Quote

A lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often - I say this against myself - a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light.

— John O'Donohue

Sentiment: NEGATIVE

←Previous Next→

✓Similar Perspectives

It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.

— Sharon Salzberg

The word 'suffering' is not in my vocabulary.

— Judith Jamison

Suffering has roused them from the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terrible intoxication. They are now something more than themselves; those we loved were merely happy shadows.

— Georges Duhamel

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.

— William Wordsworth

I think we have a creative impulse where suffering can magnify our work, but so can joy. You can be in love and write the greatest love song ever. Sometimes I think too much suffering makes it difficult to do one's work.

— Patti Smith

Anything that I undergo, I look at as redemptive suffering.

— Jim Caviezel

✗Opposing Perspectives

Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise.

— Rob Bell

I don't look at myself as suffering.

— A. J. Langer

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

— Colm Toibin

Suffering is a kind of ecstasy in a way. Having pain all the time makes me terribly, terribly grateful for every moment I've got.

— John Tavener