This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.

We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

Suffering is a big informer, a big catalyst for creation. You take your sadness, your despair, your sense of injustice, and you put it in your work.

When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.