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

Helen Keller

pain - healing
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 insignificant things begin to torture
you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

Thomas Merton
   

Realize that your suffering has meaning and purpose.  It has
made you more compassionate to others' suffering.  You can
now use your pain to help others overcome suffering.

Susan Santucci
   

Strength is a capacity for endurance.
One of the dividends of suffering is
the universal discovery the we possess
a strength within us we never knew
we had.  Navigating through a difficult episode not only shows us that inner strength is there but convinces us it
will always be there to serve us in
the future.  Overcoming gives us an assurance of personal confidence and value that far exceeds what we thought we possessed before our struggles began.

Dennis Wholey

Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the
same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering.

G.I. Gurdjieff
   

   
And the miracle is:  if you can go into your suffering as a meditation,
watching, to the deepest roots of it, just through watching, it disappears.
You don't have to do anything more than watching.  If you have found
the authentic cause by your watching, the suffering will disappear.

Osho
   
   

   
We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they
do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
   

You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free
permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature,
but perhaps this very holding back is the one
suffering you could have avoided.

Franz Kafka
   

In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see.
In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way.  When
someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first.  One's
very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who
grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.

Elie Wiesel
   
   
Remember this:  all suffering comes to an end.  And whatever
you suffer authentically, God has suffered from it first.

Meister Eckhart
   

As you look at many people's lives, you see that their suffering is
in a way gratifying, for they are comfortable in it.  They make
their lives a living hell, but a familiar one.

Ram Dass
   

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think
we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases.  But there, too,
we know it is false; so soon as one has got used
to not suffering one wants something else.

Simone Weil
   

    
Those who recognize the existence of suffering, its cause, its remedy,
and its cessation, have fathomed the four noble truths.  They will walk in the right path.

the Buddha
   

Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment
of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary
graces--Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions.

Matthew Henry
   
It is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.  Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements.  "Life" does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are very real and concrete.  They form one's destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. . . . When one finds that it is one's destiny to suffer, one will have to accept the suffering as one's task, one's single and unique task. . . . No one can relieve one of the suffering or suffer in that person's place.  Our unique opportunity lies in the way in which we bear our burdens.

For us, as prisoners, these thoughts were not speculations far removed from reality.  They were the only thoughts that could be of help to us.  They kept us from despair, even when there was no chance of coming out of it alive.

Viktor Frankl
   

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Articles and book excerpts on suffering:

Regrets, I Have a Few. . . .      Robert Knowlton
  

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pain - healing
The Buddha taught that suffering is the extra pain in the mind that
happens when we feel an anguished imperative to have things be different
from how they are.  We see it most clearly when our personal situation is
painful and we want very much for it to change.  It's the wanting very
much that hurts so badly, the feeling of "I need this desperately," that
paralyzes the mind.  The "I" who wants so much feels isolated.  Alone.

Sylvia Boorstein
   

If you have high self-esteem, you might still know times
of emotional suffering, but less often and with faster
recovery--your resilience is greater.

Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem Every Day

Many people put up with a life of suffering because
they feel they deserve no better.