Life Philosophy Suffering Quotes & Sayings

Pain is painful but an essential ingredient of life. Suffering is optional. — Debasish Mridha

At moments when Herman fantasized about a new metaphysics, or even a new religion, he based everything on the attraction of the sexes. In the beginning was lust. The godly, as well as the human, principle is desire. Gravity, light, magnetism, thought may be aspects of the same universal longing. Suffering, emptiness, darkness are nothing more than interruptions of a cosmic orgasm that grows forever in intensity ... — Isaac Bashevis Singer

For those who trust, life is a blessing. For those who don't trust, life is suffering. — Debasish Mridha

O world, world when I was younger I thought there was some order governing you and your deeds. But now you seem to be a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild beasts, a game in which men move in circles ... a stony field, a meadow full of serpents, a flowering but barren orchard, a spring of cares, a river of tears, a sea of suffering, a vain hope. — Fernando De Rojas

Our heads are full of comparisons, needs for approval and attention, a desire to be at other places, imagining things could be better there and thus hating our reality.
We are the only ones to blame for our own suffering.
We hurt ourselves every time we think of how other people should behave according to our standards and then suffer when they appear to be individuals; every time we open a book with so many expectations about it from what we've heard and hoped it to be, and then close it in disappointment, realizing it's something totally different (maybe beautiful, inspiring and challenging, but nothing that met our expectations). — Lidiya K.

Only the shallowest person believes that they can attain true happiness by maximizing their wealth at any cost. In absence of morality, ethics, and a sustainable philosophy to guide us in an ethical search for happiness, we will always perceive life's random countervailing forces of adversity and unpleasantness as inflicting a great personal injustice upon us. Through application of a deeply embedded personal philosophy, we can push back against the negative implications of a life of suffering. We can use a philosophical stance to gain the perspective needed to say 'yes' to all of life, both its rosy path of ineffable joys and a blackened trail of tears. We must learn to accept life as it truly is and not waste precious time in wistfulness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

He stole glances at the heathen faces of Bodien and Gaylord, the suffering, yet oddly consoled, eyes and mouth of Basellecci, noting the brave enthusiasm of men who had never dreamed of anything very definite, and it occurred to him through the reek of his person that there was only one hope for him, and for all people who had lost, through intelligence, the hope of immortality. "We must love and delight in each other and in ourselves!" he cried. — Edward Lewis Wallant

Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism - in terms of human suffering - is the belief that love is a matter of "the heart," not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. — Ayn Rand

We unthinkingly build the pilings of our lives upon whatever comes along. Like it or not, we play the hand that fate deals us. If fate is kind, some people credit their fortuitous circumstances to their ingenuity and resoluteness. If fate is cruel, some people curse God. The truth is that an unenlightened person resists suffering, they continually wish for a world different than it is, whereas an enlightened person learns how to suffer heroically. — Kilroy J. Oldster

When I see that humanity is suffering, it tears my heart, I cry then extend my hand to help with my heart. — Debasish Mridha

Dear little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. — Oscar Wilde

I am deeply in love with the world and its contents. My heartaches when I see any suffering so kindness and altruism is my ultimate way of life. — Debasish Mridha

When you see suffering and sadness, to heal them the least we can offer is our love and kindness. — Debasish Mridha

She said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth."
"Um, okay. So what is it?"
"Suffering," she said. "Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering? ... Nothing's wrong. But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about. — John Green

Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?" she asked. "Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?"

"Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering. — Paul Kalanithi

So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men — Mary Shelley

How can there be suffering when there is love? — Debasish Mridha

I had to wonder what sadistic pleasure and entertainment human suffering must provide to the divine game players who decided the fate of their pawns in a board game they made of life. — Clyde DeSouza

When life is an existential suffering, death is our ultimate blessings. — Debasish Mridha

Everyone is longing for love, everyone is suffering from the needs and wants, so be loving, kind, and compassionate to everyone. — Debasish Mridha

If you think about life simply as one big waiting room for eternity, who cares if it's not fully air conditioned? — Joyce Rachelle

Try to change the world one suffering heart at a time with your endless kindness. — Debasish Mridha

By degrees, however, he fashioned for himself out of this tendency a philosophy that was actually serviceable to life. He gained strength through familiarity with the thought that the emergency exit stood always open, and became curious, too, to taste his suffering to the dregs. If it went too badly with him he could feel sometimes with a grim malicious pleasure: I am curious to see all the same just how much a man can endure. If the limit of what is bearable is reached, I have only to open the door to escape. — Hermann Hesse

