available to those contingent things whose participation in Creation was never solicited. ~ John Zande

At last she sighed.
But the most wretched thing - is it not? - is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice. ~ Gustave Flaubert

I don't believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you man. Cant you see? The clamor and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear. And I loathe these discussions. The argument of the village atheist whose single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place. Your fellowship is a fellowship of pain and nothing more. And if that pain were actually collective instead of simply reiterative then the sheer weight of it would drag the world from the walls of the universe and send it crashing and burning through whatever night it might yet be capable of engendering until it was not even ash. And justice? Brotherhood? Eternal life? Good god, man. Show me a religion that prepares one for death. For nothingness. There's a church I might enter. Yours prepares one only for more life. For dreams and illusions and lies. If you could banish the fear of death from men's hearts they wouldnt live a day. Who would want this nightmare if not for fear of the next? The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and everything that you have chosen to care for. There's the true brotherhood. The true fellowship. And everyone is a member for life. You tell me that my brother is my salvation? My salvation? Well then damn ~ Cormac McCarthy

Fear and pain and suffering is not OK for any being to feel intentionally at the hands of us. ~ Leona Lewis

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your 'thorn' uncomplainingly - that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak - is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace. ~ J.I. Packer

I hate people who splash their own pain on covers, like the whole world should hear about them. Why are we all supposed to be interested in one individual's suffering? ~ Andrea Corr

I knew you'd kiss me."
"How?" I say. Because I didn't know myself.
"Because I am in pain," He say's. "That's the only way I get your attention. ~ Suzanne Collins

Do you want a sign that you're asleep? Here it is: you're suffering. Suffering is a sign that you're out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there's falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering. ~ Anthony De Mello

In the U.S. for instance, the value of a homemaker's productive work has been imputed mostly when she was maimed or killed and insurance companies and/or the courts had to calculate the amount to pay her family in damages. Even at that, the rates were mostly pink collar and the big number was attributed to the husband's pain and suffering. ~ Gloria Steinem

You don't want to diminish anybody's pain and suffering. ~ James Callis

Without a word or hesitation, Pain took the mop from Nick. Suffering moved to pick up glass.
"Wow. Where have you two been all my life?"
Pain quirked and eyebrow as he mopped the floor.
"Walking hand in hand with you. Haven't you noticed? ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

If you are experiencing confusion, pain, and suffering, it may be that God is working things out for you in his own way. It is most often the sovereign work of our God unfolding a master plan known only to him. ~ David Wilkerson

Suffering pain is what made you a woman. Most of the milestones in a woman's life were accompanied by pain, like her first time having sex or birthing a child. For men, it was all orgasms and champagne. ~ Brit Bennett

Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why? ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

When we do not reject our suffering, or add anything to it, pain is simply pain. It is what we add to our pain that turns it into suffering. ~ Brenda Shoshanna

For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Every step. Every curve into darkness. Every moment of despair and rage and pain. It had led him to precisely where he needed to be. Where he wanted to be. ~ Sarah J. Maas

In an old family album
Ever again you return, Melancholy,
O meekness of the solitary soul.
A golden day glows and expires.
Humbly the patient man surrenders to pain
Ringing with melodious sound and soft madness.
Look! There's the twilight.
Night returns once more and a mortal thing laments
And another suffers in sympathy.
Shuddering under autumn stars
Yearly the head is bowed deeper.
-Georg Trakl (1887-1914) ~ Georg Trakl

Human suffering is articulated in language; communication is how we seek help, consolation, etc. ~ Rigoberto Gonzalez

I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It's true that fretting never did any good. ~ Claude Monet

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism. ~ Walter Kaufmann

I thought about the terrible uselessness of suffering. Love leaves behind its creation-the next generation coming into the world; the continuation of humanity. But suffering? Such a great part of human experience, the most difficult and painful, passes leaving no trace. If one were to collect the energy of suffering emitted by the millions of people here [Magadan, Russia] and transform it into the power of creation, one could turn our planet into a flowering garden. But what would remain?
Rusty carcasses of ships, rotting watchtowers, deep holes which some kind of ore was once extracted. A dismal, lifeless emptiness. Not a soul anywhere, for the exhausted columns have already passed and vanished in the cold eternal fog. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

Life justified itself. It might be cruel, treacherous, ironic, but it was life, and pain was as much a part of it as joy. ~ Sheila Kaye-Smith

The only thing that really teaches one what life's about the joy of understanding, the joy of coming in contact with what life really signifies - is suffering, affliction. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

The first step in understanding a people is to know the extent of their mortality, the things from which they suffer and die. ~ Gertrude Diamant

Why they were loaded with bags of beans and peas and anything else they happened to pick up when they were still some distance away from the street where the first blind man and his wife lived, for that is where they are going, is a question that could only occur to someone who has never in his life suffered shortages. ~ Jose Saramago

To survive and be happy, Russians have so much to bury, to willfully ignore. Small wonder that the intensity of their pleasures and indulgences is so sharp; it has to match the quality of their suffering. ~ Owen Matthews

It seemed to suggest various kinds: hardships, anxieties, and the suffering born of the indifference that comes from having already suffered a lot. ~ Fernando Pessoa

What good is faith if it causes pain for another? What good is religion if it does no good? What good is any belief that leads to hate? ~ Jared Brock

The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sweet is pleasure after pain. ~ John Dryden

This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and memoirs I read
that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will; and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pass to the real life above. ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Trying to control the emotional self willfully by manipulative attempts is like trying to choose a number on a thrown die or to push back the water of the Kamo River upstream. Certainly, they end up aggravating their agony and feeling unbearable pain because of their failure in manipulating the emotions. ~ Shoma Morita

At the root of all misery is unfulfilled desire. ~ Scott Hahn

I'd like to focus on my life on creating new medicines for people who are suffering from rare disease. ~ Martin Shkreli

Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret? ~ Agnes Repplier

Of all tyrannies a country can suffer, the worst is the tyranny of the majority. ~ William Inge

Every life is punctuated by deaths and departures, and each one causes great suffering that it is better to endure rather than forgo the pleasure of having known the person who has passed away. Somehow our world rebuilds itself after every death, and in any case we know that none of us will last forever. So you might say that life and death lead us by the hand, firmly but tenderly. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you.
Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you.
Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you.
Consumed by fire of my love for you.
I remember what you said to me,
I am thinking of your love for me.
I am torn by your love for me.
Pain and more pain.
Where are you going with my love?
I'm told you will go from here.
I'm told you will leave me here.
My body is numb with grief.
Remember what I said My Love
Goodbye My Love, goodbye. ~ Kwakiutl Indian

Your personality is so convinced that the habit thoughts running along with your body are you that it comes up with any number of reasons why replacing those thoughts is impossible. Even if those reasons can be addressed rationally, there is still an emotional component that is often reticent to admit that it is already talking to itself all the time. Repeating the same thoughts over and over, reacting to events in the same habitual way day in and day out, entertaining the same memories, most of which are based on pain and loss – the personality keeps the moment-to-moment awareness overwhelmed with the sense of a personal history in order to maintain the continuity of its artificial identity. ~ William Douglas Horden

Every piece of clutter you dissolve back into clear light allows your higher inner blueprint, your soul's destiny, to translate fluidly and accurately into the form of your life. The clearer you become, the easier it is to evolve along with the planet - with no snags, stuckness, or suffering. This is the act of becoming transparent. ~ Penney Peirce

What I think I've been able to do well over the years is play with pain, play with problems, play in all sorts of conditions. ~ Roger Federer

The sharp, superficial pain at being spoken to unkindly had obscured the deeper pain, which had not yet turned into something hard and heavy. ~ Olivia Sudjic

Heaven ... a place where there is neither sufferings, sadness nor separation ... Now we climb the stairways to heaven one step by one step and when we ascend, we will live. ~ Suh Jung

Literature ... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form. ~ Thomas Mann

The feminists are trying to tell women that there is really no difference between them and men. Just as men can be promiscuous, women can, too, and go for one night stands without consequences. But there are consequences. The women have the suffering of the abortion. They suffer more with the social diseases. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, and sand eddies in a whirlwind. ~ Dante Alighieri

One day, I promise this pain will fade." "No, it won't." "Right now it's still too fresh. It might seem as if this grief will never let go of the hold it has on your heart. ~ Morgan Rhodes

She had a job to do. She did not have time to feel pain; not often. ~ Ayn Rand

You haven't lost Iraki, you know. I don't know if it helps to say that. I lost a friend once myself, and I know how it goes.
'He'll find his way inside you, and you'll carry him onward. Behind your heartbeat, you'll hear another one, faint and out of step. People will say you are speaking his opinions, or your hair has turned like his.
'There are no more facts about him, that part is over. Now is the time for essential things. You'll see visions of him wherever you go. You'll see his eyes so moist, his intentions so blinding, you'll think he is more alive than you. You will look around and wonder if it was you who died.
'Gradually you'll grow older than him, and love him as your son.
'In the future, you'll live astride the line separating life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them. You'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgement falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.' ~ Rana Dasgupta

I once had a complete life - in love, in envy, in pains. Now, I was living a death. A peaceful, gorgeous, liberating death. ~ Prashant Chopra

If you want to help people, if you care, go to the cities. The city is where the pain is the greatest - and the cities are a hell of a lot of fun if you like art, movies and plays. ~ Frederick Lenz

As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away. ~ Mohsin Hamid

Sometimes I think I enjoy pain, physically and mentally. Sick right? ~ B.B. Reid

If the students see that rules are for everyone ... for professors too, not just for poor helpless students who get nothing but suffering out of the system ... why, the positive effects on school discipline should be tremendous. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Curious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exception ... and if we could recognize this from the beginning, what a saving in pain and grief and misery. ~ Rohinton Mistry

"Don't worry too much about how spiritually poor you are_God sees that,but for you it is expected to trust in God and pray to Him as best you can,never to fall into despair and to struggle according to your strength.If you ever begin to think you are spiritually_"well off"_then you can know for sure that you aren't!True spiritual life,even on the most elementary level,is always accompanied by suffering and difficulties.Therefore you should rejoice in all your difficulties and sorrows." ~ Seraphim Rose

The world is full of terrible suffering, compared to which the small inconveniences of my childhood are as a drop of rain in the sea. ~ Richard Rhodes

Young men and fools sometimes bear pain they do not have to as a badge of their pride. Or their foolishness. ~ Robert Jordan

In My Shoes They do not understand my pain, They say I should be strong, They say that it's not right, To grieve for far too long, They say I need to get back up, They say in time I'll heal, But they are not the ones, Who feel the way I feel, Some days I want to lie in bed, And stay there all day long, What's the point of getting up? What's the point? You've gone? They say things will get better, That time will heal my blues, Maybe they would understand, If they walked in my shoes. ~ John Connor

Pain comes to all of us some time or another. Its how we learn to cope with it that determine our future. ~ Abbi Glines