Top 100 Suffering Happiness Quotes
#1. When life gives you pain, accept it. When life gives you happiness, reject it.
Santosh Kalwar
#2. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that Nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect.
Andrew Solomon
#3. My message is that happiness is the first principle of life. But you must choose it. We all have pain, but suffering is a choice. You can be happier if you make some changes in your life.
Alexandra Stoddard
#4. When we have unconflicted self-esteem, joy is our motor, not fear. It is happiness that we wish to experience, not suffering that we wish to avoid. Our purpose is self-expression, not self-avoidance or self-justification. Our motive is not to "prove" our worth but to live our possibilities.
Nathaniel Branden
#5. I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
Ayn Rand
#6. Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure - to the largest thing you can: to God, to relieving suffering, to contributing to knowledge, to adding to literature, or something else. Happiness lies this way, and it beats pleasure hollow.
Annie Dillard
#7. Understanding that everything is impermanent, that happiness is transformed into suffering, and that all phenomena are lacking reality in themselves and are only projections of our mind, will permit us to counteract the first hindrance to meditation, that is, our attachment to this world.
Bokar Rinpoche
#8. As long as the belief is: we need suffering to grow, the world will be suffering and the belief will be limiting.
Natasa Nuit Pantovic
#9. There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man - that is, the more divine - the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.
Miguel De Unamuno
#10. In Zen Buddhism an action is considered good when it brings happiness and well-being to oneself and others, evil when it brings suffering and harm to oneself and others.
Thich Thien-An
#11. All human beings have an innate desire to overcome suffering, to find happiness. Training the mind to think differently, through meditation, is one important way to avoid suffering and be happy.
Dalai Lama
#12. The art of happiness is also the art of suffering well.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#13. I'm now asking an idle question of my own: which is better
cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#14. As for suffering I do not wish even the slightest; as for happiness I am never satisfied. In this, there is no difference between others and me. Bless me so I may take joy in others' happiness.
Dalai Lama XIV
#15. 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
#16. Suffering just means you're having a bad dream. Happiness means you're having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.
Jed McKenna
#17. 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
#18. We suffer from the illusion that the faster we run, the more likely we are to grasp happiness. The truth is that the velocity necessary for success rarely exceeds the rate of reflection.
Sam Keen
#19. Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#20. That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to which I have returned!
Victor Hugo
#21. Life, U May told her, is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined. Any attempt to have one without the other was simply bound to fail. The monastery itself was surrounded
Jan-Philipp Sendker
#22. Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.
Nathaniel Branden
#23. I pray for a more friendly, more caring, and more understanding human family on this planet. To all who dislike suffering, who cherish lasting happiness, this is my heartfelt appeal.
Dalai Lama
#24. The realization that we are all basically the same human beings who seek happiness and try to avoid suffering is very helpful in developing a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood; a warm feeling of love and compassion for others.
Dalai Lama
#25. Annual income is £ 20, the cost is 19, you will feel happiness. If annual income of £ 20, the cost is £ 20.6, you will see suffering
Charles Dickens
#26. It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.
Albert Camus
#27. Be awesome! With kindness, serve the suffering humanity.
Debasish Mridha
#28. Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy.
George Eliot
#29. Yoga is many things to many people, but in its full potential the practice of yoga can provide the means to transform suffering into happiness and Suzanne Bryant's film YOGA IS shows us this path.
Sharon Gannon
#30. There's this human capacity for joy and endurance, even when things are at their worst. A joy that occurs not despite our suffering, but within it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#32. If you don't believe others can end your suffering, why believe they can end your happiness?
Donald L. Hicks
#33. Life is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined. Any attempt to have one without the other was simply bound to fail.
Jan-Philipp Sendker
#34. When you see suffering and sadness, to heal them the least we can offer is our love and kindness.
Debasish Mridha
#35. To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also the possibilities of happiness.
John Lubbock
#36. When we direct our attention toward our suffering, we see our potential for happiness. We see the nature of suffering and the way out. That is why the Buddha called suffering a holy truth. When we use the word "suffering" in Buddhism, we mean the kind of suffering that can show us the way out.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#37. The consequences of karma are definite: Negative actions always bring about suffering, and positive actions always bring happiness. If you do good, you will have happiness; if you do bad, you yourself suffer.
