Suffer is to experience physical or mental pain. Profoundly inspirational suffering quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.
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Famous Suffering Quotes
At this stage of my life I would rather try and have some small impact within a company and suffer through those things than make such a big stink that nobody can trust to work with you. It’s very important in an environment of a big institution that people don’t feel threatened that you’re going to expose them in any way. — Gelsey Kirkland
The Middle East is more angry than ever. I’m afraid that the sort of deceit on the route to war was linked to the lack of preparation for afterwards and the chaos and suffering that continuous – so it won’t go away will it? — Clare Short
Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer. — Maynard James Keenan
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. — Ira Gershwin
My mother was suffering every day of her life, and what right did I have to be happy if she was suffering? So whenever I got happy about something, I felt the need to cut it off, and the only way to cut it off was to pray. ‘Forgive me Lord.’ For what, I didn’t know. — Gene Wilder
No nation ever yet found any inconvenience from too close an inspection into the conduct of its officers, but many have been brought to ruin and reduced to slavery by suffering gradual impositions and abuses. — Edward Livingston
I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do. — Amy Winehouse
To live forever should not be an obligation. In fact, eternal life should only be for those who wish for it, because if we are depressed and unhappy with our lives, just the idea of living forever is an unbearable source of suffering. — Claude Vorilhon
In contrast, Christianity, while acknowledging the presence of suffering, declares that life can be infinitely worth living and opens the way to eternal life in fellowship with God Who so loved the world that He gave Himself in Christ. — Kenneth Scott Latourette
Familiarity with evil breeds not contempt but acceptance. — Roy Hattersley
When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that’s the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don’t always get. — Mary Karr
My significant other right now is myself, which is what happens when you suffer from multiple personality disorder and self-obsession. — Joaquin Phoenix
We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men. — George Ripley
Let a nation’s fervent thanks make some amends for the toils and sufferings of those who survive. — Edward Everett
Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real. — Andre Malraux
I’m definitely more understanding of people who have disabilities and who are suffering. — Kevin Sorbo
The suffering of the Bahamian people is nearly ended. A new day is coming. It is almost here. — Perry Christie
Death remains about the one certain fact in the lives of each one of us, and there will be suffering, sorrow, and sadness next week as there was last week. — Basil Hume
Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn’t there anymore. — Rob Bell
My family understands the pain of struggling with a loved one who’s suffering from a blood-related cancer, and we seek to support those who are working to find a cure. — Nadia Bjorlin
But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich. — Douglas Hurd
There are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn’t bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it’s hard to see, it’s important to understand that these people exist. — Mia Farrow
You can grow up with literally nothing and you don’t suffer if you know you’re loved and valued, — Esperanza Spalding
To be reserved, secretive, with a passionate violence that causes suffering. — Gwen John
You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision. — Veronica Lake
Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing, has no education, no money, lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another, through sheer force of will, he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country. — Seth Grahame-Smith
Laughter is a way of really letting out all this pressure that you could face in your daily life in the suffering of your people, and comedy is almost like a medicine to your soul in a way. — Hiam Abbass
When a person has cancer, the whole family really suffers with her. — Ann Jillian
You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy. — John Calvin
Here an attempt is made to explain suffering: the outcaste of traditional Hinduism is held to deserve his fetched fate; it is a punishment for the wrongs he did in a previous life. — Walter Kaufmann
Christ shared our experience; he suffered as we suffer; he died as we shall die, and for forty days in the desert he underwent the struggle between good and evil. — Basil Hume
When we believe in our thoughts, when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. ‘My husband doesn’t respect me.’ ‘I should be thinner.’ Those are stories. When there’s no story, there’s no suffering. — Byron Katie
A well-off plastic surgeon can suffer just as much as an Irish lad who has been abused or whatever. — William Nicholson
The future battle on the ground will be preceded by battle in the air. This will determine which of the contestants has to suffer operational and tactical disadvantages and be forced throughout the battle into adoption compromise solutions. — Erwin Rommel
