Frederick Buechner Quotes

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

The thorn is a bridge spanning the muddy depths of agony and sorrow so that one may on the other side dance to the drums of the rose of joy.

He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

I found more joy in sorrow than you could find in joy.

I've always said you have to go through a lot of heartache in life to feel joy.

Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain.

When I think of the happiness that is in store for me, every sorrow, every pain becomes dear to me.

The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.

There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

Joy came always after pain.

The most important lesson that man can learn from life, is not that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy.

Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.

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.

So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.

Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you to stop suffering.

In our lives, we have good things and bad things, happiness and pain.

I've had at least my share of tragedy, but I have had far more than my share of happiness.

Perhaps the day may come when we shall remember these sufferings with joy.

I think sometimes when our childhoods are difficult, we forget that there's also a lot of joy.

I have been blessed with a good, fun, and wonderful life, but I've also seen a whole lot of pain.

I believe in joy, but I believe in the flip-side, agony.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We've all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we've all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that's a gift - to you and your audience.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.