Suffering Inspirational Quotes & Sayings

There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we're not moving even our little finger to help them. It's in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it's a choice. So what will you choose, huh? — Yoleen Valai

Using time, pressure and patience, the universe gradually changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls, and coal into diamonds. You're being worked on too, so hang in there. Just because something isn't apparent right now, doesn't mean it isn't happening. It's not until the end do you realize, sometimes your biggest blessings were disguised by pain and suffering. They were not placed there to break you, but to make you. — John Geiger

Why wait? So precious is this life - this gift - this temporary blindness. Burn and drown and embrace the false dark, then grasp the unthinkable height of resulting joy. For in the end, in the light of truth when the flesh is cast off, there is nothing but this. — Jennifer DeLucy

Our task is to take suffering in stride, not as if it is a pleasure (it isn't), but in the knowledge that God will not let it overwhelm us and that He will use it, by His own supernatural alchemy, to three good ends, at least. 1) Our suffering produces character; 2) Our suffering glorifies God; 3) Suffering fulfills the law of the harvest (John 12:24), Rediscovering Holiness by J.I. Packer, pgs. 232-239. — J.I. Packer

The Lotus in Buddhism is a sacred symbol that represents purity and resurrection as attributes that develop through a spiritual awakening of the self. With humble beginnings in swamplands, the Lotus flower exquisitely blooms, pure and untainted, from this murky world it thrives in. The Lotus flower represents a higher state of mind, a strong spirit cultivated far from the suffering and temptations of this muddied world that personifies beauty through the present moment. — Forrest Curran

The specific sufferings of Jesus do not amount to redemption: rather, redemption is wrought through the uniqueness of the person who suffered and the perfect charity for which, in which and by which he suffered. The uniqueness of the suffering of Christ, then, lies in the pro knobs, which is bound to the freedom through which the Son endures "every human suffering" on account of love. To say that Jesus endured "every human suffering" does not mean that he specifically suffered every thing that every person ever did or could suffer, but the he "sums up" in this Passion the suffering so fate world, mystically including them in his own suffering and recapitulating them in the form of perfect love. The whole weight of this psychological and physical dereliction of humanity is, in Christ, suffered and sorrowed now within God himself, in the sense that the human sufferings of Christ are "one" with the divine filial relation that constitutes his unity with the Father. — Aaron Riches

Life is to be experienced in totality. Try not to blame others like spouse, parents, friends, fellow beings or situations for any suffering.. Never allow your vibe to go to a lower level. This way you will attract more and more positive circumstances in your life. — Sakshi Chetana

God uses no magic wand to simply wave bad things into nonexistence. The sins that he remits, he remits by making them his own and suffering them. The pain and heartaches that he relieves, he relieves by suffering them himself. These things can be shared and absorbed, but they cannot be simply wished or waved away. They must be suffered. — Stephen E. Robinson

Ascend, may you find so resistance
Just know that you made such a difference
All you leave behind will live to the end
The cycle of suffering goes on
But memories of you stay strong
Some day I too will fly and find you again — Alter Bridge

Why do men create suffering for others and fight over material wealth? Naked we come into the world, naked will go out of the world. — Lailah Gifty Akita

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever. — Vance Havner

Become disinterested in your pain and suffering. Only then can you make space for your longstanding joy. — David Ault

At the root of all misery is unfulfilled desire. — Scott Hahn

When someone who is suffering looks to you for compassion, it's indeed a blessing; you are chosen to be their Light in a moment of sorrow. — Michelle Cruz-Rosado

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

Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls. — Allen R. Hunt

As you sip your morning coffee ... please say a prayer for the people of Tibet and all other children of humanity that are suffering despair & hopelessness throughout our world. — Timothy Pina

These tears are proof that there is love in the world. Tears are only bitter when we cry selfishly for ourselves. When we deny and forget the sweet love that tears are made of. When we let sorrow turn to anger. When people cry for each other, it is a good thing. Always remember that you are a human being, connected to all other human beings. When you cry for others you are opening your heart to God, who must see what we do and weep for us, too, for the suffering we cause to one another and to ourselves. — Nafisa Haji

Despite all of the violence, suffering and wars, don't forget to sing the song of love, harmony, and peace. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God. — Joni Eareckson Tada

None of us are unique in our suffering. But we are unique in our survival. — Penelope Douglas

Paradise" is a suffering word, grossly overused and ineptly devalued in everyday hype and blurb. Yet, tired as it is, it will have to do. Nothing else conveys that sense of place that can inspire a blissful contentment. — Andrew Rayner

Your suffering is something you choose. Experience it fully. Without it you will not achieve personal growth and higher consciousness. — Ernie J Zelinski

The stars in their infinite peace seemed to pour their healing light into me. I thought of captives in prison, the sick and the suffering from the beginning of time who had looked to these stars for strength. What was my little sorrow to the centuries of pain which those stars had watched? So near they seemed, so compassionate. My bitter hurt seemed to grow small and drop away. If I must go on alone, I should still have silence and the high stars to walk with me. — Anzia Yezierska

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

Despite not knowing if what he felt from moment to moment would pass or last forever, he entered fully into his shifting states of violent rage, self-pity, longing, heartbreak, cynicism, without losing the ability to think about what was happening to him. That took courage, I thought, living with the suffering in a mindful way, as an artifact of being, neither good nor bad. — Diane Ackerman

Consider again that dot [Earth]. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. — Carl Sagan

When anybody laughs, he has no mind, no thought, no problem, no suffering. — H.W.L. Poonja

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

Love is something worth suffering for... — Scott Hahn

Every single being, even those who are hostile to us, is just as afraid of suffering as we are, and seeks happiness in the same way we do. Every person has the same right as we do to be happy and not to suffer. So let's take care of others wholeheartedly, of both our friends and our enemies. This is the basis for true compassion. — Dalai Lama XIV

Mom could have shared her suffering with her children, but she didn't. She could have succumbed to a world of pain and sorrow, but she didn't. Instead she loved each of us deeper, and found even more reasons to celebrate our lives together. — Ron Mayes

Suffering happens when we expect life to be something more and different than what it is in the present moment. When we let go of all expectations, there is peace. — Kim Eng

A person cannot grow up through happiness. Happiness makes a person shallow. It is only through suffering that we grow up, transform, and come to a better understanding of life. — Leslie T. Chang

It takes all my strength to do daily tasks. To some people, I'm just a number. I'm a projected food stamps debit card lifetime member. I'm seen as crazy or insane, but it doesn't matter. I know I am bigger than my suffering. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When you weep, Jesus weeps with you. And together you enter into the dance of tears. The dance of tears with Jesus is a precious intimacy He shares only with those who have known deep suffering. In the dance of tears, Jesus shares your pain. He carries your deep sorrows in His everlasting arms. And He ultimately turns your mourning into dancing. He revives and saves your crushed spirit. What a blessed comfort in our deepest darkness to know the One who shares the depth of every pain and loss, every joy and gladness. Jesus, He is the One. — Catherine Martin

Every psychic advance of man arises from the suffering of the soul. — Carl Jung

There's often a reason why people and dogs bite. It's about self-protection. If we respect what we may not know about the suffering of others and look at them compassionately, we open the door that can lead to understanding. — Jennifer Skiff

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.

