You are outside life, you are ...

You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.

~Antonin Artaud~

What was hard to suffer is swe...

What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.

~Seneca~

What really raises one's indig...

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche~

We are threatened with sufferi...

We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.

~Sigmund Freud~

We are healed of a suffering o...

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

~Marcel Proust~

To choose a hardship for ourse...

To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide.

~Cesare Pavese~

There is no true love save in ...

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man -- that is, the more divine -- the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.

~Miguel De Unamuno~

Rather suffer than die is man'...

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

~Jean de la Fontaine~

No pain, no palm; no thorns, n...

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

~William Penn~

It requires more courage to su...

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

~Napoleon~

Is suffering so very serious? ...

Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime -- I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful. I agree that it's hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It's no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.

~Sidonie Gabrielle Colette~

I reckon that the sufferings o...

I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

~Romans~

I have trodden the winepress a...

I have trodden the winepress alone.

~Bible~

Every age, every culture, ever...

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

~Hermann Hesse~