“…in the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.”
~ Viktor Frankl / Psychology Today
Seneca on Suffering
“Two elements must therefore be rooted out once for all — the fear of future suffering, and the recollection of past suffering; since the latter no longer concerns me, and the former concerns me not yet.”
(Letters to Lucilius, LXXVIII.14)
~ Seneca
Hannah Arendt on Spectating
As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.
~ Hannah Arendt
Cicero on Memory
“We forget our pleasures and remember our sufferings.”
~ Cicero
Aristotle on Suffering
“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”
~ Aristotle
Plutarch on Success
“Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.”
~ Plutarch
William Butler Yeats on Wisdom
“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.”
~ William Butler Yeats
Buddha on Suffering
“Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.”
~ Buddha
Buddha on Suffering
“Life is suffering.”
~ Buddha
Carl Jung on Patience
“The greatest, most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.”
~ Carl Jung
Seamus Heaney on Suffering
“Human beings suffer.
They torture one another
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.”
~ Seamus Heaney
Zora Neale Hurston on Suffering in Silence
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
~ Zora Neale Hurston
Marcus Aurelius on Endurance
“If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.”
~ Marcus Aurelius
Alexandra Fuller on the Universality of Suffering
“Your suffering does not make you special; it makes you universal”
~ Alexandra Fuller
Seneca on Worrying
“A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.”
~ Seneca