top of page
.png){kind=small}
"When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Suffering quotes
"One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary."
"Although it pains me to admit it, I am quite familiar with the holes in life. And this familiarity is due to the fact that I spend far more time in these holes than I spend on the paths that brought me to them."
"The saints have to 'drink poison' (worldly suffering) and the world has to 'drink nectar' (worldly pleasures). Because people are weak."
"No one is without troubles, without personal hardships and genuine challenges. That fact may not be obvious because most people don't advertise their woes and heartaches. But nobody, not even the purest heart, escapes life without suffering battle scars."
"Discharge [disposal of karma] is in nature's hands. That's why there is restlessness. That is why these are the pains of dependency [association]. There are such times man has to face that it becomes difficult for him to pass even one hour."
"As long as there is worldly life, one is going to attain physical body, and as long as there is a body, there will be worldly miseries and troubles."
"If you allow it, [suffering] can be the means by which God brings you His greatest blessings."
"The suffering that is there in this world is such that it will fall off (go away), but people give support to it."
Explore more quotes by Yann Martel
"You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better."
"So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"
"Trees were not hard, irritable things, but discreetly orgasmic beings moaning at a level too deep for our brutish ears. And flowers were quick explosive orgasms, like making love in the shower."
"There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is."
"To her, writing is making stock and reading is sipping broth, but only the spoken word is the full roasted chicken."
"Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer."
"Let that be a reminder to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the conclusions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depending on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depending on how we live it. There is no inevitability to any historical occurrence, only what people will allow to take place. And it is by dreaming first that we get to new realities."
"If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
bottom of page