Dalai Lama XIV
#38. Public health service should be as fully organized and as universally incorporated into our governmental system as is public education. The returns are a thousand fold in economic benefits, and infinitely more in reduction of suffering and promotion of human happiness.
Herbert Hoover
#39. There are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.
Albert Camus
#40. We are all basically the same human beings, who seek happiness and try to avoid suffering. Everybody is my peer group. Your feeling "I am of no value" is wrong. Absolutely wrong.
Dalai Lama
#41. People say you can't have peace without a war, but on the contrary they say they don't support war. You can not, ever achieve happiness from focusing on suffering, you have to change your perspective. World peace starts with Inner peace.
Mark Ryan
#42. Finding love is a fixation now, and that's because although romantic love can sometimes cause a lot of suffering, it can also give people peaks of happiness that come very close to our ideal of 'the happy state.'
Francois Lelord
#43. The Buddhist approach to this collective suffering is to turn toward it. We understand that genuine happiness and meaning will come through tending to suffering. We overcome out own despair bby helping other to overcome theirs.
Jack Kornfield
#44. Our suffering does not make us weak; only our avoidance of suffering makes us weak. And that avoidance - the avoidance of legitimate suffering - is unfortunately bolstered by the cultural attitudes of a society obsessed with cheap and easy happiness.
Marianne Williamson
#45. Despite the loss they were suffering, they'd both relaxed - as people do when they realize they've run out of chances for happiness
Orhan Pamuk
#46. Intentional suffering and the postponement of happiness is not yoga or Buddhism. It will not lead to a better incarnation.
Frederick Lenz
#47. The only reason you are happy is because you choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice, and so is suffering.
Miguel Angel Ruiz
#48. Life is a daring adventure, so suffering should be optional.
Debasish Mridha
#49. Isn't it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering?
Matthieu Ricard
#50. Don't let your outer pain, misery, and suffering touch your inner calmness and happiness.
Debasish Mridha
#51. This culture of mandatory happiness actually promotes dishonesty and more suffering.
Tullian Tchividjian
#52. How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. (Page 58)
Ann Voskamp
#53. We are social animals. Others' suffering is ultimately your suffering; their happiness is ultimately your happiness.
Dalai Lama
#54. External circumstances can contribute to one's happiness and well-being, but ultimately happiness and suffering depend on the mind.
Dalai Lama
#55. The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.
Charlotte Bronte
#56. Without suffering, there's no happiness. So we shouldn't discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#57. Only the enlightened are consistently happy. Their happiness is not predicated upon the events and experiences that take place in this world. Instead it is based on the boundless inner energy they gain from their connection with the world of enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#58. Then, after all the excitement, I shall experience a certain satiation of suffering
perhaps on the mountain pass to a kind of happiness which it is too early for me to know (I know only that when I reach it, it will be with pen in hand).
Vladimir Nabokov
#59. The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants.
Herbert Spencer
#60. 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
#61. I often wonder if I am entitled to be as happy as I am, given the amount of suffering in the world.
Dennis Prager
#62. The suffering and happiness in our world, both individual and collective, depend on our consciousness.
Jack Kornfield
#63. There is no such thing as good and bad in an absolute sense. There is only the good and bad- the harm in terms of happiness and suffering- that our thoughts and our actions do to ourselves and others.
Matthieu Ricard
#64. We are the creators of our own happiness and suffering, for everything originates in the mind.
Dalai Lama
#65. How could any Lord have made this world? ... there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for this world to commit ... No happiness lasted.
Virginia Woolf
#66. The main cause of suffering is egoistic desire for one's own comfort and happiness.
Dalai Lama
#67. So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled.
Carl Jung
#68. Attachment strangles freedom and clarity and makes us a puppet to our desires and cravings; attachment is the root of suffering, a root that if left unattended grows into a tree which drops the fruits of anger, greed, envy, dispersion, competitiveness, ego and pain
Evan Sutter
#69. Knowing how to suffer well is essential to realizing true happiness. SUFFERING
Thich Nhat Hanh
#70. Pain is painful but an essential ingredient of life. Suffering is optional.
