your suffering QUOTES

1 " The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners... "

― Natalie Goldberg , Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir

2 " When we suffer we inspire ourselves to change. Imagine we had no pain to overcome, we would not take action to make our life any more meaningful. Turn your suffering into motivation to change. "

3 " Before label yourself and before you decide that there is something irreparably wrong with your thoughts or emotions, ask yourself: “Do I have a caring, unconditionally loving best friend in myself?” If the answer is “No,” then you will not find the solution to your suffering until you address this serious, life-threatening absence of self-compassion. Self-love is not a dinner mint. Self-love matters. Self-love saves lives. "

― Vironika Tugaleva

4 " There is no greater suffering than constantly measuring yourself and coming up short, except perhaps the realization that your suffering is hurting others. But where do we learn these things? Because, really, they are learned. We don't come crying out of the womb because of our birth weight or because we have no money in this brand new world. We learn to measure and we learn to attach our self-worth to those measurements.

These patterns we're stuck in aren't just painful for us, they're also distracting us. Every day, the gap between rich and poor grows while the people of developed societies do nothing, because we are too busy worrying about looking good. We're distracted, but not because we've chosen to be. Being distracted by our illusory inadequacy keeps us from changing the world. And believe me, we all have the power to change the world. If we only make the time. If we only free some head space.

If you can't learn to love yourself for yourself (and how could you with such a paradoxical motivation?)... then do it for us. Do it for the world. We need you. We need your mind. We need your attention. We need your thoughts.

Change your focus, and you will (not can, but will) change the world. You already matter. You just have to realize it for yourself. "

― Vironika Tugaleva

5 " Pain fuels artistry and creativity. Harness your suffering and become a master of your art. "

― Michelle C. Hillstrom

6 " If pain doesn't lead to humility, you have wasted your suffering. "

― Katerina Stoykova Klemer

7 " And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.'

And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.'

And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right. "

― Peter Weiss , The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

8 " Every dimension of your suffering will instruct you, until you have learned your essential lessons. "

― Bryant McGill , Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

9 " Your life will always be the perfect classroom journey for you and every experience that shows up in your journey is here to serve you. There is meaning and purpose behind everything that happens. There are no accidents which means your suffering through difficulties is never for nothing. Your life matters and everything you experience matters. Your trials are there to help you become a better person and trusting this is truth will take some of the sting out of them. Suffering becomes more bearable if it at least counts for something. "

― Kimberly Giles , Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness

10 " With battle-weary arms, Sheridan slugged his way across the luminous waves sending light-filled droplets splashing into the air like Fourth of July sparklers.Stumbling onto the lake’s rocky banks, he clawed desperately at the animal skin suit, yanking at the fastenings and peeling back the suffocating shroud in a fitful temper tantrum. He collapsed onto the glitter washed shore, his chest heaving, his forehead pulsing with pumped up veins.“That was a nightmare!” Sheridan rasped between gulps of air. “Like some sort of freaked-out acid trip!”“All suffering comes bearing a gift. Every pain is a portal. You must look at the hand of your suffering to see the gift it offers and peer into your pain to see where it may lead.” Kunchen said calmly. "

11 " Attitude Is Everything

We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations.

The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances?

When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability. "

― Sandra Lee Dennis

12 " But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. It belittles the prestige of hell, and converts the slaughterhouses of time into idyls. What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist? Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle. . . "

― Emil M. Cioran , A Short History of Decay

13 " To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence. "

― Andrei Lankov

14 " You used to believe that with age you would become less unhappy, because you then would have reasons to be sad. When you were still young, your suffering was inconsolable because you believed it to be unfounded.

Your suicide was scandalously beautiful…

You died because you searched for happiness at the risk of finding the void. We shall have to wait for death before we can know what it is that you found. Or before leaving off knowing anything at all, if it is to be silence and emptiness that awaits us. "

― Édouard Levé , Suicide

15 " You used to believe that with age you would become less unhappy, because you then would have reasons to be sad. When you were still young, your suffering was inconsolable because you believed it to be unfounded. Your suicide was scandalously beautiful…You died because you searched for happiness at the risk of finding the void. We shall have to wait for death before we can know what it is that you found. Or before leaving off knowing anything at all, if it is to be silence and emptiness that awaits us. "

16 " It takes great courage when you are suffering to see beyond your suffering to the clear relations between things, to the laws that cause and govern your suffering; it takes great courage to be ruthless with one's griefs. "

17 " Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That's very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none. "

― Stokely Carmichael

18 " According to the rules of comedy, your suffering will be funny after an undetermined length of time. Maybe not while you're having your gangrenous leg sawed off, watching your home burn down or learning how to be intimate with your cellmate, but, in the big scheme of things, soon. "

19 " Hope is in the name of God, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is when you compare your suffering to the infinite, immeasurable love and grace of God. "