If I could just capture each memory in a bottle the maybe you people would understand how much I've suffered, how much I've been through, but most importantly how far I have come. — Tommy Tran

Suffering passes, but the fact of having suffered never passes. — Leon Bloy

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

Don't let your outer pain, misery, and suffering touch your inner calmness and happiness. — Debasish Mridha

All these nice clothes, all these jokes and drinks and food, what good does it do? Tomorrow, folk will be poor and starving and dying with a solder's pike in them, and these people will have another celebration, more nice clothes, more jokes, more gems. The suffering is forgotten or ignored - why sorrow? The war victims aren't our people. And then the wheel turns and suddenly they are our people. — Tamora Pierce

Suffering over things that have happened to us is nothing more than an argument with the past. — Byron Katie

Why do mortals think that suffering is a coin with which they can buy justice or salvation? ... life is a steal if you are a talented thief, and if you are not, then you may suffer all you please but if will buy you nothing but pain. — Karen Maitland

Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself - expanding and learning as you go - you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip. — Dean Karnazes

If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example. — Anne Frank

It's not the suffering that wears you down and defeats you, it's the meaningless suffering. There's no limit to what human beings will put up with if they think it all has a purpose; there's no limit to what they'll sacrifice — William John Watkins

As with all things in the physical plane, nothing is permanent, and the only thing we can truly count on is change. Things come and go, people are born and die and move in and out of our lives. The dreams and goals of today will one day either materialize or evolve into something different with time. If we become rigidly attached to any of this, we set ourselves up for the inevitable suffering that will ensue when the thing, person or idea flows out of our lives, or our desire for it shifts. — Dashama Konah Gordon

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

Whoever suffers knows the strength of suffering. — Lailah Gifty Akita

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

After you have suffered great losses and known much pain, it is not cowardice to wish to live henceforth with a minimum of suffering. And one form of heroism, about which few if any films will be made, is having the courage to live without bitterness when bitterness is justified, having the strength to persevere even when perseverance seems unlikely to be rewarded, having the resolution to find profound meaning in life when it seems the most meaningless. — Dean Koontz

The thinking at the epicenter of most human conflict: I'm right; you're wrong. — Charles F. Glassman

At times we will be asked to let go of things that we have always wanted to keep for ourselves, or things that we would never have thought that we would to have to let go of, such as the loss of a loved one or the betrayal of a dear friend. A tree never hesitates to shake off her leaves during fall, and so we must take another lesson given to us by the nature: let go when it is time. Although such losses can be difficult and painful, rise above this suffering. Focus within your mind, the image of the Lotus prospering above mud. We are the lotus; rise above. — Forrest Curran

Fear grid-irons your broken, suffering heart with strength, encasing it with a protective, tough shell. One that soon becomes a prison that will emaciate the unused, enclosed heart inside if left to its own accord. But renewed hope gently unwraps the hard cast, and replaces it with a more resilient, pliable layer, protective, strong, but permeable so as to let love soak in and nurture the malnourished, dying heart inside. — Connie Kerbs

Walk through pain, face it, lay down in it and rest. Get up and walk again, repeat until you reach the end. — Juls Amor

Violence can only breed more violence and suffering. Our struggle must remain non-violent and free of hatred. — Dalai Lama XIV

Of all the joys that lighten suffering earth, what joy is welcomed like a new born child? — Caroline Norton

Good yield does not come without suffering, it does not come without struggle, and toil, and yes, loss. — Geraldine Brooks

Suffering is tossed by handfuls over the multitudes, with most of it falling on some people and little or none of it on others. — Jose Luis Peixoto

With God nothing is ever lost, so every experience, even the most painful ones, can mold our souls for eternity. People who do not understand this get lost in their suffering because they see it as meaningless. -- page 41 — Evan Howard

Suffering is like an echo - reflecting it only prolongs it. — James L. Papandrea

The longing for happiness and freedom from suffering
expresses the great natural potential of mind. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

As he stood there, the audience was forgotten. The past, with all its mistakes and suffering, its doubt and sin,
came before him for an instant, then vanished, and his heart leaped for joy, because he knew that it was gone
forever. And the future, made beautiful by the presence of Christ and the conviction that he was right with
God, stretched away as a path leading ever upward, until it was lost in the glories of the life to come, while he
heard, as in a dream, the words of his confessed Master, Follow: thou me. — Harold Bell Wright

