Best Suffering Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“The only advantage of knowledge is that it can justify suffering.”

“The beauty of the sea is that it never shows any weakness and never tires of the countless souls that unleash their broken voices into its secret depths.”

“Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.”

“If I were a lesbian, I’d probably be one of those lipstick lesbians, which I of course had in my pocket for touch-ups later.”

“Comfort took a distant second to fashion where footwear was concerned. Unless of course, one was fleeing!”

“Let’s add up what we know. He gravitated toward all things occult. He wanted to be a member of a tight clan with strict rules and secret codes. He craved highly organized social structures, with leaders and followers clearly distinguished.  A group with little appeal to the masses. A group with few members. We know that these Nordic runes fascinated him. And apparently he held that fascination for a long time, given that he added the ‘Hagalaz’ to the message intended for Marshal Pack.”

“[Letter to his wife, Natalia Sedova]”

“Not from Hades' black and universal lake can you lift him. Not by groaning, not by prayers. Yet you run yourself out in a grief with no cure, no time-limit, no measure. It is a knot no one can untie. Why are you so in love with things unbearable?”

“A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.”

“But I couldn’t help thinking—Who the hell eats bats? Probably nothing.”

“From The Other Side, Uncle Roscoe was still exercising his Second Amendment rights. Protecting me from my stalker? Or was his gun going to get me killed?”

“I sat in my brown-belted gi at the painted metal table outside of Einstein’s and Peet’s with Mr. Ho, my Kenpo Karate instructor in his black-belted gi, and my bronze, canine psychologist, wearing his/her Lacoste eyeglasses.”

“Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

“Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.”

“They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?”

“The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you're talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.”

“Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.”

“People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”

“I believe Cerridwen’s story is the truth the faeries have forgotten. They have forgotten how to turn themselves inside out and let suffering grow them into who they were created to be.”

“It is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does of our conduct.”

“When it hurts, observe, life is trying to teach you something.”

“He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.”

“They say that “time assuages,”—”

“And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you”

“This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.”

“When shall I be dead and rid”

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,”

“A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.”

“Ever since third grade you make mushroom clouds out of mushroom soup.”

“This is a class in American Literature and not an arena for extreme full-contact judo”