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Suffering quotes

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“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.” Michel de Montaigne, “The Essays of Michel de Montaigne” - 1580

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.” Michel de Montaigne, “The Essays of Michel de Montaigne” - 1580

“To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.” Marcel Proust, “Swann's Way” - 1913

“Well, quoth Friar John, as good sit still as rise up and fall; what cannot be cured must be endured.” François Rabelais, “Gargantua and Pantagruel” - 1534

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Crime and Punishment” - 1867

“To become the spectator of one's own life . . . is to escape the suffering of life.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“'What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“no matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” Haruki Murakami, “Kafka on the Shore” - 2002

“The things we love destroy us every time” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.” Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables” - 1862

“Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.” Haruki Murakami, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” - 2007

“what we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.” Haruki Murakami, “Dance Dance Dance” - 1994

“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death.” Albert Camus, “The Fall” - 1956

“if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Crime and Punishment” - 1867

“why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.” Robert Louis Stevenson, “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” - 1886

“As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.” Jack London, “The Star Rover” - 1915

“The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” - 1774

“suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Notes from Underground” - 1864

“suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.” Charles Dickens, “Great Expectations” - 1861

“Ay me! sad hours seem long.” William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” - 1597

“We do not suffer by accident.” Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice” - 28 January 1813

“Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man. Or a fish, he thought.” Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea” - 1952

“He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely.” Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist” - 1838

“Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.” Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables” - 1862

“They suffer, of course ... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“And how are the other weak ones to blame, because they could not endure what the strong have endured?” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” - 1774

“For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering?” Albert Camus, “The Plague” - 1947

“Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot?” Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot” - 1953

“The apartment faces an alley and is entered by a fire escape, a structure whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth, for all of these huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation.” Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie” - 1944

“In short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that whoever came to see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate with her in her sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery.” Marcel Proust, “Swann's Way” - 1913

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.” Oscar Wilde, “De Profundis” - 1905

“As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.” John Green, “Paper Towns” - 2008

“When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.” John Green, “Looking for Alaska” - 2005

“Suffering . . . Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem.” John Green, “Looking for Alaska” - 2005

“'Does it hurt very much to die? ' Well, sweetheart, I tell her, yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Survivor” - 1999

“Maybe people have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Diary” - 2003

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian...” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are...” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender Is the Night” - 1934

“It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.” Neil Gaiman, “American Gods” - 2001

“Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Crime and Punishment” - 1867

“Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form...” Adam Smith, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” - 1759

“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.” Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” - 1877

“Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.” Honoré de Balzac, “Father Goriot” - 1835

“it's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering, I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence.” Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” - 1957

“They’re a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It’s said that without whisky to soak and soften the world, they’d kill themselves.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

Related topics

death pain love life fear happiness indifference weakness man cowardice heart humanity hell change strength men wisdom mind human nature destiny

Related authors

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (8)
Haruki Murakami (4)
John Green (3)
Marcel Proust (3)
Oscar Wilde (2)
George R. R. Martin (2)
Charles Dickens (2)
Victor Hugo (2)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2)
W. Somerset Maugham (2)
Michel de Montaigne (2)
Albert Camus (2)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
William Shakespeare (1)
Jane Austen (1)
Ernest Hemingway (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
Charlotte Brontë (1)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1)
H. G. Wells (1)

Related sources

The Brothers Karamazov (4)
Swann's Way (3)
Crime and Punishment (3)
A Game of Thrones (2)
Les Misérables (2)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (2)
Looking for Alaska (2)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2)
Romeo and Juliet (1)
Pride and Prejudice (1)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1)
The Old Man and the Sea (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Oliver Twist (1)
The Alchemist (1)
Anna Karenina (1)
Father Goriot (1)
Of Human Bondage (1)
The Plague (1)