Home > Topic > the sufferings
1 " Thus we arrive at the singular conclusion that of all the information passed by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life -- it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any. "
― Sigmund Freud , The Future of an Illusion
2 " We are not as Christ-centered and cross-cherishing as we should be, because we do not ponder the truth that everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good, was purchased by the sufferings of Christ. "
― John Piper , The Passion of Jesus Christ
3 " To set their sufferings alongside the sufferings of another people was to compare them (which hell was worse?), demoting Sarajevo's martyrdom to a mere instance. "
― Susan Sontag , Regarding the Pain of Others
4 " Strengthen your heart muscles by removing the sufferings of others. "
― Amit Ray , Walking the Path of Compassion
5 " Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success. "
― Oscar Wilde
6 " Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth. "
7 " Tell me how much you know of the sufferings of your fellow man and I will tell you how much you have loved them. "
8 " ...as we proceed to higher and higher levels of expertise, and as the stakes get higher and higher, the agonies of excellence reappear in new and frightening ways. A tiny minority gets through to the top, to memorable excellence or profound understanding. The rest of us stop at stages along the way, perhaps for a temporary rest, perhaps for a period of reassessment. But once we stop, we are unlikely to start up again. Security is suddenly far sweeter than enterprise. The sufferings of the ascent, so long endured by insuppressible aspiration, suddenly seem pointless. "
― Robert Grudin , The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation
9 " Oh thee! Lets fill my mind with joy of kindness to make joyful me.Let me see the sufferings and agony.Let me feel the sadness and misery.Still be kind to thee. "
― Debasish Mridha
10 " For Japanese people before 1868, Europeans were little more than curious beasts, strange and incomprehensible. Then, after the Meiji Restoration, everything changed. Along with European science and technology, European art flooded into Japan, all forms of it representing themselves as the universal—and most advanced—model. The same was true of novels. The Japanese, with characteristic diligence, began to read masterpieces of European literature, first in the original and then in translation. And such is the power of literature that through the act of reading, little by little the Japanese came to live the lives of Europeans as if they were their own. They began to live the ambitions of Julien Sorel, the happiness of Jane Eyre, the sufferings of young Werther, and the despair of Anna Karenina as if they were their own. They thus began living a new temporality—that which flows in the West, dictated by the Gregorian calendar, marked by major historical events in the West. And by so doing, they eventually joined what the Europeans called " humanity. "
11 " ... although the sufferings of children are the worst, being inextinguishable--children themselves seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world. [p. 13] "
― Shirley Hazzard , The Bay of Noon
12 " Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones!The Brothers KaramazovIvan to Alyosha, on the suffering and torture of children, " Book V - Pro and Contra, Chapter 4 - Rebellion. "
13 " 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 of reality, it must be asserted that just the opposite is true. What we learn about the child and the adult through psychoanalysis shows that all the sufferings of later life are for the most part repetitions of these earlier ones, and that every child in the first years of life goes through and immeasurable degree of suffering. "
― Melanie Klein
14 " Jesus has borne the death penalty on our behalf. Behold the wonder! There He hangs upon the cross! This is the greatest sight you will ever see. Son of God and Son of Man, there He hangs, bearing pains unutterable, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Oh, the glory of that sight! The innocent punished! The Holy One condemned! The Ever-blessed made a curse! The infinitely glorious put to a shameful death! The more I look at the sufferings of the Son of God, the more sure I am that they must meet my case. Why did He suffer, if not to turn aside the penalty from us? If, then, He turned it aside by His death, it is turned aside, and those who believe in Him need not fear it. "
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon , All of Grace
15 " The rich never have a chance of being neighborly to their equals. The best they can do is feel mawkish about the sufferings of their inferiors, which they can never begin to understand, and to be patronizingly kind. "
― Aldous Huxley , Point Counter Point
16 " If we had to and were able to suffer the sufferings of everyone, we could not live. "
― Primo Levi , The Drowned and the Saved
17 " I came to recognise that, apart from her [Françoise's] own kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity inspired in her a pity which increased in direct ratio to the distance separating the sufferers from herself. "
― Marcel Proust , Swann's Way
18 " As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As Wilfred Owen's poem " Insensibility" puts it so well, those who feel most of others suffer most in war. "
19 " Mercy is to care, and care very deeply about one another. It is to care to the point where we are prepared to be involved with the sufferings and adversities of others. It implies that I am prepared to put myself in the other person's place. It means that I shall try to really understand why they behave as they do, even though it injures me. It is a willingness to walk a mile in the other man's moccasins before I criticize his conduct. It is the extension of good will, help, forgiveness, compassion and kindness to one who may not seem to deserve it. "
20 " You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that they turned their backs on the sufferings of others, and left them in pain; those whose greed meant that others starved and died. Such souls belong here, because they would find no peace elsewhere. In this place, they are understood. In this place, their faults have meaning. In this place, they belong. "
― John Connolly