Debasish Mridha
#71. 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
#72. Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.
Sam Harris
#73. Let us be the hope for those who are suffering.
Let us be the eyesight for those who are blind.
Let us show the way, nonjudgmental and kind.
Debasish Mridha
#74. All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.
Shantideva
#75. There is no beauty in sadness. No honor in suffering. No growth in fear. No relief in hate. It's just a waste of perfectly good happiness.
Katerina Stoykova Klemer
#76. It's all for the best, I know it is. I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises. I know all this. But still ...
Elizabeth Gilbert
#77. People never remember happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.
Edward St. Aubyn
#78. Everything that God sends us is beautiful, even though we may not understand it - and we only need to give it some proper thought to see that what God gives is just sheer happiness; the suffering is what we add to it.
Adalbert Stifter
#79. Claiming to love self, but willingly default to cheating at the first sign of trouble is nothing short of playing yourself. Your ego may feel avenged - temporarily - but your heart and soul, the true self, will suffer the long term affects of karma's justifiable sting.
T.F. Hodge
#80. A compassionate leader always feel motivated to bring happiness and relieve the suffering of customers, investors, suppliers, employees, government and the communities.
Amit Ray
#81. For all of us with consciousness" - the Dalai Lama returned to his seat - "our life is very precious. Therefore, we need to protect all sentient beings very much. Also, we must recognize that we share the same two basic wishes: the wish to enjoy happiness and the wish to avoid suffering." These
David Michie
#82. When you make up your mind to forgive, your happiness will almost automatically follow.
Stephen Richards
#83. Everything is unfolding based on causes and conditions. Our happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment. If we cling now, we suffer later. If we let go and respond with compassion or friendliness, we create happiness and well-being for the future.
Noah Levine
#84. 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
#85. We should practice by showing one another love and helping one another. It is a mistake to pursue happiness and to seek to the avoid suffering by deceiving and humiliating other people. We must try to achieve happiness and eliminate suffering by being good-hearted and well-behaved.
Dalai Lama
#87. If we are in a position to affect the happiness or suffering of others, we have ethical responsibilities toward them2 - and many of these responsibilities are so grave as to become matters of civil and criminal law. Taking
Sam Harris
#88. We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.
Nhat Hanh
#89. Suffering is primarily a
call for attention, which itself is a movement of love. More than
happiness, love wants growth, the widening and deepening of awareness and consciousness and being. Whatever prevents that, becomes a cause of pain, and love does not shirk from pain.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
#90. People are constantly forced to choose between having freedom and having success and stability; freedom with suffering or happiness without freedom. The majority choose the latter.
Svetlana Alexievich
#91. In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self.
Mahavira
#92. Living, if we go about it with selfishness and lack of awareness about our interdependence with the universal laws and other beings, turns into a nightmare of suffering with brief moments of happiness
Ivan Figueroa-Otero
#93. The more we know our suffering, the more we will enjoy our happiness. And
A.G. Roemmers
#94. Suffering from loss should have been bringing happiness because true blue of love is really shown up from behind of it.
Neo Wasiman
#95. You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#96. Karma moves in two directions. If we act virtuously, the seed we plant will result in happiness. If we act non-virtuously, suffering results.
Sakyong Mipham
#97. My own view, which does not rely solely on religious faith or even on an original idea, but rather on ordinary common sense, is that establishing binding ethical principles is possible when we take as our starting point the observation that we all desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering.
Dalai Lama
#98. Enlightenment, the great mysterious state of mind, is contentment, or freedom from suffering. How then do we measure happiness? We measure it in smiles, in the openness of our hearts, in generosity, in gratitude and compassion towards others, and in the steadiness of our contentment.
Andrew Furst
#99. Virtuous people always let go.
They don't prattle about pleasures and desires.
Touched by happiness and then by suffering,
The sage shows no sign of being elated or depressed.
Gautama Buddha
#100. The Laws of Reasoning consist of the ground, the path, and the result ... Suffering is in the mind. How we perceive happiness determines our suffering or not.
Dalai Lama
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