Quotes about Suffering

Say they who counsel war; 'we are decreed, Reserved, and destined to eternal woe; Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, What can we suffer worse?' Is this then worst

And miserable it is to be to others cause of misery...

Father, I do acknowledge and confess That I this honor, I this pomp have brought To Dagon, and advanc'd his praises high among the Heathen round; to God have brought Dishonor, obloquy, and op'd the mouths Of Idolists, and Atheists […]The anguish of my Soul, that suffers not Mine eye to harbor sleep, or thoughts to rest. This only hope relieves me, that the strife With mee hath end.

Say they who counsel war; 'we are decreed, Reserved, and destined to eternal woe; Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, What can we suffer worse?' Is this then worst, Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms? What when we fled amain, pursued and struck With Heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought The Deep to shelter us? This Hell then seemed A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay Chained on the burning lake? That sure was worse.

Somebody once said that the biggest difference between you and God is that God doesn't think he's you. In pain, we get very clear about not being God.

God's great, holy joke about the messiah complex is this: Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from it—except one. And he was the Messiah.

The question is, can a human being hold on to God in the face of suffering? After all, suffering is the test of love.

Etty spent her last days giving hope and care, "with a kind word for everyone she met on the way." Her final words were written on a postcard and thrown off Wagon No. 12, the railroad car she rode to what she knew would be her death in Auschwitz. "We left camp singing," she wrote. The Nazis took control of her possessions, her mobility, her work, her family, her body, and finally her life, yet she believed that they did not truly take anything at all.

Dostoyevsky, who was a believer, wrote that the "death of a single infant calls into question the existence of God."1

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

It therefore behoveth all those who may possibly be called to suffer for the truth in any season, or on any occasion, to assure their minds in this fundamental truth, that they may have in themselves a certain undeceiving understanding of the mind and will of God as revealed in the Scripture, independent on the authority of any church or persons whatsoever; the use of whose ministry herein we do yet freely and fully allow.

Yet in these and the like distresses doth the word of God, by its divine power and efficacy, break through all interposing difficulties, all dark and discouraging circumstances, supporting, refreshing, and comforting such poor distressed sufferers, yea, commonly filling them under overwhelming calamities with "joy unspeakable and full of glory." Though