Problem Of Suffering Quotes & Sayings

All of us must do our best to live gracefully in the present moment. I now see depression as akin to being tied to a chair with restraints on my wrists. It took me a long time to realize that I only magnify my distress by struggling for freedom. My pain diminished when I gave up trying to escape completely from it. However, don't interpret my current approach to depression as utterly fatalistic. I do whatever I can to dull depression's pain, while premising my life on its continuing presence. The theologian and philosopher Thomas Moore puts it well with his distinction between cure and care. While cure implies the eradication of trouble, care "appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life. — David A. Karp

I understood that the teacher was not eing dismissive, that the problem would be addressed. But, without extra upset. A noncombative response, the Buddha taught, assures that pain does not become suffering. And, unclouded by the tension of struggle, the mind is able to assess clearly and respond wisely. — Sylvia Boorstein

The appearances of the world are not the problem,
it's clinging to them that causes suffering — Tilopa

If you want to understand suffering you must look into the situation at hand. The teachings say that wherever a problem arises it must be settled right there. Where suffering lies is right where non-suffering will arise, it ceases at the place where it arises. If suffering arises you must contemplate right there, you don't have to run away. You should settle the issue right there. One who runs away from suffering out of fear is the most foolish person of all. He will simply increases his stupidity endlessly. — Ajahn Chah

The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased". — C.S. Lewis

We don't have a major problem right now in our country, and life is normal. Things like unemployment, which the youth are suffering from, and the rate of inflation - these are chronic conditions and we have to solve them. — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism. — Walter Kaufmann

All of our notions of modernity and progress and all our advances in technological expertise have not brought an end to war. Our declaring the notion of sin to be obsolete has not diminished human suffering. And the easy answers: blaming technology, or, for that matter, the world's religions, have not solved the problem. The problem, C. S. Lewis insists, is us. — C.S. Lewis

Somehow, turning to God and trusting him with the mysteries of suffering is the answer to the problem of suffering. — Edward T. Welch

This inclination to ignore problems is once again a simple manifestation of an unwillingness to delay gratification. Confronting problems is, as I have said, painful. To willingly confront a problem early, before we are forced to confront it by circumstances, means to put aside something pleasant or less painful for something more painful. It is choosing to suffer now in the hope of future gratification rather than choosing to continue present gratification in the hope that future suffering will not be necessary. — M. Scott Peck

The book of Job does not set out to answer the problem of suffering, but to proclaim a God so great that no answer is needed. — Billy Graham

I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have. — Ally Condie

Whenever we have a problem, it is easy to think that it is caused by our particular circumstances, and that if we were to change our circumstances our problem would disappear. We blame other people, our friends, our food, our government, our times, the weather, society, history and so forth. However, external circumstances such as these are not the main causes of our problems. We need to recognize that all the physical suffering and mental pain we experience are the consequences of our taking a rebirth that is contaminated by the inner poison of delusions. — Kelsang Gyatso

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering on both sides of this ghastly struggle somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming. — Dorothy Day

The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ
all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself
that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness
that I myself am the enemy who must be loved
what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves. — C. G. Jung

In my investigations of the connections between morality and the body, I encountered two further aspects that, unlike the problem of forgiveness, were new to me. One question I asked myself concerned the true nature of the feeling that we, as adults, persist in calling love for our parents. The other aspect that struck me was the realization that throughout our lives the body craves the nourishment that it needed so badly in childhood but was never given. I believe that this is a source of suffering and distress for many people. Part — Alice Miller

The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven. — Elizabeth Gilbert

If the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart - which it is - you'll never cure the disease you're suffering from by doing X-rays on other people. — Matt Chandler

The problem is hedonism. The problem is the preening vanity and selfishness of 'coming out,' of parading private inclinations, of a kind that repel normal people, as if those inclinations were, all by themselves, marks of authenticity and virtue, of suffering and oppression. — John Derbyshire

There's been a problem, a problem eating away at me from the inside out. I've become weak, I've shown human compassion, and it has weakened me. But no more. Tonight I will once again feast on fear and suffering. My appetite for agony will be awakened. I will once again taste the pain of others. I will feast on the fear of the innocent, and that is the sweetest taste of all. Tonight I hunger for a sacrifice. — Kane

The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have. I — Ally Condie

When a person understands the problem that vexes them, and comprehends the choices that created them, they begin a journey of the mind seeking personal liberation from suffering. — Kilroy J. Oldster

To be willing to suffer in order to create is one thing; to realize that one's creation necessitates one's suffering, that suffering is one of the greatest of God's gifts, is almost to reach a mystical solution of the problem of evil. — J. W. N. Sullivan

The problem with loneliness is that, unlike other forms of human suffering, it teaches us nothing, leads us nowhere, and generally devalues us in our own eyes and the eyes of others. — Adam Bagdasarian

Innermost suffering makes the mind noble. Only that deepest, slow and extended pain that burns inside of us as firewood forces us to go down into our depths ... I doubt that such a pain could ever make us feel better, but I know that it makes us deeper beings. It makes us ask more rigorous and deeper questions to ourselves ... Trust in life has disappeared. Life itself has become a problem. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing whatsoever, not even the existence of God to His lovers, can be proved, but that every man, if he is to live at all finely, must deliberately adopt certain assertions as true, and those assertions should, for the sake of the enrichment of the human race, always be creative ones. He may, as life goes on, modify his beliefs, but he must never modify them on the side of destruction. It may be difficult, in the face of the problem of human suffering, to believe in God ... but if you destroy God you do not solve your problem but merely leave yourself alone with it ... A ghastly loneliness. — Elizabeth Goudge

There is...no easy answer to the evil and suffering problem and no easy road to its solution. But Christ tackled the matter radically and realistically by winning the allegiance of a few men and women to a new way of living...They were to be the spearhead of good against evil. — J.B. Phillips

The individual who violates the rules in a zealous search for an answer to the problem may overstep the bounds and thereby suffer the loss of his relationships to the organized medical profession. — Morris Fishbein

As a religious problem, the problem of suffering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer, how to make of physical pain, personal loss, worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of others' agony something bearable, supportable- something as we say, sufferable. — Clifford Geertz

The unflagging optimism and constant good nature of the Tibetan people challenges us to identify the source of our misery and discontent. Most of the time when we examine it, we realise we have little to be upset about at all. It is simply our lack of control over our own lives that causes us the majority of our own suffering. Attack the real root of the situation, and we can solve the problem. But any other action simply causes more problems. — James Oroc

But the problem is that Jesus' kingdom (and Paul's "citizenship in heaven") was about the real world, here and now. It was about allegiance. Jesus and Paul were telling the people that they must live here with their identities as aliens. They must live by the rules of heaven amid the violent earthly powers. And to claim that one's citizenship is in heaven is to say that you pledge allegiance not to any of the kingdoms of the world but to Jesus and the body of those who take on his suffering, enemy-loving posture toward the world. — Shane Claiborne

The problem is whether we are determined to go in the direction of compassion or not. If we are, then can we reduce the suffering to a minimum? If I lose my direction, I have to look for the North Star, and I go to the north. That does not mean I expect to arrive at the North Star. I just want to go in that direction. — Thich Nhat Hanh

[T]he truth is that drug addicts have a disease. It only takes a short time in the streets to realize that out-of-control addiction is a medical problem, not a form of recreational or criminal behavior. And the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make "relieving" the suffering of the addicts. — Jay-Z

ALLOW THE SENSATIONS TO BE PRESENT, BUT DO NOT ACT ON THEM This is probably the hardest thing to do when you start using the Four Steps. When you refuse to give in to the content of your deceptive brain messages by not performing the action your brain is telling you to do, your Uh Oh Center fires even more intensely, which makes you feel extremely uncomfortable. You want to do virtually anything to get rid of those sensations, both physical and emotional, and know that simply following your deceptive brain messages will accomplish that task in the short term. The problem, as we all must learn the hard way over time, is that doing so will only fuel the negative messages and further entrench the maladaptive circuits ever more powerfully into your brain. Said another way, short-term relief rapidly causes more pain and suffering, not less. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

All believers in Christ, the Scripture teaches, will suffer-all of us. You will be glorified, Paul says, if you suffer with him. The problem with too many of us is not that we don't suffer, but that we assume that only Third World Christians or heroic missionaries are suffering. My boys didn't know that they were suffering in Russia; they would feel it as suffering now. — Russell D. Moore

And that fear I'd felt, the disembodying confusion, seemed to be a drug I was now addicted to, because moving through the ordinary world- watching CNN, reading the Times, walking to Sant Ambroeus to have a coffee at the bar- made me feel exhausted, even depressed. Perhaps I was suffering from the same problem as the man who'd sailed around the world and now on land, facing his farmhouse, his wife and kids, understood that the constancy of home stretching out before him like a dry flat field was infinitely more terrifying than any violent squall with thirty-foot swells. — Marisha Pessl

