The trees come up to my window like the yearning voice of the dumb earth.

Separation from the wife, disgrace from one's own people, an enemy saved in battle, service to a wicked king, poverty, and a mismanaged assembly: these six kinds of evils, if afflicting a person, burn him even without fire.

That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.

You feel your strength in the experience of pain.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.