George Saunders Quotes

I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over.

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.

Bear patiently, my heart, for you have suffered heavier things.

Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.

When pain brings you down, don't be silly, don't close your eyes and cry, you just might be in the best position to see the sun shine.

We know there's going to be nothing but pain, but we go back again and again.

Don't be bitter. Everybody suffers. If you can accept your suffering then you will understand other people better. Be grateful for pain. Love life.

Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.

By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.

The key is being able to endure psychologically. When you're not riding well, you think, why suffer? Why push yourself for four or five hours? The mountains are the pinnacle of suffering

Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes.

And I also know that pain can seem like an endless ribbon. You pull it and you pull it. You keep gathering it toward you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just more pain. But there's always something else at the end; something at least a little different. You never know what that thing will be, but it's there.

We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harry, but battle on.

Life's pain. You just have to get over as much of it as you can. -Isabel Culpeper

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotions,--nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer.

There was a time when I had the blues - I mean I really had it bad. I couldn't pay my light bill and I couldn't pay my rent and I really had the blues. But today I can pay my rent and I can pay the light bill and I still got the blues. So I must been born with 'em... That's my religion - the blues is my religion.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us

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.

Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life.

Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.

My life would never contain a convenient, pain-saving plan when it could stretch a problem out into an endless agony of uncertainty and torture.

As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune....Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy....Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.

The longer I live, the less chance I'll ever recover from what life keeps doing to me.

One is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen.