Top 100 Quotes About Suffering And Joy
#2. There is pain and suffering in this world, but there is also joy, and not just suffering here and joy there, but suffering and joy in the very same place.
Todd Neva
#3. All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.
Bodhidharma
#4. Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person.
William Fritz
#5. Everything happens for a reason. Life. Death. Suffering and joy. There is a frightening beauty in all this that I don't want to lose, even if there's pain, too.
Elizabeth Hunter
#6. States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.
Roger Scruton
#7. No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.
Patti Smith
#8. Suffer what there is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life, and continue chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, no matter what happens. How could this be anything other than the boundless joy of the Law?
Nichiren
#9. Like the ocean that remains calm in its depths even when waves rage over its surface, and like the sun that continues shining on high even during storms, we can at each moment create value and develop our state of life, enjoying our existence to the fullest in times of both suffering and joy.
Daisaku Ikeda
#10. Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
Simone Weil
#11. Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.
John Green
#12. At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants.
Egon Schiele
#13. Suffering together builds togetherness, and if togetherness is more important for us and for our joy than freedom from suffering is, then God is good to allow this suffering.
Peter Kreeft
#14. Love ... includes fellowship in suffering, in joy and in effort.
Albert Schweitzer
#15. Joy is love exalted; peace is love in repose; long-suffering is love enduring; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is love on the battlefield; meekness is love in school; and temperance is love in training.
D.L. Moody
#16. I sail with you on the ocean of my dreams
to a far away distant Place of great beauty and tranquility.
where suffering and pain do not exist,
where we give praises for our joy and happiness,
where our Love interwines with Love for all things.
Rumi
#17. If we take good care of ourselves, we help everyone. We stop being a source of suffering to the world, and we become a reservoir of joy and freshness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#18. True power does not amass through the pain and suffering of others.
Joy Harjo
#19. We can experience joy in adverse circumstances by holding God's benefits in such esteem that the recognition of them and meditation upon them shall overcome all sorrow.
John Calvin
#20. By changing our inner state of mind, we can change any suffering or hardship into a source of joy, regarding it as a means for forging and developing our lives. To turn even sorrow into a source of creativity - this is the way of life of a Buddhist
Daisaku Ikeda
#21. Why wait? So precious is this life - this gift - this temporary blindness. Burn and drown and embrace the false dark, then grasp the unthinkable height of resulting joy. For in the end, in the light of truth when the flesh is cast off, there is nothing but this.
Jennifer DeLucy
#22. Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#23. Then Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry. But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy without the boy.
Hermann Hesse
#24. The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama.
Madeleine L'Engle
#25. Being on the path means we again meditate with joy. We deal with the suffering of life and the pain of existence without perfect enlightenment with a smile.
Frederick Lenz
#26. People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been
for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.
Ayn Rand
#27. You see, what I want is life. A real life, full of moments of joy, of anguish, of irritation, of fun. A life with an end point, which makes each second important. A life that is full of love, that doesn't cause suffering and pain.
Gemma Malley
#28. When our trials come, when we feel pain and suffering, when our tears flow again, it is our joy and comfort to lift our faces heavenward and to go on, standing on the promises of God.
W. A. Criswell
#29. The pain that we feel when we are making love with someone is that we know it will end. It's that paradoxical response of joy and suffering.
Terry Tempest Williams
#30. So does he live, seeking, finding, joying and suffering.
Kate Chopin
#31. In this life, the proper way of living is to make use of both joy and suffering. They are both merely stimuli that the world presents to us. So by blending them skillfully within you, you can use them in a completely different way. If you want to be steeped in evil, you mustn't forget good.
Fuminori Nakamura
#32. Filipinos don't realize that victory is the child of struggle, that joy blossoms from suffering, and redemption is a product of sacrifice.
Jose Rizal
#33. I was discovering that the cross of Christ meant more then joy and peace. It meant suffering, too- suffering that was necessary to bring a later hope.
Bruce E. Olson
#34. Our identity is not in our joy, and our identity is not in our suffering. Our identity is in Christ, whether we have joy or are suffering.
Mark Driscoll
#35. To identify with others is to see something of yourself in them and to see something of them in yourself
even if the only thing you identify with is the desire to be free from suffering.
Melanie Joy
#36. We have been impossible right from the beginning and we must continue to be impossible because we are raising a voice against suffering which has been considered to be the nature of life. It is our joy to be considered impossible - and it is our greater joy to make the impossible a living reality.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
#37. Suffering can give us opportunities to witness. The world is a gigantic hospital; nowhere is there a greater chance to see the peace and joy of the Lord than when the journey through the valley is the darkest.
