#suffer

Suffering can thus be seen in large part as a kind of resistance or reactivity to the pain of the present moment. (p. 74) ↗

— Donald Rothberg

#life

She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and miseries to keep the sharp edge on her work. But the idea that an artist needed to suffer to do her best work was a conceit of the young and inexperienced. The happier she grew, the better she wrote. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#starving-artist #suffering #writing #writing-process #life

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry. ↗

— Yann Martel

#life-of-pi #metaphor #pain #suffering #time

Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life. ↗

— Piero Gheddo

#attention #christianity #compassion #empathy #giving

Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child. ↗

— Piers Anthony

#innocence #suffering #nature

Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘there is joy is self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness. ↗

— Helen Keller

#gratitude #joy #nature #self-forgetfulness #suffering

Nismo li možda tijekom vremena tumačili kršćanstvo suviše isključivo kao religiju osjetljivu za grijeh te u skladu s tim premalo osjetljivu za trpljenje? ↗

— Johann Baptist Metz

#religion #sensitive #sin #suffering #religion

The antique, almost primitive band he held between his fingers caught the sunlight, glinting silver. “I found this ring shortly after I was banished from heaven. I kept it to remind myself of how endless my sentence was, how eternal one small choice can be. I’ve kept it a long time. I want you to have it. You broke my suffering. You’ve given me a new eternity. Be my girl, Nora. Be my everything. ↗

— Becca Fitzpatrick

#suffering

There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, “If God gave it to me,” we say, “its mine. I can do what I want with it.” No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of – if we want to find our true selves, if we want real life, if our hearts are set on glory. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#hold-on #keep #let-go #mine #pain

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#suffering #cruelty