You feel so happy about that, that you feel loving towards these poor being who are suffering in their separateness, and their alienation Then have the problem of how to help them get free, because just by your knowing that they're essentially free, that doesn't free them. Just by your being blissful, it doesn't release them from their knot of separation and false self absolutization. — Robert Thurman

If you weren't built for this life, you'd be dead by now. i think the problem is people don't share enough of their pain with the world, so they never know who else is in pain, too, and what others are going through. we're never really alone in anything. — Darnell Lamont Walker

I am in a profession that has succeeded because of its ability to fix. If your problem is fixable, we know just what to do. But if it's not? The fact that we have had no adequate answers to this question is troubling and has caused callousness, inhumanity, and extraordinary suffering. — Atul Gawande

Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem? We have made God a problem, we have made love a problem, we have made relationship, living a problem, and we have made sex a problem. Why? Why is everything we do a problem, a horror? Why are we suffering? Why has sex become a problem? Why do we submit to living with problems, why do we not put an end to them? Why do we not die to our problems instead of carrying them day after day, year after year? Sex is certainly a relevant question but there is the primary question: why do we make life into a problem? Working, sex, earning money, thinking, feeling, experiencing - you know, the whole business of living - why is it a problem? Is it not essentially because we always think from a particular point of view, from a fixed point of view? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

When the next big problem comes online, be it the Euro crisis, nuclear proliferation, an overstretched Internet, a killer flu, or any of the other possibilities I consider in X-Events, we will suffer a complexity overload. — John L. Casti

How you approach the problem of suffering depends on how you approach life itself. There are only two ways. Either meaning is surrounded by matter, or matter is surrounded by meaning. — Peter Kreeft

In other words, you could endlessly try to have suffering cease by dealing with outer circumstances - and that's usually what all of us do. It is the usual approach; you just try to solve the outer problem again and again and again. But the Buddha said something quite revolutionary, which most of us don't really buy: if you work with your mind, you will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside. When something is bothering you - a person is bugging you, a situation is irritating you, or physical pain is troubling you - you must work with your mind, and that is done through meditation. Working with our minds is the only means through which we'll actually begin to feel happy and contented with the world that we live in. — Pema Chodron

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life's secrets. It's the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. 'We are too ego-centered,' Suzuki tells Cage.' The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away. — Kay Larson

So, the first thing we should introspect - are we concerned about ourselves ? All the time do we think that we are suffering, we have this problem, that problem, or this should be done, that should be done. If the attention is on that, that all the time you are worried about yourself, then you cannot break, you cannot break through this shell of your being which is under the domination of your mental selfishness or self centeredness. — Nirmala Srivastava

When confronted with suffering that won't go away or with even a minor problem, we instinctively focus on what is missing, ... not on the Master's hand. Often when you think everything has gone wrong, it's just that you're in the middle of a story. If you watch the stories God is weaving in your life, you ... will begin to see the patterns. You'll become a poet, sensitive to your Father's voice. — Paul E. Miller

In all three cases, and for most human beings, the problem of suffering poses no difficult problem at all: one has a world picture in which suffering has its place, a world picture that takes suffering into account. — Walter Kaufmann

... ongoing care for the soul rather than seek for a cure appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life.
I sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel.
To approach this paradoxial point of tension where adjustment and abnormality meet is to move closer to the realization of our mystery-filled, star-born nature.
It is a beast this thing that stirs in the core of our being, but it is also the star of our innermost nature.
We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlock the star.
~Thomas Moore *Care of the Soul* — Thomas Moore

It is clear that something is seriously lacking in the way we humans are going about things. But what is it that we lack? The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values, I mean the qualities that we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness-or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner value emerge. — Dalai Lama XIV

It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. 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? — John Green

The problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering. — John Green

A season of suffering is a small assignment when compared to the reward. Rather than begrudge your problem, explore it. Ponder it. And most of all, use it. Use it to the glory of God. — Max Lucado

Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn't ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward. What The Work gives us is a way to change the projector - mind - rather than the projected. It's like when there's a piece of lint on a projector's lens. We think there's a flaw on the screen, and we try to change this person and that person, whomever the flaw appears on next. But it's futile to try to change the projected images. Once we realize where the lint is, we can clear the lens itself. This is the end of suffering, and the beginning of a little joy in paradise. — Byron Katie

Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up.
If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other's faults and burdens.
If we love enough, we are going to light a fire in the hearts of others.
And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much. — Dorothy Day

Technology usually provides a series of tradeoffs. Each asset is offset by a deficit ... A major problem occurs when those who suffer from technology's defecits and those who benefit are not the same people. — Donald A. Norman

Compassion may not fix a problem. It may not undo a wrong, but it may bring a little light into the life of someone who is suffering. — Karlyle Tomms

True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not "luv." Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross. — Peter Kreeft

The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it. — Joseph Heller

Not once after graduating from Bryan was I asked to make a case for the scientific feasibility of miracles, but often I was asked why Christians aren't more like Jesus. I may have met one or two people who rejected Christianity because they had difficulties with the deity of Christ, but most rejected Christianity because they thought it means becoming judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, and unkind. People didn't argue with me about the problem of evil; they argued about why Christians aren't doing more to alleviate human suffering, support the poor, and oppose violence and war. Most weren't looking for a faith that provided all the answers; they were looking for one in which they were free to ask questions. — Rachel Held Evans

The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam; but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering. — Walter Kaufmann

The problem is that contemporary people think life is all about finding happiness. We decide what conditions will make us happy and then we work to bring those conditions about. To live for happiness means that you are trying to get something out of life. But when suffering comes along, it takes the conditions for happiness away, and so suffering destroys all your reason to keep living. But to "live for meaning" means not that you try to get something out of life but rather that life expects something from us. In other words, you have meaning only when there is something in life more important than your own personal freedom and happiness, something for which you are glad to sacrifice your happiness.129 — Timothy Keller

Hardship sometimes comes as a direct result of sin and disobedience. We are usually aware when consequences of sin have caused us deep suffering, but many other times, trials have nothing to do with disobedience. Yet we may wonder why we can't muster enough faith to be healthy, problem-free, and prosperous. Please be encouraged to know that difficulty is not a sign of immaturity or faithlessness. The Holy Spirit will do His job and let you know if you're suffering because of sin. Otherwise, remember - we all suffer many hardships. The key difference is this: ours are never in vain. — Beth Moore

The problem has to be answered by means of art, because you can't blast them with bliss. Tat freaks them out even more. So instead, you have to have an artful way of approaching them. You do a dance for them, you get them to imagine being interconnected, and to imagine being free of their suffering, and not so self involved, through art that draws them out. Then you, and they, are all established in what's called a Buddha-verse, or Buddha-land — Robert Thurman

Anyone who takes the Bible seriously agrees that God hates suffering. Jesus spent most of his time relieving it. But when being healed becomes the only goal - 'I'm not letting go until I get what I want' - it's a problem. — Joni Eareckson Tada

The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was referring not to our natural inclination as living beings to have wants and needs, but to our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away. — Tara Brach

When you enter deeply into this moment, you see the nature of reality, and this insight liberates you from suffering and confusion. Peace is already there to some extent: the problem is whether we know how to touch it. — Nhat Hanh

The problem with the religious solution [for mysteries such as consciousness and moral judgments] was stated by Mencken when he wrote, "Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." For anyone with a persistent intellectual curiosity, religious explanations are not worth knowing because they pile equally baffling enigmas on top of the original ones. What gave God a mind, free will, knowledge, certainty about right and wrong? How does he infuse them into a universe that seems to run just fine according to physical laws? How does he get ghostly souls to interact with hard matter? And most perplexing of all, if the world unfolds according to a wise and merciful plan, why does it contain so much suffering? As the Yiddish expression says, If God lived on earth, people would break his window. — Steven Pinker

Climate change is a moral challenge, not simply an economic or technological problem. It is linked to social justice, because it is the poor citizens of the world who will suffer the most from our excesses. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

If we come to see the purpose of the universe as God's long-term glory rather than our short-term happiness, then we will undergo a critical paradigm shift in tackling the problem of evil and suffering. The world has gone terribly wrong. God is going to fix it. First, for his eternal glory. Second, for our eternal good. — Randy Alcorn

The problem with trying to find your happiness through avoidance is the nature of reality. Reality simply does not allow us to evade unwanted experiences. Sure, we might be able to escape a few {...] but the evasive life often comes at a cost, like having to live your life in terror. Even if we can successfully ward off some terrifying experiences, we can not advert them all. Particularly, the most unpleasant ones: sickness, old age and death. If our strategy has been to flea unpleasant circumstances, when they come to meet us - as they surely will - our suffering will be great indeed. — Mark W. Muesse

how much Jesus had broken away from the historically conditioned attitudes of his time, for the prevailing idea at that time was that good health and good fortune were a sign of God's favor to the deserving. This is how they got around the problem of evil, for it meant that the poor and suffering were only having divinely ordained punishment for their sin. No doubt this justified in the minds of the people of his day a great deal of social abuse, even as today some people of wealth and means look upon their material gains as their "just due." Jesus — John A. Sanford

I have a binging imagination and thus a mental hoarding problem.
What I need to do is host an estate sale in my heavy head
and invite those suffering from creative block in through the porches of my ears to browse through the crowded unorganized trove of
curious coinages, precious epiphanies and junky minutiae and take away inspiration while uncluttering my poor mind. — Stephen Stokes

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in — Thich Nhat Hanh

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don't be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this - fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether yo u are living or dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our whole educational problem suffers from a one-sided approach to the child who is to be educated, and from an equally one-sided lack of emphasis on the uneducatedness of the educator. — Carl Jung

The problem of evil is raised more often by spectators of life than the actual combatants. You will hardly ever find that the great sufferers are the great skeptics. — James Stewart

Let us remember that every worldview-not just Christianity's-must give an explanation or an answer for evil and suffering ... this is not just a problem distinctive to Christianity. It will not do for the challenger just to raise the question. This problem of evil is one to which we all must offer an answer, regardless of the belief system to which we subscribe. — Ravi Zacharias

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort
a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. — Melanie Joy

The problem with mad people is not that they are mad, but that they are suffering from a particular brand of madness that the majority are not. — Merlyn Gabriel Miller

Many listeners have the experience of sharing the feelings that seem to be expressed by a piece of music[.] [T]he listener mirrors the feelings expressed by the music.
[...] The problem is that if listeners mirror the negative emotions they hear in music, then we seem to be landed with a paradox; [...] the "paradox of tragedy[.]" [P]eople apparently take great delight in watching and hearing about people in hideously unhappy situations and undergoing terrible suffering. [...] The musical version of the paradox is this: If people actually feel sad when they listen to sad music, why do they go on doing it? All they have to do is leave the room or flip the switch, and the music would vanish, along with the pain it causes. Yet people continue to listen, apparently complacently, to the most anguished and wrenching strains. [...] There must be some value to experiencing the sadness in sad music, or otherwise people would not do it; but what value can it have? — Jenefer Robinson

It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available. — Sam Harris

Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade. — Pope Francis

So that's the process of understanding, and through that process, if you have a deep realization of the selflessness in regard to your absolute self, then it releases your relational self to be happily interconnected with everything in a blissful way. Then you yourself have "no problem" in the sense of no suffering. You reach Nirvana. — Robert Thurman

While the realm of no materiality was a precious fruit of meditation, it did not help resolve the fundamental problem of birth and death, nor did it liberate one from all suffering and anxiety. It did not lead to total liberation. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Recognizing its importance, Aedes aegypti should be studied as a long-term national, regional, and world problem rather than as a temporary local threat to the communities suffering at any given moment from yellow fever, dengue or other aegypti-borne disease. No one can foresee the extent of the future threat of Aedes aegypti to mankind as a vector of known virus diseases, and none can foretell what other virus diseases may yet affect regions where A. aegypti is permitted to remain. — Fred Lowe Soper

To answer the question, what makes a tragedy, is to answer the question wherein lies the essential significance of life, what the dignity of humanity depends upon in the last analysis. Here the tragedians speak to us with no uncertain voice. The great tragedies themselves offer the solution to the problem they propound. It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows. Endow them with a greater or as great a potentiality of pain and our foremost place in the world would no longer be undisputed. Deep down, when we search out the reason for our conviction of the transcendent worth of each human being, we know that it is because of the possibility that each can suffer so terribly. What do outside trappings matter, Zenith or Elsinore? Tragedy's preoccupation is with suffering. But, — Edith Hamilton

The PR industry loves the concept that if you just apologize, the problem goes away. The concept of apology is known in the Judeo-Christian sense: You apologize, but then you suffer. The problem is nobody wants the suffering. Everybody wants drive-through redemption. — Eric Dezenhall

Becoming conscious of three important things:
First, as soon as people decide to confront a problem, they realize that they are far more capable than they thought they were.
Second, all energy and all knowledge come from the same unknown source, which we usually call God. What I've tried to do in my life, ever since I first started out on what I believe to be my path, is to honour that energy, to connect up with it every day, to allow myself to be guided by the signs, to learn by doing and not by thinking about doing.
Third, that no one is alone in their troubles; there is always someone else thinking, rejoicing, or suffering in the same way, and that gives us the strength to confront the challenge before us. — Paulo Coelho

Jesus doesn't give an explanation for the pain and sorrow of the world. He comes where the pain is most acute and takes it upon himself. Jesus doesn't explain why there is suffering, illness, and death in the world. He brings healing and hope. He doesn't allow the problem of evil to be the subject of a seminar. He allows evil to do its worst to him. He exhausts it, drains its power, and emerges with new life. — N. T. Wright

It was only with the crisis that debt soared.
Yet many Europeans in key positions - especially politicians and officials in Germany, but also the leadership of the European Central Bank and opinion leaders throughout the world of finance and banking - are deeply committed to the Big Delusion, and no amount of contrary evidence will shake them. As a result, the problem of dealing with the crisis is often couched in moral terms: nations are in trouble because they have sinned, and they must redeem themselves through suffering.
And that's a very bad way to approach the actual problems Europe faces. — Paul Krugman

The media covers what's new - and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it's easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it's difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It's hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don't know how to help. And so we look away. — Bill Gates

How do you measure suffering? I mean, the fact that I live in a democratic country doesn't guarantee my life will be problem-free. Far from it. I understand that I am relatively privileged from a socioeconomical viewpoint, but so was Hamlet - so are a lot of miserable people. I bet there are people in Iran who are happier than I am - who wish to keep living there regardless of who is in charge politically, while I'm miserable here in this supposedly free country and just want out of this life at any cost. — Matthew Quick

Suffering, sin, and evil are no longer located in God's will, but are understood as arising within a finite, open, developmental, and future-oriented creation. They are dealt with by the power of God's love revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God's answer to the problem of woundedness and wickedness is not to show us now or in the eschaton how they fit into God's design or mosaic, but to show us how God overcomes the brokenness and maliciousness of the creation now and in the eschaton through the redemptive power of the cross and resurrection. Divine power is rethought as the suffering and transforming power of Jesus' cross and resurrection, not as the omnipotent power of the timeless will of God. Incarnation, instead of immutability, defines God's will and way. God is the suffering and transforming God. — Tyron Inbody

Suffering in the path of Christian obedience, with joy - because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3) - is the clearest display of the worth of God in our lives. Therefore, faith-filled suffering is essential in this world for the most intense, authentic worship. When we are most satisfied with God in suffering, he will be most glorified in us in worship. Our problem is not styles of music. Our problem is styles of life. When we embrace more affliction for the worth of Christ, there will be more fruit in the worship of Christ. — John Piper

As I have said, the Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain. It rarely, or ambiguously, answers the backward-looking question "Why?" Instead, it raises the very different, forward-looking question, "To what end?"We are not put on earth merely to satisfy our desires, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.We are here to be changed, to be made more like God in order to prepare us for a lifetime with him. And that process may be served by the mysterious pattern of all creation: pleasure sometimes emerges against a background of pain, evil may be transformed into good, and suffering may produce something of value. — Philip Yancey

The causes of this distribution I do not know; but from our present point of view it ought to be clear that the real problem is not why some humble pious believing people suffer, but why some do not. Our Lord Himself, it will be remembered, explained the salvation of those who are fortunate in this world only by referring to the unsearchable omnipotence of God. — C.S. Lewis

I have said that the attempt to avoid legitimate suffering lies at the root of all emotional illness. Not surprisingly, most psychotherapy patients (and probably most non-patients, since neurosis is the norm rather than the exception) have a problem, whether they are young or old, in facing the reality of death squarely and clearly. What — M. Scott Peck

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

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely ... Obsessing over the slipperiness of focus, bemoaning the volume of those devil "distractions," and constantly reassessing which shiny new "system" might make your life suddenly seem more sensible - these are all terrifically useful warning flares that you may be suffering from a deeper, more fundamental problem ... Know in your heart that what you're making or doing matters ... First, care. Then, as you'll happily and unavoidably discover, all that "focus" business has a peculiar way of taking care of itself. — Merlin Mann

Evil is the most difficult problem in the world. It is also the strongest objection to God's existence. If God does exist, it is also the most problematic challenge to his nature and power. As a Christian, it is my greatest temptation for doubt and unbelief. — Jon Morrison