This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"By keeping your focus on spiritual elevation you can minimize suffering about worldly matters." - Zelig Pliskin
"Despair over loneliness will increase the suffering. Looking at the time available as a precious gift will decrease it." - Zelig Pliskin
"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. " - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"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." - Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
"Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment. " - Dmitri Shostakovich, fully Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich
"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." - Duane Elgin
"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." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. " - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"Those who accept what they suffer have no suffering of the will, and thus they are in peace." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"Gluttons no longer gorge themselves; they are simply suffering from one of a variety of eating disorders." - Frank Furedi
"What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering. " - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"The impermanence of all forms is the starting point of Buddhism. The Buddha taught that ‘all compounded things are impermanent’, and that all suffering in the world arises from our trying to cling to fixed forms - objects, people or ideas - instead of accepting the world as it moves and changes. " - Fritjof Capra
"Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"Hell is the suffering of being unable to love. " - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"Pain by itself is merely pain, but the experience of pain couples with an understanding that the pain serves a worthy purpose as suffering. Suffering can be endured because there is a reason for it that is worth the effort. What is more worthy of your pain than the evolution of your soul?" - Gary Zukav
"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." - 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." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
"Above all we must not wish to cling to our suffering. Suffering surely deepens us and enhances our person, but we must not desire to become a deeper self than God wills. To suffer no longer can be a beautiful, perhaps the ultimate sacrifice." - Hans Urs von Balthasar
"The reward of suffering is experience. " - Harry S. Truman
"Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Only with the ending of sorrow there is passion. That is total energy, not limited by thought. So it is important to understand the nature of suffering and the ending of it. The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain, too. Look at it. It is a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain and look at it, be with it, live with it, not get bitter, cynical, but to see the nature of sorrow. There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; you are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes, death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Suffering is there. It is part of life and part of growth; nothing is bad in it. Suffering becomes evil only when it is simply destructive and not creative at all; suffering becomes bad only when you suffer and nothing is gained out of it. But I am telling you the divine can be gained through suffering; then it becomes creative. Darkness is beautiful if the dawn is coming out of it soon; darkness is dangerous if it is endless, leads to no dawn, simply continues and continues and you go on moving in a rut, in a vicious circle. " - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Life, however, can never be reconciled to preconceived thoughts, neither can it be rationalized. Life is not an intelligence, therefore it is neither rational nor logical; it has no cause and no purpose. The attempt to rationalize the suffering that comes to us in life, to show that we have deserved it, and that it is "good for something" ultimately, is therefore doomed to failure; we cannot tame life in this way." - J. J. van der Leeuw
"Do what you are doing now, suffer what you are suffering now; to do all this with holiness, nothing need be changed but your hearts. Sanctity consists in willing what happens to us by God’s order." - John-Pierre de Cassaude
"And if we dare to look into those eyes, then we shall feel their suffering in our hearts. More and more people have seen that appeal and felt it in their hearts. All around the world there is an awakening of understanding and compassion, and understanding that reaches out to help the suffering animals in their vanishing homelands. That embraces hungry, sick, and desperate human beings, people who are starving while the fortunate among us have so much more than we need. And if, one by one, we help them, the hurting animals, the desperate humans, then together we shall alleviate so much of the hunger, fear, and pain in the world. Together we can bring change to the world, gradually replacing fear and hatred with compassion and love. Love for all living beings." - Jane Goodall, fully Dame Jane Morris Goodall, born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall
"Muriel seeks happiness and beauty. Dan informs her that life is a balance between the two, between suffering and laughter, beauty and ugliness. 'There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death. Not happy, Muriel. Say that you have tried to make them CREATE." - Jean Toomer
"The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it." - Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
"Habit accustoms us to everything. What we see too much, we no longer imagine; and it is only imagination which makes us feel the ills of others. It is thus by dint of seeing death and suffering that priests and doctors become pitiless. " - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"In a word, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"To love all mankind, from the greatest to the lowest, a cheerful state of being is required; but in order to see into mankind, into life, and still more into ourselves, suffering is requisite." - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. " - Jerome K. Jerome, fully Jerome Klapka Jerome
"The magic of listening brings us closer to the central core of the universe. To begin to comprehend the mystery of life it is not sufficient to touch and to see – we need to hear, to listen, and thus to unite heart and mind and soul. The softer the sound the more important it is that we perceive it. We have, I fear, become a deaf people, and the cries of pain of the flora and fauna around us, the very air we breathe, the suffering of our fellow human beings in our urban deserts, in parts of the globe we have subjected to war, to famine and flood through greed and selfishness, have become inaudible. The media encourages us to read, to view, to hear, but that does not mean we listen. Until we can create a still center within ourselves we will be unable to attune the “third ear” to the messages that are broadcast to us, loud and clear for the most part, but rendered futile due to our incapacity to listen." - Joachim-Ernst Berendt
"Of course, even when you see the world as a trap and posit a fundamental separation between liberation of self and transformation of society, you can still feel a compassionate impulse to help its suffering beings. In that case you tend to view the personal and the political in a sequential fashion. "I'll get enlightened first, and then I'll engage in social action." Those who are not engaged in spiritual pursuits put it differently: "I'll get my head straight first, I'll get psychoanalyzed, I'll overcome my inhibitions or neuroses or my hang-ups (whatever description you give to samsara) and then I'll wade into the fray." Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation -- and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready. " - Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy
"You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy." - John Calvin
"You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone." - John Ciardi, fully John Anthony Ciardi
"From a social standpoint, dependence denotes a power rather than a weakness; it involves interdependence. There is always a danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may make him more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference. It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relations to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone — an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remedial suffering of the world." - John Dewey
"Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved." - John Yepes “Saint John of the Cross”
"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." - John Stuart Mill
"The seal of suffering impressed upon our destiny announces in clear characters our high calling." - Joseph Marie, baron de Gérando, born Joseph Marie Degérando, also Joseph-Marie de Gérando
"My existence is such that "I" do not really exist. At the end of understanding so much I understand that I know nothing. I suffer for being surrounded by intense suffering and yet I'm deeply suspicious if first of all there is indeed any consciousness except me. I strive to find the artist who might have fathered this great universal art but feel myself to be too feeble to accomplish this seemingly unattainable mission. Yet I have every respect for life, and it is this sheer respect that makes me live." - Kedar Joshi
""Throughout history, religion has been the single greatest source of human-caused wars, suffering, and misery. In the name of God, more suffering has been inflicted than by any other manmade cause." I was, of course, using the word "religion" in its sociological meaning, as any belief invested with "ultimate concern," in which case not only Islam, Christianity, and Shintoism are religions, but Marxism, Nazism, and Eco-terrorism are all versions of religions or religiously held beliefs. Seen as such, the opening sentence is obviously true." - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
"Likewise, looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quite, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul. " - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
"As long as you have attachment to the body and attachment to objects, fear and suffering will be with you. Therefore, Krishna told Arjuna to develop his discrimination and rid himself of body consciousness. He told him that once he was free of body consciousness he would be able to develop integral vision. Embodiments of Love, Mankind today has three types of vision. The first is body oriented vision, which is totally superficial. When you have this kind of vision you see only the external appearance of others, such as the clothes and the ornaments they wear, their facial features, their body characteristics, their peculiarities of speech, etc. This type of vision is oriented only towards the phenomenal world. The second kind of vision is insightful vision." - Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL
"The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live." - Leo Busacaglia
"The state is suffering from two opposite vices, avarice and luxury; two plagues which, in the past, have been the ruin of every great empire." - Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL
"Nature ever upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught To come to birth but through some other's death." - Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL