Dukkha Suffering Quotes

#1. We no longer view the world through the dim mist of justice and reward, but through the bright lens of resurrection, where suffering leads to glory and slaughtered lambs rule the earth. #Quote by Preston Sprinkle

#2. It seems to me that everyone on this planet whom I know or have worked with is suffering from self-hatred and guilt to one degree or another. The more self-hatred and guilt we have, the less our lives work. The less self-hatred and guilt we have, the better our lives work, on all levels. #Quote by Louise L. Hay

#3. One does not expect to be comfortable in prison. As a matter of fact, one's mental suffering is so much greater than any common physical distress that the latter is almost forgotten. #Quote by Emmeline Pankhurst

#4. If you own up to your mistakes, you don't suffer as much. But that's a tough lesson to learn. #Quote by Lee Iacocca

#5. Pain is inevitable, it eventually touches us all. Suffering is optional. #Quote by Sean Stephenson

#6. If we read the text alone, assuming that the word 'cross' can only derive its meaning from the later death of Jesus, then its appearance in the text must be an anachronism read back into the story after the crucifixion. This conclusion becomes unnecessary if the cross, being the standard punishment for insurrection or for the refusal to confess Caesar's lordship, already had a clear definition in the listener's awareness. 'Take up your cross' may even have been a standard phrase of Zealot recruiting. The disciple's cross is not a metaphor for self-mortification or even generally innocent suffering; 'if you follow me, your fate will be like mine, the fate of a revolutionary. You cannot follow me without facing that fate. #Quote by John Howard Yoder

#7. Serving and suffering are paired in the teaching and life of our Lord. One does not come without the other. And what servant is greater than The Lord? #Quote by J. Oswald Sanders

#8. There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, 'Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.' The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance. #Quote by Olive Schreiner

#9. Social pain does not trigger endorphin the way physical pain does, except for a brief laugh or cry. A broken heart doesn't trigger endorphin the way a broken bone does. In the past, daily life held so much physical pain that social pain was secondary.Today, we spend less time suffering the pain of physical labor, predator attack, or deteriorating disease. Our attention is free to focus on the pain of disappointed social expectations. This leaves us feeling that life is more painful even though it's less painful than in the past. 33 #Quote by Anonymous

#10. But in neurotic anxiety, two conditions are necessary: (1) the threat must be to a vital value; and (2) the threat must be present in juxtaposition with another threat so that the individual cannot avoid one threat without being confronted by another. In patterns of neurotic anxiety, the values held essential to the individual's existence as a personality are in contradiction with each other. #Quote by Rollo May

#11. She knew where they were going. She had visited Kilmainham Gaol before, wrapped in its brooding walls lest the ghosts it housed should break free and point accusing fingers at those who used the reins of power to drive the horses of personal ambition. It was a sad place where the residue of human suffering lingered – it had no place else to go. #Quote by Peter Murphy

#12. Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst. #Quote by Miguel De Cervantes

#13. I don't want to be ordinary. I'm willing to do the work. I'm willing to suffer the indignities of comedy because I want to be great. I don't want to just be good. I want to be great. #Quote by Judd Apatow

#14. These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while. #Quote by Victor Hugo

#15. And right then, I come the closest I think I ever will to understanding why Knight left. He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him. He was never happy in his youth -- not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. It made him feel constantly nervous. There was no place for him, and instead of suffering further, he escaped. It wasn't so much a protest as a quest; he was like a refugee from the human race. The forest offered him shelter (p 182) #Quote by Michael Finkel

#16. Odd how many suffering members of humankind have faced eternity obsessed with their bowels, their bedsores, or the meagerness of their diets. #Quote by Dan Simmons

#17. Eons of suffering, brutality and struggle have paved the way through the corridors of time to create this moment, where you exist as an exalted expression of life. #Quote by Bryant McGill

#18. I can manage my own pain. I can drink. I can go to the doctor and get a prescription. I can exercise. I can write a story about it. I've done it a million times! But I don't want to see the people I love tortured and suffering. #Quote by Chuck Palahniuk

#19. You've made all her dreams come true. The moment she holds Noah in her arms for the first time any of the pain and suffering she experienced will just evaporate in an instant. And you will be the one who gave that to her. #Quote by Katie Ashley

#20. As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can. #Quote by Virginia Woolf

#21. Got a kick for a dog
Beggin' for Love
I gotta have my suffering
So that I can have my cross
I know a cat named Easter
He says will you ever learn
You're just an empty cage girl
If you kill the bird
I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets
looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets
I've been raising up my hands
Drive another nail in
Got enough guilt to start
my own religion #Quote by Tori Amos

#22. My princess," began Mara, then found she could not speak the crushing phrases. "His Highness sends his warmest regards," she finished.
She had the satisfaction of seeing Ianni's face come back to life; the great dark eyes lost their look of suffering and turned hopefully toward the king. Mara turned to him too, well-pleased with her merciful little lie. But one look at his startled face froze the blood in her veins. What a fool she was! Of course, he had understood every word she said.
"Son of Pharaoh, live forever!" she gasped. "I crave pardon-- I could not believe you meant to wound this princess, however lowly--"
"You mean you forgot that I could understand," retorted Thutmose. #Quote by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

