Simone Weil Quotes

Misery is, by her own nature, a passing phase of sorrow, one that does not linger uninvited. Her sojourns seem to be part of life's required curriculum, perhaps because Misery endows us with compassion and empathy.

Misery is the River of the World

It is the lot of man to suffer.

It's not been a pleasant life.

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

Suffering will get you great footage. I don't know about closer to God. Although there have been times when I've suffered to the point where I think I might be about to meet him.

While we yearn for peace, we live in a world burdened with hunger, pain, anguish, loneliness, sickness, and sorrow.

One man’s exile is but a drop in the sea of human misery

There's never any ebb in human misery.

Pain - that is what life is about, isn't it? Suffering with moments of reprieve.

Wisdom cometh by suffering.

Troubles are as endless as pleasures are brief.

Small leisure have the poor for grief.

What a terrible thing life can be.

Tragedy ought really to be a great kick at misery.

Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?

Trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment; there is no fate in the world so horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows.

Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is not.

True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness.

Misery is a guest that we are glad to part with, however certain of her speedy return.

Death is not the worst sorrow.

People don't know what pain is until they suffer.