Because of our kinship in suffering, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.
To each his suff'rings: all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan, The tender for another's pain; Th' unfeeling for his own.
All religions are designed to teach us how to live, joyfully, serenely, and kindly, in the midst of suffering.
To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.
If no one remembers a misdeed or names it publically, it remains invisible. To the observer, its victim is not a victim and its perpetrator is not a perpetrator; both are misperceived because the suffering of the one and the violence of the other go unseen. A double injustice occurs-the first when the original deed is done and the second when it disappears.
Another condition can be attained. . . a condition of ecstasy. A condition so far from what the people of planet Earth experience it's not even discussable.
In the days of witchcraft it used to be believed that if one person secretly made a waxen image of another and stuck pins into the image, its counterpart would suffer tortures, and that if the image was melted the person would die. This superstition is almost realized in the relation between the private self and its social reflection. They seem to separate but are darkly united, and what is done to the one is done to the other.
It is through suffering that learning comes.
Musicians have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.
The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.
I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that's patrotism.
The suffering caused by the terrorists is the real torture.
It is better to suffer injustice than to do it.
When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious.
I'd rather suffer 1000 truths than enjoy 1 lie.
As individuals, we know that suffering is temporary, and hope is eternal.
Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.
It is very difficult also to sacrifice one's suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.
A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge, and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning.