Afflictive Quotes & Sayings

There's always a prayer, a nighean, even if it's only A Dhia, cuidich mi. Oh, God - help me. — Diana Gabaldon

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present. — Samuel Johnson

32. O my enemy, afflictive passion, Endless and beginningless companion! No other enemy indeed Is able to endure so long! 33. All other foes that I appease and wait upon Will show me favors, give me every aid, But should I serve my dark defiled emotions, They will only harm me, draw me down to grief. — Santideva

The human brain can soften as a result of incessant listening to music with an intent to commit prose. — Donal Henahan

If we see pride among people who have no idea about Dharma, it is understandable. However, if afflictive emotions and haughtiness are present among Dharma practitioners, it is great disgrace to practice — Dalai Lama

Independence was worked for by people more or less at the top; the freedom it brought has worked its way down. People everywhere have ideas now of who they are and what they owe themselves. The process quickened with the economic development that came after independence; what was hidden in 1962, or not easy to see, what perhaps was only in a state of becoming, has become clearer. The liberation of spirit that has come to India could not come as release alone. In India, with its layer below layer of distress and cruelty, it had to come as disturbance. It had to come as rage and revolt. India was now a country of a million little mutinies. — V.S. Naipaul

The very purpose of meditation is to discipline the mind and reduce afflictive emotions. — Dalai Lama

Buddhist practice is aimed primarily at cultivating the antidotes to these afflictive thoughts and emotions, with the goal of eradicating the root of our unenlightened existence to bring about liberation from suffering. — Dalai Lama XIV

And I suppose that what I have learned is a lesson that the years, or self-concern, had begun to hide from me, namely, that the bravest and most loyal and loving people in the world seldom have heroic physical characteristics or the auras of saints. In fact, their faces are like those of people whom you might randomly pull out of a supermarket line, their physical makeup so nondescript and unremarkable that it's hard to remember what they look like ten minutes after they walk out of a room. — James Lee Burke

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease. — Marianne Moore

When God intends a man for eminent usefulness in the ministry, he leads him through deep waters, and causes him to drink freely of the cup of spiritual sorrow, that he may be prepared, by a long course of afflictive experiences, to sympathize with tempted and desponding believers; and may learn how to administer to them that consolation by which his own heart was at last comforted.4 — Dave Harvey

Naming of things as they are, without embellishment, make approachable those afflictive emotions and heavy states that obscure the heart. We know that we can't let go of anything we don't accept, the noting brings us into the presence of that which often distracts us from the present. It allows the healing in. And as we observe the appearance of things, we more easily acknowledge their subsequent disappearance, and some come to an appreciation of impermanence. — Stephen Levine

Afflictive passion and the veil upon cognition - The cure for their obscurity is emptiness. How then shall they not meditate on this Who wish for swift attainment of omniscience? — Santideva

Cultivation of meditative stability alone, will not destroy the discrimination of inherent existence. Afflictive emotions can return, making all sorts of disturbances — Gautama Buddha

I am so much of a mind now to be in the audience, to watch and to experience, and to feel, rather than having to get up and perform, I want my life to be less about performing. — Alec Baldwin

After identifying the scope of suffering, we need to discover its sources, which are twofold: afflictive, or counterproductive, emotions, and contaminated karmas. — Dalai Lama XIV

Afflictive emotions - our jealousy, anger, hatred, fear - can be put to an end. When you realize that these emotions are only temporary, that they always pass on like clouds in the sky, you also realize they can ultimately be abandoned. — Dalai Lama

Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart,
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art. — Samuel Johnson