This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.
Punishment | Reward | Suffering |
The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves “inside the skin” of the other.
Ability | Compassion | Love | Suffering | Understanding |
Theologia Germanica, aka Theologia Deutsch or Teutsch NULL
God in eternity is without contradiction, suffering and grief, and nothing can hurt or vex him of all that is or befalleth. But with God, when he is made Man, it is otherwise.
Contradiction | Eternity | God | Grief | Man | Nothing | Suffering |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
Knowledge | Life | Life | Loneliness | Longing | Love | Mankind | Mockery | Pain | Pity | Poverty | Search | Suffering | World |
By keeping your focus on spiritual elevation you can minimize suffering about worldly matters.
Dmitri Shostakovich, fully Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich
Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment.
It is crucial to understand and to gain the conviction that the laws of cause and effect govern the universe and all beings. … There are only two way to erase the trace left by a harmful act: either by going through the experience of suffering that is its natural consequence, or by purifying it with the appropriate antidotes before the appearance of its dire effects.
Appearance | Cause | Experience | Suffering | Universe | Govern | Understand |
There is a field of energy that permeates the universe. This is understood by science, and now what we're beginning to discover is that field of energy is alive. One of its qualities is sentience or consciousness, and we can interact with that field. We're not just closed off in our physical bodies. We have the capacity to interact with the larger field of consciousness; it permeates our lives and touches us day-in and day-out. If there is needless suffering happening in the world, it tinges and colors the ocean of consciousness that we swim in, and we imbibe this daily. So, if we can create a world without undue suffering--one where we're not killing off all of these species and harming one another--it will change the atmosphere of our lives.
Beginning | Capacity | Change | Consciousness | Day | Energy | Qualities | Science | Suffering | Universe | Will | World |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
Effort | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Suffering | Will | Worth |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Those who accept what they suffer have no suffering of the will, and thus they are in peace.
Gluttons no longer gorge themselves; they are simply suffering from one of a variety of eating disorders.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
Experience | Individual | Progress | Suffering |