SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: SUFFERING

  • “I literally couldn’t function and I was struggling very mightily and not showing it to anyone in the world…I didn’t even talk to most of my friends because simply talking about it was so upsetting to me because of the possibility—the thought that this was me for life—that if I talked about it, it would become real and I didn’t want it to become real.  I still had hope that maybe one day it will go away.”

    —Jonathan Fields

  • In every case the joy is greater, the worse the pain which has preceded it.

    —St. Augustine, Confessions

  • You knew what I endured; no human being knew. How little of it my tongue could put into words for the ears of my closest friends! Neither the time nor my powers of speech were sufficient to tell them of the full tumult of my soul.

    —St. Augustine, Confessions

  • We think that having faith is just being optimistic, but what happens if it doesn’t get better? Our faith is most defined in the season of enduring strife. Suffering reveals what we have tied our faith to.

    —Fr. Nathanael Guirguis

  • How can you find out if you are living within the will of God? Here is the sign: If you are troubled about anything, this means that you have not completely given yourself over to the will of God. A person who lives in the will of God is not concerned over anything. And if he needs anything, he gives both it and himself over to God. And if he does not receive the necessary thing, he remains calm nevertheless, as if he had it. The soul which has been given over to the will of God is afraid of nothing, not of thunder nor of thieves – nothing. But whatever happens, she says, “Thus it pleases God.” If she is sick, she thinks: this means that I need to be sick, or else God would not have given it to me. Thus peace is preserved in both soul and body. 

    —St. Silouan the Athonite

  • In order to defeat failure and despair one must have faith that God will grant us success: “The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build.” When Saint Paul was going through a difficult trial that made him say, “We were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves,” what made him victorious was his faith. Let us contemplate on what he said and what his thinking was. He said, “we despaired even of life” and “had the sentence of death in ourselves.” Can God do anything to one who is dead? God can indeed raise the dead! Even if I reach a point of despair in my life that is so severe and I am like the dead, I should still never lose my hope nor let the despair crawl into my heart.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Overcome Hopelessness and Despair

  • ​​For when we are in great or chronic physical pain we are indifferent to all other troubles: all we are concerned about is recovering.

    —Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms (Classics)

  • Why ask this question [why]? ‘Why did this happen? Why me? Why her? Why?’ 

    Why are we asking these questions? These are questions from lack of faith. We shouldn’t have idly curious questions. You don’t need to know why you got sick. You just need to know that you should bear your illness with courage and with patience and with humility. And then in the next life, you will have no sickness and no sorrow, and I guarantee you will never ask why in heaven.


    —Fr. Seraphim Holland


  • Be not anxious about the future; it is opposed to grace. When God sends you consolation, regard Him only in it, enjoy it day by day as the Israelites received their manna, and do not endeavor to lay it up in store. There are two peculiarities of pure faith; it sees God alone under all the imperfect envelopes which conceal Him,4 and it holds the soul incessantly in suspense. We are kept constantly in the air, without being suffered to touch a foot to solid ground. The comfort of the present instant will be wholly inappropriate to the next; we must let God act with the most perfect freedom, in whatever belongs to Him, and think only of being faithful in all that depends upon ourselves. This momentary dependence, this darkness and this peace of the soul, under the utter uncertainty of the future, is a true martyrdom, which take place silently and without any stir. It is death by a slow fire; and the end comes so imperceptibly and interiorly, that it is often almost as much hidden from the sufferer himself, as from those who are unacquainted with his state. When God removes his gifts from you, He knows how and when to replace them, either by others or by Himself. He can raise up children from the very stones.

    —Francois Fenelon, Spiritual Progress

  • Whatever may be the state of your sick friend, and whatever the issue of her disease, she is blessed in being so quiet under the hand of God. If she die, she dies to the Lord; if she live, she lives to Him. Either the cross or death, says St. Theresa.

    —Francois Fenelon, Spiritual Progress