This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Moral indignation permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Envy | Hate | Indignation |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
Effort | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Suffering | Will | Worth |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Those who accept what they suffer have no suffering of the will, and thus they are in peace.
Gluttons no longer gorge themselves; they are simply suffering from one of a variety of eating disorders.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
Experience | Individual | Progress | Suffering |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.
The impermanence of all forms is the starting point of Buddhism. The Buddha taught that ‘all compounded things are impermanent’, and that all suffering in the world arises from our trying to cling to fixed forms - objects, people or ideas - instead of accepting the world as it moves and changes.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.
Indignation | Suffering |
Pain by itself is merely pain, but the experience of pain couples with an understanding that the pain serves a worthy purpose as suffering. Suffering can be endured because there is a reason for it that is worth the effort. What is more worthy of your pain than the evolution of your soul?
Evolution | Experience | Pain | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Suffering | Understanding | Worth |
Above all we must not wish to cling to our suffering. Suffering surely deepens us and enhances our person, but we must not desire to become a deeper self than God wills. To suffer no longer can be a beautiful, perhaps the ultimate sacrifice.
Life, however, can never be reconciled to preconceived thoughts, neither can it be rationalized. Life is not an intelligence, therefore it is neither rational nor logical; it has no cause and no purpose. The attempt to rationalize the suffering that comes to us in life, to show that we have deserved it, and that it is "good for something" ultimately, is therefore doomed to failure; we cannot tame life in this way.
Only with the ending of sorrow there is passion. That is total energy, not limited by thought. So it is important to understand the nature of suffering and the ending of it. The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain, too. Look at it. It is a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain and look at it, be with it, live with it, not get bitter, cynical, but to see the nature of sorrow. There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow.
Beauty | Important | Nature | Pain | Sorrow | Suffering | Beauty | Understand |
Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Suffering is there. It is part of life and part of growth; nothing is bad in it. Suffering becomes evil only when it is simply destructive and not creative at all; suffering becomes bad only when you suffer and nothing is gained out of it. But I am telling you the divine can be gained through suffering; then it becomes creative. Darkness is beautiful if the dawn is coming out of it soon; darkness is dangerous if it is endless, leads to no dawn, simply continues and continues and you go on moving in a rut, in a vicious circle.
Darkness | Dawn | Evil | Life | Life | Nothing | Suffering |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; you are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes, death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either.
Death | Life | Life | Nothing | Suffering | Unhappiness | Witness | Happiness |