Quotes & Sayings About Affliction

If we suffer persecution and affliction in a right manner, we attain a larger measure of conformity to Christ, by a due improvement of one of these occasions, than we could have done merely by imitating his mercy, in abundance of good works. — John Wesley

From all the afflictions, Your glory shall spring. And the deeper the sorrow, the louder you'll sing. — Charles Spurgeon

I'll put it this way, there was no C.P. Kennedy, there was no Dwight Dickham, we never went in the courtroom. That was the script I got. The affliction that the judge is suffering from was completely different. — Susan Downey

When you are instructed by affliction, you can become a comforter to the afflicted. — Charles Spurgeon

If there were no affliction in this world we might think we were in paradise. — Simone Weil

And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. — Augustine Of Hippo

The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it. — Simone Weil

Had it pleas'd heaven
To try me with affliction * * *
I should have found in some place of my soul
A drop of patience. — William Shakespeare

mighty smug with their present, howsoever unenviable or contemptible their lives and the attitudes might appear others to be. While nearsightedness is not exactly an affliction (but just the thing a good doctor or spiritual healer might prescribe for leading an uncomplicated and happy life), farsightedness is nothing less than a full-blown syndrome. Forever whining, carping, criticizing, castigating, berating and bemoaning every aspect of national-societal life, the lot of the farsighted is pathetic indeed. And, this, when they have far less reasons to cavil, enjoy as they do generally a far better station in life than their nearsighted — D.P. Singh

Whenever I find myself in the cellar of affliction, I always look about for the wine. — Samuel Rutherford

All providences are doors to trial. Men may be drowned in seas of prosperity as well as in rivers of affliction. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Now that another is suffering pain at thy hand, trust not that thy heart shall be exempt from affliction. — Saadi

Many a life has come forth from the furnace of affliction more beautiful and more useful than before. — Billy Graham

But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's plan in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe. — George Eliot

Human cultures are all experiments in trying to find a form that will fit the matter of our immediacy; but it is absolutely not the case that all such experiments are of equal merit or value. Some cultures - and modernity is patently one - have managed to transmute consciousness into the "disease" that Nietzsche called it, the self-affliction of a self-centeredness that has purged itself of all vestiges of wisdom and value. — Kenny Smith

Christ desires nothing so much as to redeem His heritage from the dominion of Satan. But before we are delivered from Satan's power without, we must be delivered {175} from his power within. The Lord permits trials in order that we may be cleansed from earthliness, from selfishness, from harsh, unchristlike traits of character. He suffers the deep waters of affliction to go over our souls in order that we may know Him and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, in order that we may have deep heart longings to be cleansed from defilement, and may come forth from the trial purer, holier, happier. Often we enter the furnace of trial with our souls darkened with selfishness; but if patient under the crucial test, we shall come forth reflecting the divine character. When His purpose in the affliction is accomplished, "He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday." Ps. 37:6. — Ellen G. White

Even in the greatest afflictions, we ought to testify to God, that, in receiving them from his hand, we feel pleasure in the midst of the pain, from being afflicted by Him who loves us, and whom we love. — John Wesley

Affliction is a bruising of a blessing; but it is a blessing from the hand of God. — Kara Tippetts

In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams. — Toni Morrison

I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks. — Seamus Heaney

I am afraid that all the grace that I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable ... Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister's library. — Charles Spurgeon

Handsome as sin and more dangerous than the devil himself, Braden MacAllister had but one affliction in life. He adored all women. — Kinley MacGregor

We need not get distracted by the seeming defeat or troubles of our daily lives ("what is seen"), because this affliction is actually being used by God to transform our character (2 Corinthians 3:18) so we can become the kind of citizens who will flourish in his future kingdom ("what is not seen"). — J.P. Moreland

Tears that are shed in time of affliction are rarely tears of penitence, but more likely they are shed out of self pity and pain or sorrow. — John Calvin

Men are accustomed to making objective assessments of devastating situations, as long as they are not immersed in them. Rare is he who maintains objectivity in the midst of personal affliction. — Michael D. O'Brien

Afflictions are the steps to heaven. — Elizabeth Ann Seton

Redemption from sin is greater then redemption from affliction. — Daniel Defoe

If Miss Beresford had not been in such a hurry to marry a poor country clergyman, there was no knowing what she might not have become. But Dixon was too loyal to desert her in her affliction and downfall (alias her married life). — Elizabeth Gaskell

As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune ... Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy ... Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad. — Victor Hugo

Politeness can at once be the indifferent affliction of the 'civilized' as well as a subterfuge for the designed offence. — Vinod Pande

There is nothing in afflictions which ought to disturb our joy. — John Calvin

Calamity is man's true touchstone. — John William Fletcher

There will be no Christian but what will have a Gethsemane, but every praying Christian will find that there is no Gethsemane without its angel! — Thomas Binney

Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form. — Bodhidharma

Labour to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, lest God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror. — John Owen

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey. — Arthur Schopenhauer

All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, inclucing affliction-all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved. — Simone Weil

This is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all those who are hungry come and eat with us. Let all those who are in need come and share our meal. This year we are here. Next year may we all be in the land of Israel. — Elie Wiesel

Och, away now, Ruari. You'll be telling us you're not knowing who that woman is next! Man, man, that's an awful affliction." A grey-bristled, weather-beaten face beamed back at him.

"And isn't it you that's making the drives in her car at the dead of night, too?" A female voice joined in from behind the sweets jars: "Oh my, Ruari ... 'tis a terrible thing the guilt of the carnal pleasures!"

"I haven't had any carnal pleasures ... I simply got a lift home. You're terrible, right enough," he defended himself. — Robertson Tait

For if I wimp my wing on thine. Affliction shall advance the flight in me. — George Herbert

Dyslexia is the affliction of a frozen genius. — Stephen Richards

Patience cannot remove, but it can always dignify and alleviate, misfortune. — Laurence Sterne

Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times. — Marisha Pessl

God often lays the sum of His amazing providences in very dismal afflictions; as the limner first puts on the dusky colors, on which he intends to draw the portraiture of some illustrious beauty. — Stephen Charnock

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines. — Samuel Rutherford

Over time, the persona I assumed in her presence came to supplant my true self. It must have been then I first came to realize that for most people life was not a joy to be embraced with a full heart but a miserable charade to be endured with a false smile, a narrow path of lies, punishment, and repression. — Orhan Pamuk

Affiiction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent than light in the utter darkness of a cell. A kind of horror submerges the whole soul. During this absence there is nothing to love. What is terrible is that if, in this darkness where there is nothing to love, the soul ceases to love, God's absence becomes final. — Simone Weil

She was a glass snake. She wasn't poisonous but she sowed affliction just by going among men-mysteriously, like a miracle" (385) — Jorge Amado

It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit, when they do not think well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men. — Thomas A Kempis

New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. — Sol LeWitt

How you deal with money reflects how you deal with power. Is it an affliction or a blessing? A game or a burden? — Anthony Robbins

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among. — Alain De Botton

In typology, this means that after all of the experiences of affliction, the church life will be expanded and become spacious. Then we shall have a richer seed and a wider, broader church life. The seed within us will be richer, and the land without us will be broader. — Witness Lee

I had read it some time ago but was so completely immersed that I retained nothing. This has been an intermittent, lifelong enigma. Through early adolescence I sat and read for hours in a small grove of weed trees near the railroad track in Germantown. Like Gumby I would enter a book wholeheartedly and sometimes venture so deeply it was as if I were living within it. I finished many books in such a manner there, closing the covers ecstatically yet having no memory of the content by the time I returned home. This disturbed me but I kept this strange affliction to myself. I look at the covers of such books and their contents remain a mystery that I cannot bring myself to solve. Certain books I loved and lived within yet cannot remember. — Patti Smith

I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days. And when God has seemed most cruel to me he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father's wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. Fear not the storm. It brings healing in its wings and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We must look deeply into the nature of our volition to see whether it is pushing us in the direction of liberation from suffering and toward peace and compassion, or in the direction of affliction and misery. What is it that we really want deep in our heart? Is it money, fame, power? Or is it finding inner peace, being able to live life fully and enjoy the present moment? — Nhat Hanh

Illnesses which occur because of physical causes should be treated by doctors with medical remedies; those which are due to spiritual causes disappear through spiritual means. Thus an illness caused by affliction, fear, nervous impressions, will be healed more effectively by spiritual rather than physical treatment. Hence, both kinds of treatment should be followed; they are not contradictory. — Abdu'l- Baha

The mess we are making of our planet is caused by our own greed, hatred, and delusion. Aside from the existential afflictions of aging, death, and at least some of the illnesses, every instance we see of human misery, injustice, affliction. or sufficient and pain will, upon sufficient and sometimes even cursory investigation, be shown to be rooted in the attachment, aversion, or ignorance of some person or some group of people together. — Andrew Olendzki

Don't waste your life on experiments. There are proven paths. They are marked out in the Word of God. They are understandable. They are precious. They are hard. And they are joyful. Search the Scriptures for these paths. When you find them, step on them with humble faith and courage. Set your face like flint toward the cross and the empty tomb
your cross and your empty tomb. Then, for the joy set before you, may a lifetime of sacrifices in the paths of love seem to you as a light and momentary affliction. — John Piper

Nothing unites people as sharing the same affliction. — Jack Hyles

An increased power of reflection like an increased knowledge only adds to man's affliction, and above all it is certain that for the individual as for the generation no task is more difficult than to escape from the temptations of reflection, simply because they are so dialectical and the result of one clever discovery may give the whole question a new turn, because at any moment reflection is capable of explaining everything quite differently and allowing one some way of escape; because at the last moment of a reflective decision reflection is capable of changing everything
after one has made far greater exertions than are necessary to get a man of character into the midst of things. — Soren Kierkegaard

There is mercy in every place. And mercy, encouraging thought gives even affliction a grace and reconciles man to his lot. — William Cowper

Worldly ease is a great foe to faith; it loosens the joints of holy valour, and snaps the sinews of sacred courage. The balloon never rises until the cords are cut; affliction doth this sharp service for believing souls. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I'm cursed with this puritanical streak that makes me want everything to be about something. It's a terrible affliction. — Kenneth Oppel

A smile is the only infectious affliction everyone is encouraged to spread. — Omar Kiam

The inability to set aside something that you know but that someone else does not know is such a pervasive affliction of the human mind that psychologists keep discovering related versions of it and giving it new names. — Steven Pinker

I am my own reflection
But when I look at me
I can see your affliction — Munia Khan

Nearly everything great owes its existence to "despites": despite misery and affliction, poverty, desolation, physical debility, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstacles. — Thomas Mann

The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer. — Ovid

My dear child,' said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of Oliver's sudden appeal, 'you need not be afraid of my deserting you, unless you give me cause.'
I never, never will, sir,' interposed Oliver.
I hope not,' rejoined the old gentleman; 'I do not think you ever will. I have been deceived before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless, and more strongly interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature. — Charles Dickens

In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction. — Richard Cecil

Ignorance is the world's most curable affliction. — Jeri Smith-Ready

The agony of being unable to answer the question of why are we the way we are, divisively instead of cooperatively behaved, has been the particular burden of life. It has been our species' particular affliction or condition - our human condition. — Jeremy Griffith

The potential for loss of soul
to one degree or another
is the affliction of a society that as a collective has lost its sense of the holy, of a culture that values everything else above the spiritual. We live in such a spiritually impoverished culture
and in such a time. Loss of soul, to one degree or another, is a constant teasing possibility. We are invited at every corner to hedge on the truth, indulge outselves, act as if our words and actions have no ultimate consequence, make an absolute of the material world, and treat the spiritual world as if it were some kind of frothy, angelic fantasy. In such a world the soul struggles for survival; in such a world a man can lose his own soul and have the whole culture support him, and in such a world, conversely, the light of a single, great soul that lives in integrity can truly illumine the world. — Daphne Rose Kingma

Solitude is happiness for one who is content, who has heard the Dhamma and clearly sees. Non-affliction is happiness in the world - harmlessness towards all living beings. — Gautama Buddha

The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways: we are afraid; we feel vulnerable and in danger; our very physical sustance and sanity appear to be menaced; we want to prevent or rectify. Especially this last seizes us. We feel protective, impelled to correct, straighten, repair. For we have confused something sick with something wrong. [ ... ]
affliction reaches us partly through the guilt it brings. Guilt belongs to the experiences of deviation, the the sense of being off, failing, 'missing the mark'. [ ... ]
However the true missing of the mark is taking the guilt literally, where failings becomes faults to be set right. This places the guilt on the shoulders of the ego who 'should not' have failed. Then pathologizing reinforces the ego's style and guilt serves a secondary gain, increasing the ego's sense of importance: ego becomes superego, drivenly busy with repairing wrongs. A guilty ego is no less egocentric than a proud one. — James Hillman

