Painfully Quotes (page 24)
What is death? A "tragic mask." Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite. The poor body must be separated from the spirit either now or later, as it was separated from it before. Why, then, are you troubled, if it be separated now? for if it is not separated now, it will be separated afterward. Why? That the period of the universe may be completed, for it has need of the present, and of the future, and of the past. What is pain? A mask. Turn it and examine it. The poor flesh is moved...
Epictetus
If the painful history of the human and Christian striving for God proves anything, it surely proves this: that any attempt to reduce God to the scope of our own comprehension leads to the absurd. We can only speak rightly about him if we renounce the attempt to comprehend and let him be the uncomprehended. Any doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, cannot aim at being a perfect comprehension of God. It is a frontier notice, a discouraging gesture pointing over to unchartable territory. It is...
Joseph Ratzinger
In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love.
Joseph Ratzinger
He was near tears, 'Who do I blame?' he kept asking me. 'There is no God. I can only blame myself.'"
The Reb's face tightened, as if in pain.
"That," he said, softly, "is a terrible self-indictment."
Worse than an unanswered prayer?
"Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody's out there.
Mitch Albom
I am filthy. I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit. My skin is encrusted with the scabs and scales of leprosy, and covered with yellow pus.[...] A family of toads has taken up residence in my left armpit and, when one of them moves, it tickles. Mind one of them does not escape and come and scratch the inside of your ear with its mouth; for it would then be able to enter your brain. In my right armpit there is a chameleon which is perpetually chasing them, to avoid starving...
Comte de Lautreamont
The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.
James Baldwin
We see the evil in others because we know the evil in ourselves. We never forgive those whou wound us because we believe that we would never be forgiven. We say the painful truth to others because we want to hide it from ourselves. We show our strength, so that no one can see our frailty. That is why, whenever you judge your brother, be aware that it is you who is in the dock.
Paulo Coelho
I'll be sure to pass your comments along to the manager-after I fire him for letting you in."Don't be cranky, Josh." She slanted her most persuasive smile his way, only slightly annoyed when she saw it didn't make a dent. "I'm sorry I woke you up. I wasn't thinking about the time."Not thinking is one of your most highly honed skills."I'm not going to fight with you, and I'm not going to apologize for not sleeping with you just because your ego's bruised."His smile was thin and sharp as a...
Nora Roberts
Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own...
Thomas Merton