Gods Suffering Quotes & Sayings

The power of faith to ease our suffering is God's love. — James Cook

The woman laughed, shoulders bouncing. I think the gods eat suffering. That's why they've put it everywhere you look: so anywhere they go, they'll always be fed. — Edward W. Robertson

Isn't it only through laughter that we become one with the gods and thus can endure life and can overcome all the horror and waste and suffering here on earth? ... Isn't it only through laughter we can stay human? — James Clavell

Listen: I'm not going to tell you what to do. We cannot make decisions for you. We came to help, but we do not want to interfere. We gave you a gift, yours to do with as you will. But you've heard all that before. We're happy to talk. To answer questions about why we don't stop war and suffering, cure cancer, end poverty, point the way to heaven or point out that there is no heaven. Ask us anything. We don't mind. We try our best to be candid, but there is an inevitable degree of mutual incomprehension. Because your qualia aren't our qualia. Because we're running models of who you think you are and what you think you know, but they're just models. Because the map isn't the territory. Because we aren't gods. We aren't even close. You know? At best, we're pipers at the gates of dawn. Who have come to this little blue planet to help. — Paul McAuley

Frailty and cruelty are our gifts to the world. Who is to say that suffering is not the greatest of all gifts from the gods? — Douglas Clegg

You will never really understand your heart when things are going well. It is only when things go badly that you can see it truly. And that's because it is only when suffering comes that you realize who is the true God and what are the false gods of your lives. Only the true God can go with you through that furnace and out to the other side. The other gods will abandon you in the furnace. — Timothy Keller

A brief note on the legend of Pandora's Box: Ever wondered why bundled in with all the torrents, and suffering of man kind the Gods put hope down there at the bottom, answer because in certain circumstances hope can be the worst torment of them all. — Tom Holt

There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained? ... how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring? ... If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire ... why not get better at fulfilling desire? I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to achieve the grand prize - they safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods. — Tom Robbins

If men think that a ruler is religious and has a reverence for the Gods, they are less afraid of suffering injustice at his hands. — Aristotle.

We know the value of the things for which we suffer. In this modern day and age, things and people are not actually losing value; but it is the knowledge of the value that is lost. Because in this day and age, everyone wants something that is easy. The easier, the better. And therefore all value is lost, and lost from all things that exist for which one has not toiled or suffered to some degree. All things valuable are worth suffering for. And indeed, the same thing can be multiplied in value, when you add your blood to it through suffering for it. — C. JoyBell C.

While God is not the author of evil and He never prompts or condones sin, nothing occurs without His sovereign oversight. Others may choose to do evil deeds and God's people may suffer in the short term, but He will transform the evil intentions of evil people into opportunities for the enrichment of those in His care. — Charles R. Swindoll

There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit. — C.S. Lewis

Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrongs no more. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Buddhism does not deny the existence of gods - they are described as powerful beings who can bring rains and victories - but they have no influence on the law that suffering arises from craving. If the mind of a person is free of all craving, no god can make him miserable. Conversely, once craving arises in a person's mind, all the gods in the universe cannot save him from suffering. — Yuval Noah Harari

The gods of hunter-gatherers are often capricious and malevolent. They sometimes punish bad behavior, but they bring suffering to the virtuous as well. As groups take up agriculture and grow larger, however, their gods become far more moralistic. — Jonathan Haidt

Have you any idea of what you've unleashed? (Hades) Cruelty, pestilence, wrath, violence, ultimate suffering ... what other gifts did the gods bestow on him? — Sherrilyn Kenyon

In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their lifetime aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous intensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls. — Herman Melville

The truth Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives By suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are, Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love. — Aeschylus

As long as mortals choose to do evil, then evil will triumph. And Lucifer will laugh when people blame it on the Heavenly Father. But even with all the suffering in the world, the Heavenly Father will not take away your free will. He wants you to choose good or evil. He will not force us to choose good — Kerrelyn Sparks

Ann: How does God's character fit into things that seem totally against his character? — K. Howard Joslin

Gideon conquers, the church conquers, we conquer, because faith conquers. But the victory belongs not to Gideon, the church, or ourselves, but to God. And God's victory means our defeat, our humiliation; it means God's derision and wrath at all human pretensions of might, at humans puffing themselves up and thinking they are somebodies themselves. It means the world and its shouting is silenced, that all our ideas and plans are frustrated; it means the cross. The cross over the world
that means that human beings, even the most noble, go down to dust whether it suits them or not, and with them all the gods and idols and lords of this world. The cross of Jesus Christ
that means God's bitter mockery of all human grandeur and God's bitter suffering in all human misery, God's lordship over all the world. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What a mistake that had been, to create a construct [AI] that could suffer. He knew that now. Life, pain, death, they were no playthings. Biology was serious business, not for amateurs and foolish gods. — David Marusek

It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshipers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshiped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.(138-139) — Zora Neale Hurston

You will not rightly call him a happy man who possesses much; he more rightly earns the name of happy who is skilled in wisely using the gifts of the gods, and in suffering hard poverty, and who fears disgrace as worse than death.
[Lat., Non possidentem multa vocaveris
Recte beatum; rectius occupat
Nomen beati, qui Deorum
Muneribus sapienter uti,
Duramque callet pauperiem pati,
Pejusque leto flagitium timet.] — Horace

