Quotes about Suffering

To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age.

They sought to pummel His pride, not understanding He'd laid it aside at birth, when He gave up heaven and came to earth.

Christians will be found in the neighbourhood of Jesus — but Jesus is found in the neighbourhood of human confusion and suffering, defencelessly alongside those in need. If being baptized is being led to where Jesus is, then being baptized is being led towards the chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny.

Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God.

Just as gold is purified in the fire, so the soul is purified in sufferings.

Job endured everything — until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

let us speak of the wish and thereby of the sufferings; let us properly linger over this, convinced that one may learn more profoundly and more reliably what the highest is by considering suffering than by observing achievements, where so much that is distracting is present.

From earliest childhood, an arrow of grief has been embedded in my heart. As long as it remains there, I am ironic — if it is drawn out, I will die.

If a man in truth wills the Good then he must be willing to suffer all for the Good.

And isn't it true here too that those whom God blesses he damns in the same breath?

Infinite humiliation and grace, and then a striving born of gratitude — this is Christianity.

The truth is that to become a Christian is to become unhappy for this life. The situation is this: the more thou hast to do with God, and the more He loves thee, the more wilt thou become, humanly speaking, unhappy for this life, the more thou wilt have to suffer in this life.