#suffering

These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#jean-valjean #les-miserables #smiling #suffering #love

But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer. ↗

— Nicholas Wolterstorff

#love #suffering #love

He was without any comforts of God — no feeling that God loved him — no feeling that God pitied him — no feeling that God supported him. God was his sun before — now that sun became all darkness… He was without God — he was as if he had no God. All that God had been to him before was taken from him now. He was Godless — deprived of his God. He had the feeling of the condemned, when the Judge says: “Depart from me, ye cursed,” “who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power.” He felt that God said the same to him. Ah! This is the hell which Christ suffered. The ocean of Christ’s sufferings is unfathomable… He was forsaken in the [place] of sinners. If you close with him as your surety, you will never be forsaken… “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” [The answer?] For me — for me. ↗

— Robert Murray McCheyne

#jesus #love #suffering #love

I know for a fact that no matter where I go, the memory and the suffering of not being with you will cripple me. I will go to work, fire up my PC, only to check if you're online. I will hover the pointer to your name, it will pop your contact details--just the contact details, no photo, no one-liners, no sign of what we used to have--but I shall linger and stare at it for hours. I will attempt to start a chat, but will close it without even a word to type. I will try to divert my thoughts back to work. But will fail. I will always go back to you. One hour to another, it's 5 PM. I pack my things, unproductive for the day and smile. I'm doing that again tomorrow and the next. ↗

— CSTPimentel

#bothered #chat #computer #hopeful #love

Comme son amour fut immense, Immense fut sa souffrance. ↗

— Giovanni Battista Ferrandini

#suffering #love

The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless. ↗

— Mary Balogh

#suffering #love

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#happiness #happy #joy #pain #relief

As Auden is believed to have said, no poem saved a single Jew from the gas chambers. Never mind. Write the poems anyway. Play the music in spite of that. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#art

It seemed so good when it started. I gave my trust to you. I came to you open-hearted, Hoping it was true. Now I've gotten smart. Now I've learned some things. Now I know that what once was a start, Is just an ending. The longest good-bye I ever knew, The longest good-bye Was the day I said hello to you. ↗

— Heather Lynn Rigaud

#hello-goodbye #lbs #long-bourne-suffering #music-lyrics #pride-and-prejudice

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ↗

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

#perversion #security #suffering #nature