Let us be the hope for those who are suffering.
Let us be the eyesight for those who are blind.
Let us show the way, nonjudgmental and kind. — Debasish Mridha

Life is a suffering. We suffer because we exist. So enjoy the sufferings with love to make life worthwhile to suffer for. — Debasish Mridha

Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.
I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. — Arthur Schopenhauer

In life there will be pain, suffering, ugliness, but let us be grateful for the beauty, blessing, and miracle of life. — Debasish Mridha

Attachment strangles freedom and clarity and makes us a puppet to our desires and cravings; attachment is the root of suffering, a root that if left unattended grows into a tree which drops the fruits of anger, greed, envy, dispersion, competitiveness, ego and pain — Evan Sutter

Be awesome! With kindness, serve the suffering humanity. — Debasish Mridha

Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself. — Hermann Hesse

Not knowing about the ultimate purpose of our lives causes tremendous amounts of suffering. — Debasish Mridha

Yes, we can alleviate human sufferings.
Just let us be kind and caring when we see someone is suffering. — Debasish Mridha

Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. — Viktor E. Frankl

Where there is darkness, let me be the light. Where there is suffering, let me be kind and compassionate. — Debasish Mridha

Kids want to be grown ups, adults want to be young and careless again.
Single people desperately want a relationship, but those who are in one still complain almost all the time and wish for freedom.
The poor want money, the rich want more of it.
This means that changing your situation doesn't prevent you from suffering, doesn't make your desires go away.
So you need to change something on the inside. — Lidiya K.

I'm now asking an idle question of my own: which is better
cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sufferings helps to soften the harden heart. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Fear of suffering destroys our dreams and hope. — Debasish Mridha

Life has existential suffering; we become happy by caring. — Debasish Mridha

Be a human angel! With love, generosity and kindness, let us lighten the burden of suffering from humanity. — Debasish Mridha

You can't escape the existential suffering of life as long as you are living. So get used to it. — Debasish Mridha

There's a void inside most people.
It's been created by not being contented with who we are, not being happy with what we have, not being present and looking for something more, better, more exciting out there.
And we've always been trying to fill this void with something external. — Lidiya K.

Don't judge a community by how much they are suffering but judge them by how much they are learning from it. That is what really matters. — Debasish Mridha

Let us be kind and lighten the burden of those who are suffering. — Debasish Mridha

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. This project is ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and ethically mandatory. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they once served the fitness of our genes. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. The world's last aversive experience will be a precisely dateable event. — David Pearce

You can read all the books in the world on the Nazi concentration camps and the gas chambers, and yet reality will draw upon you only when you are put through that yourself. It is a law of God, or nature, if you prefer, that pain, suffering and grief cannot be transferred or known by proxy. Neither empathy nor sympathy but experience alone is a valid currency of affliction. It alone makes you a card-holding member all allows you to join the club of the wretched of the earth. All else is counterfeit. — Kiran Nagarkar

When gratitude begins, then life finds the abundance and suffering ends. — Debasish Mridha

Ah, life, you make us suffer to love you more. — Debasish Mridha

It will be seen how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and suffering, only lose their antithetical character, and thus their existence, as such antitheses in the social condition; it will be seen how the resolution of the theoretical antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practical energy of men. Their resolution is therefore by no means merely a problem of knowledge, but a real problem of life, which philosophy could not solve precisely because it conceived this problem as merely a theoretical one. — Robert C. Tucker

He was trying to make us think about how life is hard and people suffer in all sorts of ways without our adding to their suffering to satisfy our sense of vengeance, but I sort of don't think that the quote holds up in the real world, where literature and schooling and philosophy and morality don't exist, because Asher and Linda and so many other culpable people seem to be fine - functioning exceptionally well within the world even - while I'm under a disgusting bridge about to put a hole in my skull. — Matthew Quick

The greatest purpose of life is to serve the suffering humanity with love and kindness. — Debasish Mridha

I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life. — Ayn Rand

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

Life is a daring adventure, so suffering should be optional. — Debasish Mridha

When I see the darkness and fight,
I want to be the love and light.
When I see the sadness and suffering,
I want to bring happiness and caring.
When I see ignorance and agony,
I want to cure it as a great alchemy.
When I see frustration and torment,
I want to bring opportunities to invent.
When I see violence and destruction,
I want to win by love with great intention. — Debasish Mridha

How impossible it is for strong healthy people to understand the way in which bodily malaise and suffering eats at the root of one's life! The philosophy that is true - the religion that is strength to the healthy - is constantly emptiness to one when the head is distracted and every sensation is oppressive. — George Eliot