Suffering Quotes

Mankind is a single body and each nation a part of that body. We must never say "What does it matter to me if some part of the world is ailing?" If there is such an illness, we must concern ourselves with it as though we were having that illness.

The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering- do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness - was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?

I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.

Every step forward is made at the cost of mental and physical pain to someone.

Pity makes suffering contagious.

Pain makes hens and poets cackle.

One is punished best for one's virtues.

Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell.

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.

What makes us heroic? Confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.

Creating-that is the great salvation from suffering.

But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of suffering: that is great, that belongs to greatness.

I climb upon the highest mountains, laughing at all tragedies - whether real or imaginary.