Suffering - Quotes

All the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy ... could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. - Isaac Asimov

As in labour, the more one doth exercise, the more one is enabled to do, strength growing upon work; so with the use of suffering, men's minds get the habit of suffering, and all fears and terrors are not to them but as a summons to battle, whereof they know beforehand they shall come off victorious. - Sir Philip Sidney

Affliction is a spiritual physic for the soul, and is compared to a furnace, for as gold is tried and purified therein, so men are proved and either purified from their dross, and fitted for good uses, or else entirely burnt up and undone forever. - Wellins Calcott

I marvel now that it was not obvious how inextricable suffering and fear are. It was not until fear left that I noticed, slowly, how it seemed to have taken suffering with it. It took a while to figure out that (for me, anyhow) suffering is mostly caused by fear – not by the circumstances themselves, but by my response to them. - Jan Frazier

The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food – it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on. - George Eliot

If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion. - Eckhart Tolle