It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men p...etty and vindictive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every life and every childhood is filled with frustrations; we cannot imagine it otherwise, for even the best mother cannot satisf...y all her child's wishes and needs. It is not the suffering caused by frustration, however, that leads to emotional illness, but rather the fact that the child is forbidden by the parents to experience and articulate this suffering, the pain felt at being wounded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The animals are much more content with mere existence than we are; the plants are wholly so; and man is so according to how dull a...nd insensitive he is. The animal's life consequently contains less suffering but also less pleasure than the human's, the direct reason being that on the one hand it is free from care and anxiety and the torments that attend them, but on the other is without hope and therefore has no share in that anticipation of a happy future which, together with the enchanting products of the imagination which accompany it, is the source of most of our greatest joys and pleasures. The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Without our suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, no...t part of the Redemption.... All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual destitution, must be redeemed. And we must share it, for only by being one with them can we redeem them by bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was v...ery great.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »