#uf

The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin' cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do. ↗

— John Connolly

#suffer #suffering #nature

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ↗

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

#perversion #security #suffering #nature

I first believed without any hesitation in the existence of the soul, and then I wondered about the secret of its nature. I persevered and strove in search of the soul, and found at last that I myself was the cover over my own soul. I realized that that in me which believed and that in me that wondered, that which was found at last, was no other than my soul. I thanked the darkness that brought me to the light, and I valued this veil that prepared for me the vision in which I saw myself reflected, the vision produced in the mirror of my soul. Since then, I have seen all souls as my soul, and realized my soul as the soul of all. And what bewilderment it was when I realized that I alone was, if there were anyone, that I am whatever and whoever exists, and that I shall be whoever there will be in the future. ↗

— Hazrat Inayat Khan

#nature

...one witch. In gym. But Cordelia didn't count. She wasn't supernaturally evil. She only acted like a broom rider. Buffy understood. Poor Cordelia was cursed with popularity, great cloths, and, no lie, she was a babe. Naturally she had to take her frustration out on everybody who didn't have it as good as she did. ↗

— Christopher Golden

#nature

I think it is very good when people suffer. To me that is like the kiss of Jesus. ↗

— Mother Teresa

#suffering #religion

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. ↗

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

#defiance #despair #done #god #greatest

The only thing that is still free in this world is religion, which is why a lot of people "find it. ↗

— Jimmy Buffett

#free #religion #religion

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

— John Green

#christianity #islam #religion #suffering #universal

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#defiance #empowerment #independence #individuality #self-assurance

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