Billy Graham
#38. True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.
Andre Gide
#39. The way to suffer well and be happy is to stay in touch with what is actually going on; in doing so, you will gain liberating insights into the true nature of suffering and of joy. NO
Thich Nhat Hanh
#40. In the process of meditation, fetters are undone; internal blocks of suffering such as resentment, fear, anger, despair, and hatred are transformed; relationships with humans and nature become easier; freedom and joy can penetrate us. We become aware of what is inside and around us;
Thich Nhat Hanh
#41. Control the senses, practice equanimity. Live by disciplinary rules. Associate with good friends who are not lazy and live purely. Be courteous and well-mannered, and thus, full of joy. Put an end to suffering.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#42. In relationships, when there is suffering there cannot be true love: true Love is Unconditional. Either Love is joy and happiness, or it is not Unconditional Love.
Human Angels
#43. Anything but enlightenment is pure pain; it is the lack of enlightenment. There are joys, of course, and they should be enjoyed. There are sorrows, and they should be passed over briefly.
Frederick Lenz
#44. Through service to others, we develop a Christlike love and we experience joy. Service teaches patience and long-suffering as well as gentleness, goodness, and faith.
Merrill J. Bateman
#45. In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self.
Mahavira
#46. In what he suffered, as in all true suffering and in true joy, there was the quality of eternity. He could not believe it would ever end.
Elizabeth Goudge
#47. The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person's suffering and bring that person joy.
Nhat Hanh
#48. I want us to enter into the laughter of the God that is before, during and after the experience of being human, to swim in grace, to revel in messiness, to find joy in the suffering and love in the chaos.
Tobin Wilson
#49. Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself.
Anonymous
#50. Acknowledgement: Understanding and compassion for others and their suffering is the next step. Put yourself in the shoes of people who don't have the luxury of being wasteful.
Joy Bryant
#51. Suffering is a short pain and a long joy.
Henry Suso
#52. Whatever suffering there is in this world,all arises from desiring only myself to be happy.And whatever joy there is in this world,all arises from desiring to share my happiness with everyone.
Gautama Buddha
#53. Christ is sufficient. We do not need "support groups" for each and every separate tribulation. The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the same old rugged cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.
Elisabeth Elliot
#54. It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#55. Being involved with Oxfam has really opened my eyes to the world at large and the suffering of others. But my background and my life experience are what have allowed me to understand how interconnected we all are. I believe one person suffering reverberates throughout the world.
Joy Bryant
#56. A side benefit of the new and developing technologies is that soon we won't have to feel guilty about the suffering and denigration of the animals because we will have made them up.
Joy Williams
#57. We marvel that you would consider us a joy worth suffering for, and we bow humbly before you and offer you our praise, our thanks, and our very lives.
Barbara R. Duguid
#58. I could have sworn that the man's eyes were no longer watching his daughter dying in agony, that instead the gorgeous colors of flames and the sight of a woman suffering in them were giving him joy beyond measure.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
#59. God wants to bring joy not pain, peace not war, healing not suffering. Therefore, instead of declaring anything and everything to be the will of God, we must be willing to ask ourselves where in the midst of our pains and sufferings we can discern the loving presence of God.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#60. Oh, if only the suffering soul knew how it is loved by God, it would die of joy and excess of happiness! Some day, we will know the value of suffering, but then we will no longer be able to suffer. The present moment is ours.
Mary Faustina Kowalska
#61. And even when our lives are good, how do we live in joy when so many others are suffering: when crushing poverty robs people of their future, when violence and terror fill our streets, and when ecological devastation endangers the very possibility of life on our planet?
Dalai Lama XIV
#62. I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn't believe them, I didn't suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment.
Byron Katie
#63. Act is the blossom of thought; and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and biter fruitage of his own husbandry
James Allen
#64. In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.
Ishmael Beah
#65. We know that God disciplines His children, and that testing, suffering, and persecution come to us from Heaven to stretch, grow, and mature us into the men and women God intends to make us ... If we keep this in mind when hard times fall, it can be a real source of joy in the fire ...
Kirk Cameron
#66. Kindness and pain, joy and suffering are twins in this fallen world.
Philip Zaleski
#67. I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.
Saul Bellow
#68. Who can ever affirm, or deny that the houses which have sheltered us as children, or as adults, and our predecessors too, do not have embedded in their walls, one with the dust and cobwebs, one with the overlay of fresh wallpaper and paint, the imprint of what-has-been, the suffering, the joy?
