This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone — better jobs, health care, and so forth — there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are met — in my utopia, anyway — life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking.
Better | Delusion | Health | Insight | Life | Life | Need | Security | Spirit | Struggle | Suffering | Vision | Talent | Blessed | Happiness |
If we are willing to open our eyes to the suffering of the child we will soon see that it lies within us as adults either to turn the newborn into a monsters by the way we treat them, or to let them grow up into feeling -- and therefore responsible -- human beings.
One serious consequence of this early adaptation is the impossibility of consciously experiencing certain feelings of his own (such as jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, impotence, anxiety) either in childhood or later in adulthood. This is all the more tragic since we are here concerned with lively people who are especially capable of differentiated feelings. This is noticeable at those times in their analyses when they describe childhood experiences that were free of conflict. Usually these concern experiences with nature, which they could enjoy without hurting the mother or making her feel insecure, without reducing her power or endangering her equilibrium. But it is remarkable how these attentive, lively, and sensitive children who can, for example, remember exactly how they discovered the sunlight in bright grass at the age of four, yet at eight might be unable to notice anything or to show any curiosity about the pregnant mother or, similarly, were not at all jealous at the birth of a sibling. Again, at the age of two, one of them could be left alone while soldiers had been good, suffering this quietly and without crying. They have all developed the art of not experiencing feelings, for a child can only experience his feeling when there is somebody there who accepts him fully, understands and supports him. If that is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love, or that of her substitute, then he cannot experience these feelings secretly just for himself but fails to experience them at all. But nevertheless....something remains.
Age | Art | Birth | Childhood | Children | Curiosity | Experience | Feelings | Impossibility | Mother | People | Power | Risk | Suffering | Art | Child |
Yonah ben Abraham Gerondi, known as Yonah of Gerona and Rabbenu Yonah
There are two main benefits from suffering. It serves as an atonement for transgressions, and as an incentive for us to improve our behavior. When you improve because of your suffering, appreciate the suffering since you have gained immensely because of it.
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
Indeed, the crowning proof of their valor and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.
Harm | Strength | Superiority | Valor | Valor |
Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya, aka Rabi'a of Basra or Basri, Saint Rabia of Basra
The source of my suffering and loneliness is deep in my heart. This is a disease no doctor can cure. Only Union with the Friend can cure it. Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word My choicest hours Are the hours I spend with You – O God, I can’t live in this world Without remembering You– How can I endure the next world Without seeing Your face? I am a stranger in Your country And lonely among Your worshippers: This is the substance of my complaint.
The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.
Harmony | Intelligence | Life | Life | Question | Superiority | Thinking |
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
In this world it is impossible for everything to go the way one wants it. Those who ignore the true, enduring purpose of life, satisfying only their material desires, are doomed to a life of constant pain and suffering without having any way to console themselves.
Life | Life | Pain | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Wants | World |
A doctor would have said I was suffering from depression. Everything I have read since suggests this was the case. But when you are in the grip of something like that it doesn’t usefully announce itself. No. what happens is you sit in a dark, dark cave, and you wait. If you are lucky there is a pinprick of light, and if you are especially lucky that pinprick will grow larger and larger, until one day the cave appears to slip behind, and just like that you find yourself in daylight and free. This is how it happened for me.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
If you are a person of faith, you will find it easier to repent. True repentance must balance the sin. You have to endure pain and suffering in equal measure to the enjoyment derived from the sin.
Balance | Enjoyment | Pain | Repentance | Suffering | Will |
The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country. It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity... it has by its nature a field of its own. [Clara Barton]
Aims | Deliberation | Nature | Organization | Suffering | Deliberation |
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
You may experience great pain when you regret your sins. You may feel deeply ashamed when contemplating God's exalted greatness. You may cringe in fear of punishment. Whatever form it takes , this suffering is caused by your very fear of God, and "The fear of God increases one's days." Your very pain and anxiety add to your days.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Experience | Fear | God | Pain | Regret | Suffering | God |
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
But one who has faith and believes in God has a very good life. Even when trouble strikes, he can still fortify himself with his trust in God, because he knows that everything is for the best. Either this suffering will cleanse him of his sins or eventually bring him some great benefit. For God's intention is certainly for good. Therefore the man of faith always has a good life both in this world and the next.
Faith | God | Good | Intention | Life | Life | Man | Suffering | Trust | Will | World | Trouble | God |
The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of a touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you just as you are and finding in you an unsuspected goodness. Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.
Capacity | Grace | Important | People | Power | Present | Strength | Suffering | Wholeness | Wisdom | Understand |
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
As you look at many people's lives, you see that their suffering is in a way gratifying, for they are comfortable in it. They make their lives a living hell, but a familiar one.
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
Somehow I figure that why we take incarnation is because we learn about two things in this life: suffering and love.