An opportunity lost may have motivated us to find a satisfying alternative. Adversity or suffering may have taught us certain important skills. Some writers have felt new appreciation for their lives after surviving a serious illness or disability. A fortunate outcome does not invalidate the unfortunate aspect. — Nan Merrick Phifer

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

You forgive the person or situation not because what the person did was right, but you forgive to save yourself the suffering, heartache, and feelings of revenge. The pain that you focus on will never give you peace of mind and the more you bind your emotions to the pain, the more of it you will create in your life. So being angry and revengeful does not affect the person you are angry with. Instead, it destroys your life. Thus, you forgive to keep yourself in well being. Carrying hatred and anger is like carrying garbage wherever you go, it will stink your life. — Premlatha Rajkumar

Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective ... That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. — C.S. Lewis

One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering. — Simone Weil

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

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

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

They thought back on the tales that the soldier had told. They remembered Hazel, the gentle Bethlehem donkey, who used the last of her strength helping those who needed her. They remembered the donkey who stood on the mountain and accepted suffering so that others would not know pain. They remembered the donkey with a hundred names, the sturdy friend of Jack who proved that the most humble being can have the most courageous heart. They gazed at the soldier, who said, 'I fear that John will be sorry he gave the silver donkey to me. The silver donkey belongs to the trustworthy and the brave. — Sonya Hartnett

We cannot rely upon the silenced to tell us they are suffering. — Hanan Ashrawi

And yet she hadn't the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance. — Nella Larsen

Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration ... Existential frustration is neither pathological or pathogenic. — Viktor E. Frankl

There is pain and suffering in this world, but there is also joy, and not just suffering here and joy there, but suffering and joy in the very same place. — Todd Neva

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

Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different from the way they are. — Allan Lokos

To have despair is human ... for we all have problems that at times burden us.
To rise above your trials and tribulations, sadness, suffering and heart aches is above human and quite divine! — Timothy Pina

Until you have suffered much in your heart, you cannot learn humility. — Thaddeus Of Vitovnica

All your sufferings can be alleviated by no other person but you. — Abhijit Naskar

I'm not suffering Trisha, I've never suffered all these years, someone long back taught me by example that its very easy to be content with one's solitude. I've enjoyed mine all these years. — Dixy Gandhi

See your hard times through the spectacles of your experiences. They, too, shall pass away. — Ogwo David Emenike

If you see a person who is suffering from misery and sadness, wash it away with your compassion and kindness. — Debasish Mridha

And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzling over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own. — Hermann Hesse

It's necessary to use suffering. Otherwise, one is used by it. — Natalie Clifford Barney

The hardest thing to do in this world is to have a steadfast mind & will to be who God called you to be. — Okisha Jackson

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering. — Paulo Coelho

Love and kindness are most precious where there is endless suffering. — Debasish Mridha

Every 'no' is a 'yes' to something. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

When things are good, it is because we remember a time when they were not. When there was pain. But now the pain is gone, so things are 'good'. When we hurt, it is because we recall a time when we did not. When there was no pain. But now we suffer, so things are 'bad'. The tiger sipped from the cup, peering at the boy over the rim. Stars swirled in its eyes. "Good. Bad. The cup holds both. — Brooke Burgess

Health is normal. The human body is a self-repairing, self-defending, self-healing marvel. Disease is relatively difficult to induce, considering the body's powerful immune system. However, this complicated and delicate machinery can be damaged if fed the wrong fuel during the formative years ... Healthy living with nutritional excellence throughout life can slow the decline of aging. It can prevent the years and years of suffering in ill health that is so common today as people get older and become dependent on medical treatments, drugs, and surgery. Nutritional excellence is the only real fountain of youth. — Joel Fuhrman

There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so prodigiously surpasses man in friendship, and nail him down to a table, and dissect him alive to show you the mezaraic veins ... Answer me, Machinist, has Nature really arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering? — Voltaire

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

An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering. — Byron Katie

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness. — Sharon Salzberg