#23. All suffering is suffering. As C. S. Lewis said, there is no such thing as "the sum of the world's suffering," an abstraction of the philosophers. There are simply individual people who hurt. And who wonder why God permits it. #Quote by Philip Yancey

#24. I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit. #Quote by Vincent Van Gogh

#25. Suffering has roused them from the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terrible intoxication. They are now something more than themselves; those we loved were merely happy shadows. #Quote by Georges Duhamel

#26. Some people like to throw objects, such as glasses of water or rocks, but nail painting is more positive. If more world leaders would take it up there would be less overall suffering, in her opinion. #Quote by Margaret Atwood

#27. Master Nathaniel looked at him. The fixed stare, the slightly-open mouth, the rigid motionless body, fettered by a misery too profound for restlessness - how well he knew the state of mind these things expressed! But there must surely be relief in thus allowing the mood to mould the body's attitude to its own shape.

He had no need now to ask his son for explanations. He knew so well both that sense of emptiness, that drawing in of the senses (like the antennae of some creature when danger is no longer imminent, but there), so that the physical world vanishes, while you yourself at once swell out to fill its place, and at the same time shrink to a millionth part of your former bulk, turning into a mere organ of suffering without thought and without emotions; he knew also that other phase, when one seems to be flying from days and months, like a stag from its hunters - like the fugitives, on the old tapestry, from the moon.

But when it is another person who is suffering in this way, in spite of one's pity, how trivial it all seems! How certain one is of being able to expel the agony with reasoning and persuasion! #Quote by Hope Mirrlees

#28. They say: sufferings are misfortunes, said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us. #Quote by Leo Tolstoy

#29. She has many names and many visages. She has loves and desires. She dares to dream of a future for herself and her people, despite living under the shadow of the gun, the acrid odour of devastation clogging her nostrils. For the most part she is stoic, for the garrison is also her home, her workplace, her field and her playground. Sometimes, she cries out in anguish, but the sound is muted, for there are few who want to hear. Her suffering and courage would be the stuff of legend, if only legend consisted of ordinary women carrying out extraordinary acts, going about the daily business of survival, displaying super-human strength in countering a mighty military juggernaut. #Quote by Laxmi Murthy

#30. He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely. #Quote by Charles Dickens

#31. You don't have to be emaciated or vomiting to be suffering. All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. #Quote by Portia De Rossi

#32. Other people may well not find it relevant that you have forgiven yourself, but you need to know that it is not for them anyway. Everything at the moment is wholly about you. #Quote by Stephen Richards

#33. Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense. #Quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley

#34. In Dzokchen, compassion is much more than the virtue of loving kindness. Nor does the word compassion in the Dzokchen context denote its English etymological meaning, "suffering together" or "empathy," although both these meanings may be inferred. Essentially, compassion indicates an open and receptive mind responding spontaneously to the exigencies of an ever-changing field of vibration to sustain the optimal awareness that serves self-and-others' ultimate desire for liberation and well-being. The conventional meaning of compassion denotes the latter, active part of this definition, and, due to the accretions of Christian connotation, response is limited to specifically virtuous activity. "Responsiveness" defines the origin and cause of selfless activity that can encompass all manner of response. On this nondual Dzokchen path virtue is the effect, not the cause; the ultimate compassionate response is whatever action maximizes Knowledge - loving kindness is the automatic function of Awareness. #Quote by Keith Dowman

#35. Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil. #Quote by Albert Camus

#36. Inherited collective mind-patterns ... have kept humans in bondage to suffering for eons. #Quote by Eckhart Tolle

#37. You care about the deficit because it allows you to do things you need to do to help people who are suffering. #Quote by Christina Romer

#38. Talk about a group that is REALLY suffering, it's women in America. To be a woman in America is just to live under this sword of wage inequality. Ask her in 20 years from now, "Patricia Arquette, you had the chance to talk to millions of people in over 100 countries. What did you decide to talk about? With women being traded as sex slaves in the tens of thousands under Islamic rule, in Africa and the middle East, and WHAT did you decide to talk about?"
Wage inequality in America.
You're a moral fool.
If in fact women really got 77 cents to the dollar, why would any employer hire men? If I can get the exact same work and save almost 25%, you would have to be an idiot to hire a man!
It's all nonsense. It's all a lie. #Quote by Dennis Prager

#39. Peaks are a process in which confidence is tested over and over before investors ultimately concede that they were suffering from "hopeful delusion. #Quote by Peter Atwater

#40. Every bit of pain can be a blessing if we choose to listen to its message. #Quote by Vironika Tugaleva

#41. I know i am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering. #Quote by Mother Teresa

#42. In human rights and peacemaking, it's really about having a solid concrete goal - the reduction of human suffering somewhere in the world - and then doing what is required to get that goal achieved. #Quote by John Prendergast

#43. Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice. #Quote by Plato

#44. Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing. #Quote by Eugene H. Peterson

#45. Pity . . . is more properly bestowed in cases of involuntary suffering than of crime and offences committed voluntarily and with malice aforethought. #Quote by Antiphon

#46. Without out suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption. All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual destitution, must be redeemed. And we must share it, for only by being one with them can we redeem them by bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God. #Quote by Mother Teresa

#47. An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in the world. #Quote by Madeleine L'Engle

#48. To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life #Quote by Vincent Van Gogh