If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
—Sun Tzu
Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
Only through suffering can we find ourselves.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
In Christ, justice and mercy embrace, suffering is the road to glory, the cross points to a crown, and the timber of the cross becomes the tree of life.
—Herman Bavinck
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality
—Seneca
Do not suffer, for God has not made us to abandon us.
—Michelangelo
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
It is better to suffer once than to be in perpetual apprehension.
—Julius Caesar
As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
It is absurd and a detestable shame, that we should suffer those traditions to be changed which we have received from the fathers of old.
—Thomas Aquinas
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering..
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
—Seneca
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
—Seneca
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
—Leonardo Da Vinci
To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.
—Plato
The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men.
—Plato
If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever.
Your mind is your predicament.
—Socrates
To perceive is to suffer.
—Aristotle
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
We must suffer, as well as do, for CHRIST. If you are one of his you will rejoice.
—George Whitefield
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
—Mark Twain
Help me O God to desire to do or suffer thy will.
—William Wilberforce
Since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father He feels toward His people exactly as the Father feels. He will always act like Jesus, toward sinners in compassion, toward saints in warm affection, toward human suffering in tenderest pity and love.
—AW Tozer
I was resigned to God’s will, to tarry his time, to do his work, and suffer his pleasure.
—David Brainerd
I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
Oh, methinks, if he would punish me for my sins, it would not wound my heart so deep to offend him: but though I sin continually, yet he continually repeats his kindness to me! Oh, methinks I could bear any sufferings; but how can I bear to grieve and dishonour this blessed God!
—David Brainerd
The sufferings of His soul were the very soul of His sufferings. Did Christ bear such a burden for me with unbroken patience and constancy, and shall I shrink back from momentary and light afflictions for Him?
—John Flavel
Is not eternal life worth the suffering of a moment’s pain? If I suffer with Him, I shall reign with Him (2 Tim. 2:12).
—John Flavel
To suffer sin to lodge quietly in the heart, to let thy heart habitually and without control wander from God, is a sad, a dangerous symptom indeed.
—John Flavel