Crying is the refuge of plain women, but the ruin of pretty ones.
—Thucydides
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
—Unknown
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.
—Victor Hugo
Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.
—Unknown
If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.
—Unknown
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
—Russell Baker
What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.
—Jodi Picoult in The Storyteller
Great artists suffer for the people.
—Marvin Gaye
Knowing he was suffering pained me. That's the way love tangles you up. I couldn't stop loving him, and couldn't shut off the feelings of wanting to care for him—but I also didn't have to run to answer his letters. I was hurting, too, and no one was running to me.
—Paula McLain in The Paris Wife
My father… used to say, "I need my anger. It obliges me to take action." I think my father was partly right. Anger arises, naturally, to signal disturbing situations that might require action. But actions initiated in anger perpetuate suffering. The most effective actions are those conceived in the wisdom of clarity.
—Sylvia Boorstein
The man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
—Michel de Montaigne
For, as wolves and tigers gorge themselves with flesh and lick their gory chops, so do nations gorge themselves with human victims, not in detail, but in masses, by wholesale.
—Henry C. Wright
The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
—Norman Mailer
Once I wanted total happiness—now I will settle for a little less pain.
—Ashleigh Brilliant