George Orwell Quotes

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man - that is, the more divine - the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

I don't search it out - I really want to be clear, I don't search out the misery! I'm not sitting at home going, 'I can't wait to do another harrowing piece of work.'

Life is full of painful events, and people who have lost their way and hurt others. Our pain is not lessened when we respond with hatred. In fact, the opposite occurs: When we hate people who hurt us, we come to resemble what we hate, or worse, and then we suffer all the more. What is evil is our response. We have choices, and love is the most powerful eliminator of all.

Art is only a way of expressing pain.

The sad part is that all we're trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we proceed in such a way that the uneasiness only gets worse. The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule our lives, and the patterns that we consider unhelpful don't keep getting stronger as the days and months and years go by.

I say unto you that suffering is not holding you, you are holding suffering

Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.

It is a rose planted in your heart, and as it's thorns tear you, so does it thrive and flower

In my childhood diary I wrote: “I have decided that it is better not to love anyone, because when you love people, then you have to be separated from them, and that hurts too much.

Until we get to the point where we've had enough of things that hurt and long more than anything for a peaceful love, we are bound to take painful roads. We are destined to play out our frivolous disasters until we declare ourselves finished and done with them. How much pain do we have to suffer before we are sure we want no more? As much, it seems, as we have to until we don't.

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work -- hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss -- loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

What hurts us is what heals us.

I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.

You can feel the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-- no matter how smart or accomplished--they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love and a peaceful heart.

That which makes you miserable is the only sin. That which takes you away from yourself is the only thing to be avoided.

O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes! O drooping souls, whose destinies Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again.

The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.

Small sorrows speak great ones are silent.

All conflict comes from attachment.

Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.

We cannot get to our knowledge because the world is too loud. And we tend to make it louder as we cry out in pain, pretending we are singing.