God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.
-William Nicholson
"Shadowlands"
Quotations
Suffering
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
-Helen Keller
Behold the man who shields his family from all suffering. Has not his body become a willing vessel for affliction? Without good men to hold it up, the family house will fall when misfortune descends.
-Scriptures "Tirukkural 103:1029-1030"
All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
-Helen Keller
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
-Paulo Coelho
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.
-Charles Dickens
"Great Expectations"
You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.
-Hermann Hesse
Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.
-Meister Eckhart "Meister Eckhart"
It's easy to look at people and make quick judgements about them, their present and their pasts, but you'd be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceburg hidden from sight. And more often then not, it's lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of their soul.
-Sherrilyn Kenyon
"Acheron"
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
-Saint Augustine of Hippo