For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God. — Lactantius

There is nothing wrong with God's creation. Mystery and Suffering only exist in the mind. — Ramana Maharshi

Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little. — Criss Jami

Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. — Herman Melville

The Vikings did not believe in leaving their futures to the fates, but in carving their own fates . It was believed the gods would reward those who went forth valiantly to conquer and to gain. Vikings gave no account to meekness, or suffering patience. They fought for what they wanted. Defeat held no honor. — Johanna Lindsey

Worthy persons deserve to be called so because they are not carried away by the eight winds: prosperity,decline,disgrace,honor,praise,censure,suffering, and pleasure.They are neither elated by prosperity nor grieved by decline. The heavenly gods will surely protect one who is unbending before the eight winds. — Nichiren

The gods we make in our own image are tribal gods. They tell you how very, very little you should tolerate outsiders, who are less favoured of the Lord. Amazingly, there are no recorded cases of the holy man going up the mountain and finding that it's the others who are right. It always turns out that God wants unbelievers to suffer, and what could be more noble than to help him a little? When religion rules, toleration disappears, for you cannot cherish the verdict of death to the infidels, yet also tolerate those who disagree - for those are the very same infidels ... — Simon Blackburn

If we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty [Christians were punished for not worshiping Roman gods] that we have rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made out to injure those whom we are certain are nonentities. What does not exist is in its nonexistence secure from suffering. — Tertullian

He had no fear for there was nothing to fear. He was going to a better place. Katie told him have no fear God had called him his was pain and suffering was to coming to an end. It was the next stage of their life together. This was a beautiful place where there was no pain and suffering but lots of Gods work to be done. As a social worker he had helped a lot of families in Kerry and his life had achieved a lot. Emma felt Katie's presence and prayed to her to take him quickly he had suffered too much already. Ronan was on life support — Annette J. Dunlea

He actually made damnation seem attractive. She had heard of men who rejected gods, who professed not to believe, but here was a believer who refused to grovel, a man who stood up to Shiva, to Buddha, to the gods of his own race, whoever they might be, who stood right up to them and demanded an accounting for a system in which pleasure must be paid for with pain, a system in which the only triumph over suffering was hard-won oblivion, a system that offered its captive audience little choice in matters concerning duration of performance. — Tom Robbins

Lord save the suffering souls. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. — Homer

People invent gods to explain their suffering. — Mason Cooley

Wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
So men against their will
Learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods. — Aeschylus

The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them. — Sigmund Freud

Certainly there are times when God allows suffering and deprives us of the lesser good of pleasure in order to help us toward the greater good of moral and spiritual education. Even the ancient Greeks believed the gods taught wisdom through suffering. Aeschylus wrote: 'Day by day, hour by hour / Pain drips upon the heart / As, against our will, and even in our own despite / Comes Wisdom from the awful grace of God. — Lee Strobel

Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.

A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown. — Friedrich Holderlin

For all its idyllic charm, and in the joy of companionship of Sita, Rama never lost sight of his main purpose in settling down in this region - he had come here to encounter and destroy the asuras, the fiends who infested this area, causing suffering and hardship to all the good souls who only wanted to be left alone to pursue their spiritual aims in peace. Rama's whole purpose of incarnation was ultimately to destroy Ravana, the chief of the asuras, abolish fear from the hearts of men and gods, and establish peace, gentleness, and justice in the world. — R.K. Narayan

All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. — Zora Neale Hurston

One of the dangers of the spiritual story is that it disassociates humans from reality. Relieving world hunger, crime and suffering are replaced with fantasies of other worlds, dimensions, gods or forces that will magically take care of humanities plight. I once asked a metaphysical friend of mine what she thought of rape. She replied, "People choose these experiences before birth to learn human lessons of rape." I asked her about world hunger, sex trafficking, genocide, and torture, and she replied with the same logic. At that moment, I realized the dangerous implications of esoteric ideology in our world. — Christopher Zzenn Loren

In suffering, we trust the Saviour to be our strength. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Tiresome people, but he knew it was only human nature to believe it best to ignore suffering, to focus on your own good fortune. The human survival mechanism: to say your prayers, thank your gods, and hold your breath when you passed the slums. The sweet poison of privelege, wasn't it? To think blindness a preferable condition. — Sunil Yapa

There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred. — Dan Simmons

When men are unhappy, they do not imagine they can ever cease to be so; and when some calamity has fallen on them, they do not see how they can get rid of it. Nevertheless, both arrive; and the gods have ordered it so, in the end men seek it from the gods — Epictetus

By suffering God's will, we learn to do God's will. — Thomas Case

I should die," said Ivrom. "That is blasphemy," the old man answered kindly. "I should suffer." "You are suffering, are you not?" "Not enough." "Consider the sufferings ordained by the Nameless Gods," the priest quoted. "A cupful weighs as much as an ocean." In fact - as Ivrom would discover later - a cupful weighs much more. When — Sofia Samatar

When we fail to believe the truth about who Jesus is and miss the impact of His astounding work in suffering and dying for our sin, it will be impossible to resist the allurement of the gods of this earth as they whisper their promised pleasures to us. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

And what if one of the gods does wreck me out on the wine-dark sea? I have a heart that is inured to suffering and I shall steel it to endure that too. For in my day I have had many bitter and painful experiences in war and on the stormy seas. So let this new disaster come. It only makes one more. — Homer