Daphne Du Maurier
#69. Intoxicating joy it is for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, the world once seemed to me.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#70. How I understand that love of living, of being in this wonderful, astounding world even if one can look at it only through theprison bars of illness and suffering! Plus je vois, the more I am thrilled by the spectacle.
Edith Wharton
#71. Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?
George Sand
#72. We mortals with immortal minds are only born for sufferings and joys, and one could almost say that the most excellent receive joy through sufferings.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#73. For the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed is sweeter than the presence of delight.
Herman Melville
#74. You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity.
Louis Pasteur
#75. I believe that pain and suffering can either be a prison or a prism.
Tim Hansel
#76. We should live each and every day with the certainty that this armor will protect us from danger, and then we will no longer be bound to the duality of existence. We have to find a middle path, where there is neither joy nor suffering, only profound peace.
Paulo Coelho
#77. If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine ...
Swami Vivekananda
#78. The hard work of sowing seed in what looks like perfectly empty earth has a time of harvest. All suffering, pain, emptiness, disappointment is seed: sow it in God and He will, finally, bring a crop of joy from it.
Eugene H. Peterson
#79. But finally, into the world came a baby girl, just as, I'm very, very sorry to say, her mother, and my sister, slipped away from the world after a long night of suffering - but also a night of joy, as the birth of a baby is always good news, no matter how much bad news the baby will hear later.
Lemony Snicket
#80. There is both joy and suffering on planet Earth because this beautiful world is a world of duality - a world of opposites. There is an opposite side to everything.
Rhonda Byrne
#81. What you loved and what you strove for,
What you dreamed and what you lived through,
Do you know if it was joy or suffering?
G sharp and A flat, E flat or D sharp,
Are they distinguishable to the ear?
Hermann Hesse
#82. I'm Phoenix. The mythical bird that rises from the ashes. I've risen from fear and grief, from scandal and suffering, and from the crushing loneliness of walking with a purpose that is outside myself, but not within me. I know what's within me now, and I'm ready to fly again.
Heidi Joy Tretheway
#83. Our suffering, as well as our joy, shapes who we are and who we will become. We may wish for all of our trials to be taken away, but to do so would be a great disservice to our personal growth.
Callie Kanno
#84. Love was something that did much to change a person. It brought joy as it brought suffering, and in turn brought about those moments that defined one's character.
Renee Ahdieh
#85. God didn't let Job suffer because he lacked love, but because he did love, in order to bring Job to the point of encountering God face to face, which is humanity's supreme happiness. Job's suffering hollowed out a big space in him so that God and joy could fill it.
Lee Strobel
#86. Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all it's many forms. Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.
Amartya Sen
#87. I think we have a creative impulse where suffering can magnify our work, but so can joy. You can be in love and write the greatest love song ever. Sometimes I think too much suffering makes it difficult to do one's work.
Patti Smith
#88. We receive suffering when it comes as an opportunity for God to do something good in us and through us. We rejoice not in the pain but rather in what it can accomplish for the gospel so that something as costly as suffering is not wasted but used for God's glory, our joy, and others' good.
Mark Driscoll
#89. It came to me that I should teach this truth for it is real happiness and joy. The cessation of suffering is possible.
Gautama Buddha
#90. The gift of the Truth beats all other gifts. The flavour of the Truth beats all other tastes. The joy of the Truth beats all other joys, and the cessation of desire conquers all suffering
Gautama Buddha
#91. I suppose we are all products of our parents' joy and suffering. Their emotions are written into us, as much as the inscriptions made by their genes.
Siri Hustvedt
#92. Become disinterested in your pain and suffering. Only then can you make space for your longstanding joy.
David Ault
#93. Suffering is seeing what Jesus sees, and joy is doing what Jesus does.
Heidi Baker
#94. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all-good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering.
Karen Marie Moning
#95. Time, what God first deemed holy above all else (Genesis 2:3). Thank God for the time, and very God enters that time, presence hallowing it ... I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. (page 70)
Ann Voskamp
#96. Our most natural state is joy. It is the foundation for love, compassion, healing, and the desire to alleviate suffering.
Deepak Chopra
#97. The human capacity for suffering was like that for joy. It could only have the greatest impact in small doses. After that, mind and body could no longer take it in.
Kristen Heitzmann
#98. They wander on earth and live in heaven, and although they are weak, they protect the world; they taste of peace in the midst of turmoil; they are poor, and yet they have all they want. They stand in suffering and remain in joy, they appear dead to all outward sense and lead a life of faith within.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#99. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#100. 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