The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers. — Will Durant
One challenge is trying to extend access to more poorly served communities in rural areas and in the inner city. Sometimes you have kids who are suffering from trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, and they have no way of getting access to the remedies that are available to them. — Scott Stossel
God steps into the suffering with us, and He takes it on himself, and He walks through it with us, and He uses it to create something in you that is # unstoppable . — Kirk Cameron
Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us. — Barbara Jordan
The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It shows us how dreaming can be tainted by reality, and that if you don’t compromise, you may suffer. — Azar Nafisi
Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise. — Rob Bell
If one suffers we all suffer. Togetherness is strength. Courage. — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
In the Radiation Laboratory we count it a privilege to do everything we can to assist our medical colleagues in the application of these new tools to the problems of human suffering. — Ernest Lawrence
Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent – something like an infant – deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer. — Jack Abbott
Thirdly, even if we assume that the world is governed by purpose, we need only add that this purpose – or, if there are several, at least one of them – is not especially intent on preventing suffering, whether it is indifferent to suffering or actually rejoices in it. — Walter Kaufmann
There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature. — Stephen Stills
I pass over the toil and suffering and danger which attended the redemption and cultivation of their lands by the colonists, and turn to their civil condition and to the conduct and history of the government. — William H. Wharton
Unfortunately, I suffer from insomnia, so my bedtime is as soon as I start to feel the least bit sleepy. — Cheyenne Jackson
‘The Big Girls’ has always seemed to me to be a story about different kinds of families – a divorced mother with a child; a father with his child and his girlfriend; a mother of three children, suffering from postpartum depression; and the rigid artificial families maintained by women in prison – all potentially perilous. — Susanna Moore
It isn’t easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful… it’s difficult. It’s something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself. — Rainer Werner Fassbinder
I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel. — Kenzaburo Oe
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. — Russell Baker
I’ve never told anyone this. But I suffer from terrible stage fright. True. You can’t tell though, can you? Unbelievable, the panic. I nearly die of fear before I go on stage. Something wicked. I can’t eat a thing the day before a gig. It’d make me vomit. — John Lydon
I punish myself more than anybody else does if I am stupid about my actions, and I suffer, really suffer. — Eartha Kitt
The time has come to end the suffering and the plight of millions of Palestine refugees in the homeland and the Diaspora, to end their displacement and to realize their rights, some of them forced to take refuge more than once in different places of the world. — Mahmoud Abbas
It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone
Acting is wonderful therapy for people. Instead of suffering for yourself, someone will do it for you. — Sophie Marceau
If you’re going to plan a wedding, then a certain amount of suffering is not a choice. — Ellie Kemper
Mental illness leaves a huge legacy, not just for the person suffering it but for those around them. — Lysette Anthony
The Holocaust survivor who knows Auschwitz through the experience of suffering observes it all from the perspective assigned to him. He keeps silent or gives interviews to the Spielberg Foundation, he accepts the compensation payments promised him after a fifty-year delay, or, if he is prominent, he makes a speech in the Swedish Academy. — Imre Kertesz
Love is suffering. One side always loves more. — Catherine Deneuve
It’s not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one. — Robert Capa
I will always stay close to all compatriots, and share together the happiness and suffering. — Norodom Sihamoni
It is shameful that millions of Americans are suffering the economic injustice of working a full-time job and earning a wage that leaves them below the poverty line. — Bill Pascrell
Gird your hearts with silent fortitude, Suffering, yet hoping all things. — Felicia Hemans
I feel that I have such an abundance in my life, and once you’ve seen how many people suffer and how little it takes for you to actually change their lives for the better, it’s hard not to do something. — Wendie Malick
A people can prosper under a very bad government and suffer under a very good one, if in the first case the local administration is effective and in the second it is inefficient. — Annie Besant
People often say that a bad event is a ‘blessing in disguise.’ Trust me, experience will teach you that some are unbelievably well disguised. Everyone gets fired, or decides to make a radical change at some point. Everyone suffers setbacks. — Tom Freston
God be praised for his gracious long suffering towards me in sparing my life so long. Grant, gracious God, that I may make a good use of the time that thou mayest be pleased yet to grant me for repentance. — Patrick Gordon
Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it’s not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face. — Fannie Flagg
Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. — William Styron
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. — Alan Perlis
Unless and until our society recognizes cyber bullying for what it is, the suffering of thousands of silent victims will continue. — Anna Maria Chavez
Suffering passes, while love is eternal. That’s a gift that you have received from God. Don’t waste it. — Laura Ingalls Wilder
Well, pioneers always suffer. I don’t care who is the first to embark upon things. For instance, settlers that settled the West, Western Canada and the U.S… they went though hell doing it, but it had to be done — Bobby Hull
It is true that I have had heartache and tragedy in my life. These are things none of us avoids. Suffering is the price of being alive. — Judy Collins
Everyone suffers some injustice in life, and what better motivation than to help others not suffer in the same way. — Bella Thorne
Suffering from dysentery at sea was no picnic. — Pamela Stephenson
Suffering without understanding in this life is a heap worse than suffering when you have at least the grain of an idea what it’s all for. — Mary Ellen Chase
The most wonderful study of mankind is man. Relieving human suffering and diffusing universal knowledge is humanitarian. — Daniel D. Palmer
Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other. — Albert Pike
When public access to voting is impaired or when public confidence in voting is diluted, democracy suffers and our freedom is less secure. — DeForest Soaries
Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium. — Thomas Sydenham
God wants us to know that life is a series of beginnings, not endings. Just as graduations are not terminations, but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process, and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all, suffering will cease. — Bernie Siegel
We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place. — Daniel J. Boorstin
Congress suffers a great deal of criticism for its partisan acrimony. But while we may disagree politically, and air our opposition in this chamber, it is the conversation behind the scenes that cements and defines our relationships. — Kay Bailey Hutchison
The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful – my personal life suffers. — Al Pacino
The Great Spirit will not make me suffer because I am ignorant. He will put me in a place where I shall be better off than in this world. — Red Cloud
One morning, in February 1986, out of nowhere, I experienced a realization. In an instant, I discovered that when I believed my stressful thoughts, I suffered, but when I questioned them, I didn’t suffer. — Byron Katie
Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can’t deliver good service from unhappy employees. — Tony Hsieh
Neuroscience has proven that similar areas of the brain are activated both in the person who suffers and in the one who feels empathy. Thus, empathic suffering is a true experience of suffering. — Matthieu Ricard
I realize that I live on the bubble of insanity. I feel the weight of human suffering, loneliness and despair on me all the time. It’s not getting easier; if anything, it’s always right on the edge of my skin. — Erwin McManus
Ascetics and fakirs come to mitigate human suffering; to heal us and lead us on the path. They put up with criticism; they go through many worldly trials. Some of them have even become martyrs for our sake. But they have done all this with a smile and with gratitude to God. Hence sacrifice is a great virtue. — Dada Vaswani
Life is suffering. Life is not resistance to suffering. The point of life is to suffer. This is why we’re here: We’re here to suffer. I believe in a higher power that compassionately allows suffering for us as a race, to grow and mature. — Rainn Wilson
If you suffer from depression, anything that makes you feel has to the most important thing in your life, because it’s the only thing that can save you. — Siobhan Fahey
If we have been brought up with the idea that life is for suffering and sacrifice, then of course we would seek death to escape this ‘vale of tears’. — Claude Vorilhon
Brothers in suffering, brothers in resistance, brothers in ideals and conviction. It is now our duty to further strengthen this bond in order to secure this hard-won freedom for future generations. — Guy Verhofstadt
All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for. — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on His sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by His righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation. There must be atonement made for sin according to the righteousness of God. The person to make this atonement must be God and man. — John Wycliffe
I believe that present day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive — Konrad Lorenz
Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and contrives presumptuous deeds. — Hesiod
