To perceive is to suffer.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

But penance¹ need not be paid in suffering...It can be paid in forward motion. Correcting the mistake is a positive move, a nurturing² move.

Barbara Hall, A Summons to New Orleans, 2000

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice³, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper⁴, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

I felt despair. Though it seems to me now there's two kinds of it: the sort that causes a person to surrender and then the sort I had which made me take risks and make plans.

Erica Eisdorfer, The Wet Nurse's Tale, 2009

I have found that it don't really matter if you're brought up fine or rough, but that it helps to have someone to spill your sorrows to.

Erica Eisdorfer, The Wet Nurse's Tale, 2009

But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory⁵; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), What's Wrong With the World; p. 118

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world.

Isodore Duncan

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Persuasion⁶, 1818

Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.

Jose Marti

A misery⁷ is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719)

I have not yet met with a sorrow that could not be borne, nor with one who's passing did not leave me stronger.

Kathryn L. Nelson, Pemberley Manor⁸, 2006

Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.

Leigh Hunt (1784 - 1859)

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis⁹ of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Louise Bogan

Crying is the refuge of plain women, but the ruin of pretty ones.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), Lady Windemere's Fan

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant¹⁰ things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

The sufferings that fate inflicts¹² on us should be borne with patience, what enemies inflict¹¹ with manly¹³ courage.

Thucydides (471 BC - 400 BC)

Pain is inevitable¹⁴; suffering is optional.

Unknown

If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.

Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), 'Les Malheureux'