SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: SUFFERING

  • She understood that the hardest times in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another.
     
    —Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake

  • “You do not know what is good for you: health or sickness.”  

    —St. Basil the Great

  • After he witnessed the torments she went through, the elder sighed and wondered how it was possible for a young woman to withstand so much suffering. Her response was: “Father, for the kingdom of heaven, that was nothing. Had I known at the time what awaited me in God I would have tolerated infinitely more.”

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • Although it may be difficult to accept the concept of finding fortune in suffering, after death we will know and even wish we could have endured more hardship because of the glory we would have received in Paradise.

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • St. Mary herself visited her and addressed Mother Erene’s prayer for martyrdom, telling her, “Indeed, whatever you put up with—be it pains, diseases, problems, anguish or stress—is martyrdom.”

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • It appears that a person can receive glory in heaven by enduring suffering on earth, even if that suffering seems to have nothing to do with Christ, such as sickness.

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • Often we are greatly exaggerated with our sorrows, we observe every sorrow, but we do not observe the graces we receive from the Lord, believing it to be a given thing and therefore remain ungrateful to the Lord.

    And only when our sorrows visit us do we begin to properly appreciate the happy moment when the sorrows were not there, and we promise that if the sorrows pass, we will be grateful to God for a peaceful, tranquil existence and gratitude.

    —Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)

  • Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being?

    Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • Even sometimes there is happiness in the midst of sorrow; and indeed sorrow is everywhere.

    Notes from the Underground
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • I sympathize sincerely with the sufferings of your dear sick one, and with the pain of those whom God has placed about her to help her bear the cross. Let her not distrust God, and He will proportion her suffering to the patience which He will bestow. No one can do this but He who made all hearts, and whose office it is to renew them by his grace. The man in whom He operates, knows nothing of the proper proportions; and, seeing the extent, neither of his future trials, nor of the grace prepared to meet them, he is tempted to discouragement and despair. Like a man who had never seen the ocean, he stands, at the coming in of the tide, between the water and an impassable wall of rock, and thinks he perceives the terrible certainty that the approaching waves must surely engulf him; he does not see that he stands within the point, at which God, with unerring finger, has drawn their boundryline, and beyond which they shall not pass. God proves the righteous as with the ocean; he stirs it up, and makes its great billows seem to threaten our destruction, but He is always at hand to say, thus far shalt thou go and no farther. “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.” (1 Cor. x. 13.)

    —François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress