This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.
Athol Fugard, born Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard
We compound our suffering by victimizing each other.
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
What is the greatest evil of suffering? Not the suffering itself but our rebellion against it, the state of interior revolt which so often accompanies it.
Fatima Jinna, also known as Madr-e-Millat, mother of the nation
No individual or people can achieve anything without industry, suffering and sacrifice.
Individual | Industry | People | Sacrifice | Suffering |
Mahāyāna Religious Ideal "Great Vehicle" NULL
The cause of all suffering is rooted in desire. If the desire is extinguished suffering has no foot hold.
Mary Lyon, fully Mary Mason Lyon
Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought.
Paula Ripple, fully Paula Ripple Comin
Neither power nor wealth, neither education nor ability, neither gifts of creativity nor stores of human energy can insure against the reality that suffering will be our companion at some time during our journey. It is a presence as inseparable from the human condition as food and oxygen are from human life. It is part of our legacy.
Ability | Creativity | Education | Energy | Journey | Life | Life | Power | Reality | Suffering | Time | Wealth | Will |
Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
The Buddha, that is now “Awakened One,” diagnosed the human condition in the following way. Life is out of balance and characterized by suffering because all things are impermanent, and yet we desire things as if they were permanent. We each view our own self as if it too were permanent and completely independent from our selves, and so we think of our self as competing for those things with other discrete selves. Everything that we desire will ultimately pass away – we cannot hold on to anything in the end, not even our own bodies and minds – so our inappropriate desires are frustrated and we suffer, only to be reborn again into anew life of desire and suffering. To break the cycle of rebirth (samsara), we must overcome our ignorance about the true nature of things, cut the root of desire, and give up attachment to self, for we are anatman, no-self.
Balance | Desire | Ignorance | Life | Life | Nature | Self | Suffering | Will | Following | Think |
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Inevitable | Pain | Suffering |
Full, rich and abounding health is the normal and the natural condition of life. Anything else is an abnormal condition, and abnormal conditions as a rule come through perversions. God never created sickness, suffering and disease; they are man’s own creations. They come through his violating laws under which he lives. So used are we to seeing them that we come gradually, if not to think of them as natural, then to look on them as a matter of course.
Abnormal | Disease | God | Health | Life | Life | Man | Rule | Suffering | God | Think |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Ambition | Character | Experience | Quiet | Soul | Success | Suffering | Vision | Ambition | Trial |
The Western world is now suffering from the limited moral outlook of the three previous generations. Also the assumption of the bare valuelessness of mere matter led to a lack of reverence in the treatment of natural or aesthetic beauty…