Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimps...
He supposed he was one of those unfortunates born with a great capacity for suffering.... He opened his eyes a moment and they were dark with fear, for only one race was run as yet and there might be many others.... Then his newborn courage came back...
No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it pat...
the seriousness of emotional deprivation: It is not difficult to understand how children who have suffered from malnutrition or starvation need food and plenty of care in their bodies are to recover so they can go on to lead normal lives. If, however...
Pointless, needless suffering and pain? I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that was the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.
When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left?
Sickness occurs when we desire what we need and what’s desirable with equal intensity, suffering our lack of perfection as if we were suffering for lack of bread.
To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love. (157)
If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.
We don’t live in a world that suffers from doubt, but one that suffers from certainty, false certainties that compensate for the well of worldly anxieties and worries.
Desire is suffering. A simple equation, and a nice catchphrase. But flipped around, it is more troubling: suffering is desire.
Twas such a useless thing. And so unnecessary. Many had suffered for the actions of a few. Wasn't that always the way of things? The collective suffered for the actions of an inept, ineffectual leader.
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas
Those who suffer suffer because hurt people hurt people, and busy people let it happen. So am I going to be busy or am I going to be brave?
Suffering, he thought later, could rob a man of his empathy, could turn him selfish, could make him depreciate all other sufferers.
In what he suffered, as in all true suffering and in true joy, there was the quality of eternity. He could not believe it would ever end.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.
The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.
The loved one suffers. All loved ones suffer. Love is not enough to prevent this. Love is not enough. Love is enough. The thing that you wished for. Was this it? Here endeth the lesson.
Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.
The cross is the place where heaven meets earth and grace erupts. The cross is the place where Jesus does not simply meet our suffering, but becomes our suffering so as to transform the world.
