3,815 Quotes About Suffering

They called our arrangement a 'Death Pact' - but, really, that's not a phrase that tells you anything important. It's just the kind of phrase that sells newspapers. For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, that his suffering was not going to become unendurable (...).

I'd never known that I could feel this broken and whole at once.

If every child grows up watching their parents lend a hand to those in need, all suffering will fade within a century.

Some days, she was pain incarnate. She would suffer all day and he would try to cheer her up and fail, and he felt like an irrelevant gnat.

At the moment of his awakening at the foot of the bodhi tree, the Buddha declared, How strange—all beings possess the capacity to be awakened, to understand, to love, and to be free, yet they don’t know it and they allow themselves to be carried away on the ocean of suffering.

A person whom encounters disproportionate grief is likely to either capitulate to madness or ascend to a higher level of cognitive awareness.

It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue.

We grant that which is ‘right’ this impenetrable notion, that it will prevail even when the worst of life repeatedly comes crashing against it. And when that which is ‘right’ succumbs to the assaults of that which is not, we must remember that evil may have had its day, but it’s just a day.

Night after night I inflict abuse on myself, even drawing blood. It's strangely calming. I know the pain will stop whenever I want. I was the one who decided when it should start; I will be the one to decide when it stops. However much it hurts, I draw some comfort from the idea that I'm in control.