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
There is nothing wrong with God’s creation. Mystery and suffering only exist in the mind.
-Ramana Maharshi "Ramana Maharshi"
I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
-Colette
The reward of suffering is experience.
-Harry S. Truman
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
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"
God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.
-Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
There are sufferings that have lost their memory and do not remember why they are suffering.
-Antonio Porchia
"Voces (Voices)"
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
All sacrifice and suffering is redemptive. It is used to either teach the individual or to help others. Nothing is by chance.
-Arthur J. Russell
