SUFFERING
some quotations

"In the central cases of physical pain, then, it appears that at least part of what is bad about our condition is the way it makes us feel. Here there seem to be no problems with a purely mental state account, no counterpart to the experience machine that could bring us to think that we are being deceived by mere appearances. [...] If I am suffering physical pain then I can be quite wrong about the organic cause of my affliction, or even about whether it has one, without that error diminishing in the slightest either the reality of my pain or its impact on the quality of my life."
Wayne Sumner
(Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, p. 100)

"We stand, as it were, on the shore, and see multitudes of our fellow beings struggling in the water, stretching forth their arms, sinking, drowning, and we are powerless to assist them."
Felix Adler

"The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven."
John Milton

"All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals"
Peter Singer

“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive”
William Somerset Maugham

“Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity”
William Wordsworth

“Life is suffering.”
Gautama Siddharta [Buddha]

"We have all sufficient strength to endure the misfortunes of others"
François de la Rochefoucauld

"I cannot stand being awake, the pain is too much."
Spike Milligan

"When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same."
Toni Morrison

“Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.”
Agatha Christie

"The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain."
Aristotle

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation ? A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind."
Henry David Thoreau

“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”
C.S. Lewis

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame."
Antonia S. Byatt

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.”
Woody Allen

"Three passions simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life; the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
Betrand Russell

"Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much."
Marcel Proust

"Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another."
Arthur Schopenhauer

“Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?”
Bruce Springsteen

"There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.”
Anthony de Mello

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.”
Albert Schweitzer

"We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other."
Sigmund Freud

"There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning."
Elisabeth KüBler-Ross

"Happiness and misery depend not on how high up or low down you are - they depend not upon these, but on the direction in which you are tending”
Samuel Butler

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.”
William S. Burroughs

"Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings."
William Hazlitt

"Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt."
Dr Samuel Johnson

"In separateness lies the world's great misery, in compassion lies the world's true strength.”
Gautama Siddharta [Buddha]

“Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven”
John Donne

"One must really have suffered oneself to help others."
Mother Theresa

"Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies
Between the pain of hell and Paradise."
George William Russell (used pseudonym "AE")
Janus

"It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering."
Robert Lynd

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

"Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time -- is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next."
Cesare Pavese

"Narcotics cannot still the tooth
That Nibbles at the soul”
Emily Dickinson

"I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within."
Louise Nevelson

"Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise."
George Orwell

"Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead."
Tennessee Williams

"Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish in our own."
Francis Thompson

"When we are flat on our backs there is no way to look but up."
Roger W. Babson

"I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another."
Jean Jacques Rousseau

HOME
Superhappiness?
The End of Suffering
Quotations on Utopia
Quotations about Paradise
Quotations about Happiness
Better Never To Have Been?
The Abolitionist Project (podcast; 30 MB)