#erin

in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them ↗

— Marcel Proust

#suffering #men

As Auden is believed to have said, no poem saved a single Jew from the gas chambers. Never mind. Write the poems anyway. Play the music in spite of that. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#art

Didn't I say I'd always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up. ↗

— Anne Rivers Siddons

#missing #parted #remembering #love

Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about. ↗

— John Green

#christianity #islam #religion #suffering #universal

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things. ↗

— Anne Rice

#respect

The question was whether an ape which was being used to develop a poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering. Unanimously, the group replied that of course it would not; with its limited intelligence, it could not enter into the world of man, i.e., the only world in which the meaning of its suffering would be understandable. Then I pushed forward with the following question: ‘And what about man? Are you sure that the the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer? ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#suffering #intelligence

In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone. ↗

— Carson McCullers

#enlightenment #expression #face #faces #life

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling. ↗

— Yann Martel

#suffering #life

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long. ↗

— Louis L'Amour

#education

If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#feeling #love #message-in-a-bottle #nicholas-sparks #regret