# Quotes about suffering - Quotes: 27 - Authors: 15 - Topic page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering ## Quotes > All people believe their suffering is greater than others. [Erica Jong](https://www.leafyquotes.com/erica-jong.md) · [How to Save Your Own Life](https://www.leafyquotes.com/erica-jong/how-to-save-your-own-life.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/erica-jong/how-to-save-your-own-life/all-people-believe.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > Now no joy but lacks salt, > > That is not dashed with pain > > And weariness and fault; > > I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark > > Of almost too much love, > > The sweet of bitter bark > > And burning clove. [Robert Frost](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-frost.md) · [New Hampshire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-frost/new-hampshire.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-frost/new-hampshire/now-no-joy.md) Topics: [happiness](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. I sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition. Autobiography · p. 134 Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year. Autobiography · p. 140 Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > My education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible. It was however abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared. Autobiography · p. 135 Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > No quiero para mí tantas desgracias. > > No quiero continuar de raíz y de tumba, > > de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertos > > ateridos, muriéndome de pena. [Pablo Neruda](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pablo-neruda.md) · [Residencia en la Tierra / Residence on Earth](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pablo-neruda/residencia-en-la-tierra-residence-on-earth.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/pablo-neruda/residencia-en-la-tierra-residence-on-earth/no-quiero-para.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > I was imprisoned in Concepción for a few days and then realeased. They didn't torture me, as I had feared; they didn't even rob me. But they didn't give me anything to eat either, or any kind of covering for the night, so I had to rely on the goodwill of other prisoners, who shared their food with me. In the small hours I could hear them torturing others; I couldn't sleep and there was nothing to read except a magazine in English that someone had left behind. The only interesting article in it was about a house that had once belonged to Dylan Thomas. ... I got out of that hole thanks to a pair of detectives who had been at high school with me in Los Ángeles... Last Evenings On Earth · p. 215 Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > No, the only good was to be found in non-existence or, if one had to exist, in being a tree, a stone, or lower still, a grain of sand, for that cannot bleed under the heel of every passer-by. Germinal Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > She was haunted by the vision of Chaval, and rambled on about him, about their cat and dog life together, the one day when he had been nice to her, in Jean-Bart, and the other days or alternate caresses and blows, when he half killed her with his embraces after nearly beating her to death. Germinal Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md), [relationships](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/relationships.md) > Now Étienne could oversee the entire country. The darkness remained profound, but the old man's hand had, as it were, filled it with great miseries, which the young man unconsciously felt at this moment around him everywhere in the limitless tract. Was it not a cry of famine that the March wind rolled up across this naked plain? The squalls were furious: they seemed to bring the death of labour, a famine which would kill many men. And with wandering eyes he tried to pierce shades, tormented at once by the desire and by the fear of seeing. Everything was hidden in the unknown depths of the gloomy night. He only perceived, very far off, the blast furnaces and the coke ovens. The latter, with their hundreds of chimneys, planted obliquely, made lines of red flame; while the two towers, more to the left, burnt blue against the blank sky, like giant torches. It resembled a melancholy conflagration. No other stars rose on the threatening horizon except these nocturnal fires in a land of coal and iron. Germinal Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > What misery! and all these girls, broken by fatigue, were silly enough to come here at night and make babies, more flesh to toil and suffer! It would never end while they went on getting themselves filled with starvelings. Ought they not rather to stop up their wombs and close their thighs tight against approaching disaster? But then, perhaps he was only harbouring these dismal thoughts because he resented being alone when all the others were pairing off to take their pleasure. Germinal Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > He knew that henceforth, all his days would resemble one another, and bring him equal suffering. And he saw the weeks, months and years gloomily and implacably awaiting him, coming one after the other to fall upon him and gradually smother him. Thérèse Raquin Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md), [the future](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-future.md) > Nothing could be more heartrending than this mute and motionless despair. Thérèse Raquin Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last. [H.G. Wells](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells.md) · [The Time Machine](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-time-machine.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-time-machine/we-are-kept.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it. > > Love! A dark and starry transfiguration is mingled with that torment. There is ecstacy in the agony. [Victor Hugo](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo.md) · [Les Miserables](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo/les-miserables.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo/les-miserables/you-who-suffer.md) Topics: [love](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil. [Albert Camus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus.md) · [The Rebel](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel/metaphysical-rebellion-is-a-claim.md) Topics: [death](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md), [evil](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evil.md) > Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege. [Voltaire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/voltaire.md) · [Candide](https://www.leafyquotes.com/voltaire/candide.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/voltaire/candide/even-in-those.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life. The Story Of My Life · p. 383 Topics: [god](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/god.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md), [nature](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature.md) > Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. [Mark Twain](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain.md) · [A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-court.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-court/why-it-was.md) Topics: [history](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace. [George Bernard Shaw](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw.md) · [Heartbreak House](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/heartbreak-house.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/heartbreak-house/when-your-heart.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women, and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine. [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/a-large-cask.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > "I, Alexander Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year 1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust." [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/i-alexander-manette.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night. [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/into-his-handsome.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md), [perseverance](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/perseverance.md) > The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them. [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/the-sea-of-black.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/sadly-sadly-the.md) Topics: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and stared up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil. [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/samples-of-a-people.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth. [George Orwell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell.md) · [Animal Farm](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/animal-farm.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/animal-farm/now-comrades-what.md) Topics: [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md)