Sufferers Quotes

• Job never saw why he suffered, but he saw God, and that was enough.

  Timothy Keller

  Bible, God, Christian

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• History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery.

  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

  Peace, Freedom, Tyrants

  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1949). “Labor's Own William Z. Foster: A Communist's Fifty Years of Working-class Leadership and Struggle”, New York : New Century Publishers

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• The mental suffering you create is always some form of non-acceptance,
  some form of unconscious resistance to what is.
  On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgement.
  The intensity of the suffering depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Acceptance, Thinking

  41 Copy quote

• Its unfortunate and I really wish I wouldn't have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They're kinder.

  Emma Thompson

  Kindness, People, Suffering

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• Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace, to have meaning for many who have known only suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as freedom and human dignity - a steadily better life. If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long-starved, forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged and the undernourished, must begin to realize without delay the promise of a new day and a new life.

  Ralph Bunche

  Education, Peace, Freedom

  "Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time". Ralph Bunche's Nobel lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1950.

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  Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Inspirational, Sad, Pain

  Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2014). “The 10 Greatest Books of All Time”, p.262, Google Publishing

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• Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.

  Dorothy Rowe

  Inspirational, Depression, Depressing

  Dorothy Rowe (2003). “Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison”, p.1, Psychology Press

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• All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.

  Peter Singer

  Encouragement, Nature, Animal

  "Peter Singer" by Ed Vulliamy, www.theguardian.com. February 14, 2009.

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• A suffering person does not need a lecture - he needs a listener.

  Billy Graham

  Suffering, Doe, Needs

  Twitter post from Jul 24, 2015

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• We declare that a great number of those who are condemned to eternal punishment suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those mysteries of faith which must be known and believed in order to be numbered among the elect.

  Pope Benedict XIV

  Ignorance, Punishment, Numbers

  50 Copy quote

• No one was ever called by God to greater suffering than God's only begotten Son.

  R. C. Sproul

  Son, Suffering, Greater

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• The best people often have terrible lives. Job is one example, and Jesus—the ultimate ‘Job,’ the only truly, fully innocent sufferer — is another.

  Timothy Keller

  God, Jesus, Jobs

  Timothy Keller (2013). “Walking with God through Pain and Suffering”, p.93, Penguin

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• There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

  George Eliot

  Peace, Morning, Pain

  "Felix Holt, the Radical". Book by George Eliot. Introductory chapter, 1866.

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• Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love,' is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is, and the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel that passion slip away No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.

  Julian Fellowes

  Passion, Being In Love, Reality

  6 Copy quote

• A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.

  Joseph Addison

  Nature, Anger, Evil

  Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd (1811). “Remarks on Italy. The Tatler”, p.323

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• ...we cannot stand idly by now, as the Nation is urged to embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.

  Durward Gorham Hall

  Adventure, Medicine, Government

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• Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride and have no prospect of great conquests; for them the easy prey - and that is what all who suffer are - is enchanting.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pain, Pride, Feelings

  "Political writings of Friedrich Nietzsche: an edited anthology".

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• It’s not the body that people love, but the soul. The body is a temporary vehicle. Without the soul, the body is like a car without a driver. I see through my eyes, smell through my nose, taste through my tongue, hear through my ears, feel through my skin, think through my brain, and love through my heart. But who am I? Who is the witness, enjoyer and sufferer that activates my body?

  Radhanath Swami

  Eye, Heart, Thinking

  Radhanath Swami (2016). “The Journey Home”, p.150, Simon and Schuster

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• 'T is hers to pluck the amaranthine flower Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.

  William Wordsworth

  Faith, Flower, Wind

  William Wordsworth (1851). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth ...”, p.180

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• Personal finances are like people’s personal health, crucial and tragic to the sufferer but tedious to the listener.

  Thomas Keneally

  People, Finance, Tragic

  Thomas Keneally (2008). “Searching for Schindler”, Hodder & Stoughton

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• Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it.

  William James

  Courage, Attitude, Fear

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• Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Prayer, Regret, Self

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• Kindness is the visible expression of a feeling and merciful heart; it is the going forth of a tender and susceptible mind; it claims kindred with the human race; it is all ear to listen-all heart to feel-all eye to examine and to weep-all hand and foot to relieve; it invites the sufferer with kind words, and sends him not empty away.

  John Angell James

  Kindness, Heart, Eye

  John Angell James (1828). “Christian charity explained; or, The influence of religion upon temper stated; in an exposition of the thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians”, p.95

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• The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

  James Richardson

  Philosophical, Suffering, May

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• Who would not rather be the sufferer than the defrauder?

  Samuel Richardson

  Men, Honest, Honest Man

  "The Works of Samuel Richardson: With a Sketch of His Life and Writings".

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