Top 200 Suffering Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 4

101. “No victory without suffering.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

102. “Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.”

— Bob Dylan

103. “Happiness for a reason is just another form of misery because the reason can be taken away from us at any time.”

— Deepak Chopra

104. “Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.”

— Fulton J. Sheen

105. “To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.”

— Jordan B. Peterson

106. “I dare you to take a little pain. I dare you!”

— Eric Thomas

107. “Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

108. “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.”

— C. S. Lewis

109. “Sometimes you’ve got to go through hell to get to heaven.”

— Dean Karnazes

110. “These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”

— Rumi

111. “To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.”

— Charlie Chaplin

112. “When you go through a trial, the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which you lay your head.”

— Charles H. Spurgeon

113. “In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.”

— Bertolt Brecht

114. “Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”

— William Faulkner

115. “As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.”

— Leo Tolstoy

116. “When you feel like you’ve had it up to here, and you’re mad enough to scream, but you’re sad enough to tear, that’s rock bottom.”

— Eminem

117. “Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus – a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you.”

— Mother Teresa

118. “How many deaths will it take ’till we know that too many people have died?”

— Bob Dylan

119. “Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.”

— Nick Hornby

120. “It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

121. “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

— C. S. Lewis

122. “If Life Gets Too Hard To Stand, Kneel.”

— Gordon B. Hinckley

123. “Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.”

— Hermann Hesse

124. “I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

125. “The world has kissed my Soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.”

— Rabindranath Tagore

126. “Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

— Rumi

127. “I was never crippled until I lost hope.”

— Nick Vujicic

128. “If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”

— Nhat Hanh

129. “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

— Khalil Gibran

130. “Something very beautiful happens to people when their world’s fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.”

— Marianne Williamson

131. “We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.”

— Charles Bukowski

132. “It is in the quiet crucible of your personal, private sufferings that your noblest dreams are born and God’s greatest gifts are given.”

— Wintley Phipps

133. “The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person’s suffering and bring that person joy.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

134. “Jesus Christ did not suffer so that you would not suffer. He suffered so that when you suffer, you’ll become more like him. The gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life.”

— Timothy Keller

135. “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”

— Nhat Hanh

136. “Life’s hard, then you die.”

— Woody Allen

137. “It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

138. “People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

139. “Those who do not weep, do not see.”

— Victor Hugo

140. “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”

— C. S. Lewis

141. “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”

— A.W. Tozer

142. “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”

— Sophocles

143. “If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

144. “Poverty, disease, sorrow, imprisonment and other evils are the fruits borne by the tree of one’s own sins.”

— Chanakya

145. “The deep meaning of the cross of Christ is that there is no suffering on earth that is not borne by God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

146. “The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain – to just be with it all.”

— Ram Dass

147. “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”

— Bob Pierce

148. “Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”

— Sam Harris

149. “It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

150. “A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

— William Shakespeare