Human Suffering Quotes

“Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“What a terror a body must live through. It’s a wonder there are people at all.”
― Catherine Lacey, Pew

“I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe.”
― Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

“Spirituality isn't some quaint stepchild of an intelligent worldview, or the only option for those of us not smart enough to understand the facts of the real world. Spirituality reflects the most sophisticated mindset, and the most powerful force available for the transformation of human suffering.”
― Marianne Williamson, Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment

“I was not always that way, but perhaps the shadow Earth, where I spent so many years, mellowed me a bit, and maybe my hitch in the dungeons of Amber reminded me somewhat of the quality of human suffering. I do not know. I only know that I could not pass by the hurt I saw on the form of someone much like someone who had once been a friend.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon

“On the ward there was hurt and pain so big and so deep that speech could not express it. I had been interested in philosophy, and suddenly philosophy came alive for me, for here the basic questions of human existence were not abstractions: they were embodied in human suffering”
― Frank X. Barron, Unusual Associates: A Festschrift for Frank Barron

“Too much reason limits man to the physical world and blinds his imagination to the greater things that may be. But too much faith blinds him from curing the human suffering in this world. Men with too much faith accept suffering; they expect it and even seek it out.”
― John Kramer, Blythe

“Only parents and torturers and the janitors of holocausts are asked to stand the sound of so much human grief.”
― Martin Amis, London Fields

“If life really begins at forty, then all poor people die in their teens.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups

“We unthinkingly build the pilings of our lives upon whatever comes along. Like it or not, we play the hand that fate deals us. If fate is kind, some people credit their fortuitous circumstances to their ingenuity and resoluteness. If fate is cruel, some people curse God. The truth is that an unenlightened person resists suffering, they continually wish for a world different than it is, whereas an enlightened person learns how to suffer heroically.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Seeing human suffering changes you. It either makes you compassionate or it makes you hard.”
― Jane Wilson-Howarth

“Both glory and dominion last forever but glory is for God and dominion is for mankind.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“Africa was full of people in need of help and there had to be a limit. You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. That principle allowed you to deal with the suffering you saw. That was your suffering. Other people would have to deal with the suffering that they, in their turn, came across.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“When it comes to human suffering, appearance is everything.”
― Nadja Sam

“I was a good lawyer , and most days that was enough. I was aware, however, that I took refuge in my profession, as unlikely as that seemed considering the amount of human suffering I dealt with. It offered me a role to escape into, from what I no longer knew; perhaps nothing more significant than my own little ration of suffering.”
― Michael Nava, The Little Death

“The thinking at the epicenter of most human conflict: “I’m right; you’re wrong.”
― Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain - The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life

“Încotro ducea conducta verticală a suferinței umane? Cine se hrănea cu plânsul și nefericirea și neputința și nimicnicia și vremelnicia noastră? Cine se bucura de trosnetul oaselor noastre, de chinul iubirii ne-mpărtășite, de ravagiile cancerului și-ale morții celor apropiați, de pielea arsă, de ochii scoși, de venele explodate? Pentru cine substanța limpede ca lacrima a nenorocirii noastre era necesară ca aerul și apa?... Hedoniști ai durerii, vizionari ai terorii, arhangheli ai strivirii de viu, regi ai distrugerii și ai urii...”
― Mircea Cărtărescu, Solenoid

“The perverse belief that God causes or allows all the suffering in the world has made hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of atheists and agnostics worldwide and throughout history.”
― Sebastien Richard, Kingdom Fundamentals: What the Kingdom of God Means and What it Means for You | A Thorough and Biblical Exposition of the Kingdom of Heaven as Preached by Jesus

“The disease moves within human suffering”
― Benjamin Oren Black, Belly Woman

“God smiles to calm me and it works. He says, 'They don't realize what they're losing when they bring suffering upon themselves in the name of God. Great art must always have balance. I did not create humanity to suffer. However, suffering is unavoidable. It's a component of life. To bring additional suffering upon oneself is a waste of human potential.”
― Penelope Przekop, Dust

“روی بستر اندکی جا به جا شد و یک نفس ادامه داد:(( تو و برادرت آنقدر با هم فرق دارید که آدم شماها را برادر نمی شناسد. اما از یک نظر به هم رفته اید و آن هم نشاط و خونگرمی است. نشاط او از شور زندگانی است، نشاط تو از سرزندگی است تو بانشاط ترین موجود دنیا هستی، این را از همان روز اول که تو را دیدم فهمیدم آنجا در اتاق بزرگ... من همیشه می کوشیدم به تو فکر کنم چون دلم برایت می سوخت! و از همان هنگام باور کن، همیشه به یاد تو هستم...))”
― Elsa Morante, History

“فقط یک انسان پاک ناد می تواند دست رد بر سینه ی سوداگران نهاده و به آنان بگوید: زمین، معبد وجدان تام را، شما راهزنان مبدل به کنام دزدها کرده اید!.”
― Elsa Morante, History

“What we refer to as 'mental health problems' is human suffering. Just one from among many others, even if it's unique in some ways, especially from a social perspective. After all, it's the kind of pain that exceeds medical knowledge.”
― Fernando Balius, Desmesura

“There are two kinds of people in the world.  The first kind is the creative and conscious people and the second kind is the destructive and unconscious. Great awareness is needed to be creative and conscious, while no awareness and consciousness is needed to be destructive. The creative people have attained inner awareness. 
The other kind of people are the violent and destructive people, who are the unhealthy, narcissistic and pathological people. These are the people who bring misery and human suffering to the world. They themselves are miserable and they create misery for others. 
Alexander the Great killed thousands of people, Joseph Stalin killed millions of people and Adolf Hitler is one of the greatest murders history has known.  The world would have been better without them. 
The creative and conscious people are a blessing to the world. Without them humanity would not have progressed at all. These people are the salt of the earth. Life has some meaning, joy, beauty and song, because of these people. People like Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu made themselves blissful, and spread the secret of being blissful in the world. They spread their light in the world. 
Meditation is the way to become blissful. Become blissful, because you can only give that which you have. You cannot give that which you do not have. Become a source of bliss and blessings to others. ”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the Heart