The people come to Jesus, not because they recognized his dignity and function but because it is rumored that a miracle worker has come in their midst. Jesus had come to preach repentance and the nearness of the kingdom but the people think only of relief from pain and affliction. — William L. Lane

We also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope." Romans 5:3-4. Suffering develops in us, qualities of Christian character, which cannot be developed in any other way. — Christian Love

If the sun of God's countenance shine upon me, I may well be content to be wet with the rain of affliction. — Joseph Hall

Knowing the truth concerning the deep workings of the evil spirit helps the individual not only to overcome sins but to eliminate unnecessary afflictions as well. — Watchman Nee

The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God. — Simone Weil

Psalms 25:18 Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins. — Anonymous

Nowhere has God promised anyone, even His children, immunity from sorrow, suffering, and pain. This world is a "vale of tears," and disappointment and heartache are as inevitable as clouds and shadows. Suffering is often the crucible in which our faith is tested. Those who successfully come through the "furnace of affliction" are the ones who emerge "like gold tried in the fire. — Billy Graham

I'm an insomniac - the affliction of champions. — Emma Chase

Colonel Brandon was now as happy, as all those who best loved him, believed he deserved to be; - in Marianne he was consoled for every past affliction; - her regard and her society restored his mind to animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend. Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby. — Jane Austen

Let us educate the younger generation to be shy in and out of season: to edge behind the furniture: to say spasmodic and ill-digested things: to twist their feet round the protective feet of sofas and armchairs: to feel that their hands belong to someone else
that they are objects, which they long to put down on some table away from themselves.
For shyness is the protective fluid within which our personalities are able to develop into natural shapes. Without this fluid the character becomes merely standardized or imitative: it is within the tender velvet sheath of shyness that the full flower of idiosyncrasy is nurtured: it is from this sheath alone that it can eventually unfold itself, coloured and undamaged. Let the shy understand, therefore, that their disability is not only an inconvenience, but also a privilege. Let them regard their shyness as a gift rather than as an affliction. Let them consider how intolerable are those of their contemporaries who are not also shy. — Harold Nicolson

Simone Weil was absolutely right- beauty and affliction are the only two things that can pierce our hearts. Because this is so true, we must have a measure of beauty in our lives proportionate to our affliction. No more. Much more. Is this not God's prescription for us? Just take a look around. — John Eldredge

Affliction may be for our edification and Christian development. — Billy Graham

Giving comfort under affliction requires that penetration into the human mind, joined to that experience which knows how to soothe, how to reason, and how to ridicule; taking the utmost care never to apply those arts improperly. — Henry Fielding

Affliction hardens those whom it does not soften. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Affliction by that falsehood is the act of dying. To be free from that delusion is to attain Immortality. — Sathya Sai Baba

A wise Providence consoles our present afflictions by joys borrowed from the future. — Hosea Ballou

Look back, believer: think of your doubting God when he has been so faithful to you
think of your foolish outcry of "Not so, my Father," when he crossed his hands in affliction to give you the larger blessing; think of the many times when you have read his providences in the dark, misinterpreted his dispensations, and groaned out, "All these things are against me," when they are all working together for your good! Think how often you have chosen sin because of its pleasure, when indeed, that pleasure was a root of bitterness to you! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me.

"Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!"

"You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him. — Nicholas Kaufmann

There is a particularly unattractive and discouragingly common affliction called tunnel vision, which for all the misery it causes, ought to top the job list at the World Health Organization. Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest. Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good dea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comps out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended. — Tom Robbins

In the central cases of physical pain, then, it appears that at least part of what is bad about our condition is the way it makes us feel. Here there seem to be no problems with a purely mental state account, no counterpart to the experience machine that could bring us to think that we are being deceived by mere appearances. [ ... ] If I am suffering physical pain then I can be quite wrong about the organic cause of my affliction, or even about whether it has one, without that error diminishing in the slightest either the reality of my pain or its impact on the quality of my life. — L. W. Sumner

No one could be more happy than a man who has never known affliction. — Fay Weldon

Diminish the mass of evils that afflict the human species, increase enjoyment and well-being. And even if the new routes opened up could prolong the average life of mankind by only a few hours, or even a few days, then the scientist, too could aspire. — Antoine Lavoisier

Remember, one just man causes the Devil greater affliction than a million blind believers. — Khalil Gibran