Suffering Quotes - Page 116

We mustn't romanticize suffering. It can turn people bitter and hard, although it does seem to have been almost indispensable in making people into the kind of leaders that we admire.

There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.

When public access to voting is impaired or when public confidence in voting is diluted, democracy suffers and our freedom is less secure.

Heaven is the experience of being completely present to all that is, all that you are, and all that you have to give. Are you choosing to live in heaven or suffer in hell?

The artist does not have to suffer to show suffering.

It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for their ignoble ones. For nobility is an occasion for pride, the most treacherous of sentiments.

Just as you have the instinctive natural desire to be happy and overcome suffering, so do all sentient beings; just as you have the right to fulfill this innate aspiration, so do all sentient beings. So on what exact grounds do you discriminate?

When we suffer, there will sometimes be mystery. Will there also be faith? Yes, if our attention is focused more on the cross, and on the God of the cross, than on the suffering itself.

Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer.

Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That's true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.

Addiction is the dominant form of a culture that suffers from a superficial spectacle and celebrity-connectivity at its center. It's a form of spiritual emptiness.

Being is a fiction invented by those who suffer from becoming.

Not a few patients, however, suffering from certain forms of mental disorder, regain a high degree of insight into their mental condition in what might be termed a flash of divine enlightenment.

To live forever should not be an obligation. In fact, eternal life should only be for those who wish for it, because if we are depressed and unhappy with our lives, just the idea of living forever is an unbearable source of suffering.

...stories that rise from deep suffering can provide the most potent remedies for past, present, and even future ills.

I love actors. I enjoy their company, and I get excited each and every time they bring a character I've written to life. Every so often a talented actor doesn't hook in correctly to a character; or someone gets lost in a labyrinth of over-complicated thoughts, and the character and play suffer. However, most of the time I find actors either end up doing exactly what was in my head, or sometimes do something even better.

As many suffer from too much as too little.

Unfortunately, I suffer from insomnia, so my bedtime is as soon as I start to feel the least bit sleepy.

That love of the practice of ending suffering will probably be all of the awakening that you would ever desire.

It seems to me that doubt is worse than trial. I had sooner suffer any affliction than be left to question the gospel or my own interest in it.

There is no greater mercy that I know of on earth than good health except it is sickness, and that has often been a greater mercy to me than health.

If every call to Christ and His righteousness is a call to suffering, the converse is equally - every call to suffering is a call to Christ, a promotion, an invitation to come up higher.

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.

About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.

Madhouses are houses made on purpose to cause suffering . . . I cannot stand any longer the screams of these creatures.