#suffer

Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#suffering #family

The secrets of alchemy exist to transform mortals from a state of suffering and ignorance to a state of enlightenment and bliss. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#suffering #life

When confronted with suffering that won't go away or with even a minor problem, we instinctively focus on what is missing,...not on the Master's hand. Often when you think everything has gone wrong, it's just that you're in the middle of a story. If you watch the stories God is weaving in your life, you... will begin to see the patterns. You'll become a poet, sensitive to your Father's voice. ↗

— Paul E. Miller

#poet #prayer #story #suffering #life

May our afflictions be few, but may we learn not to squander them. ↗

— Scott Cairns

#life #spiritual #suffering #life

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

Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#love #pain #redemption #scars #suffering

Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room." Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door. ↗

— Emma Donoghue

#love #loyalty #motherhood #suffering #love

It is easy to suffer for a cause or for a mission; this ennobles the heart of the person suffering. But how to explain suffering because of a man? It's not explainable. With that kind of suffering, a person feels as if they're in hell, because there is no nobility, no greatness - only misery. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#man #suffering #love