October 28

Just as the sensation of pain is a necessary condition for the preservation of our bodies, so is suffering a necessary condition of our lives from birth till death.

1

Just as our body would burst if the atmosphere stopped exerting pressure on it, so too people’s arrogance would rise to a level that, if not in danger of bursting, would nevertheless reach that of unbridled folly and even insanity if necessity, toilsome labor and all the vicissitudes of fate stopped exerting pressure on their lives.

— Schopenhauer

2

Just as a doctor prescribes one treatment to one patient, a different treatment to another, so too providence prescribes us diseases, injuries and tragic losses.

In the same way that a doctor’s prescription aims towards the restoration of a sick person’s health, the accidents of providence that befall a human being aim towards his moral improvement, towards restoring the connection he has lost between his individual existence and the common life of the whole of humankind.

So accept everything that comes your way the same way that a patient takes his doctor’s medicine. The purpose of the bitter medicine is to restore the health of the body, but it is just as important for the whole of sentient nature that every one of its beings maintains its purpose as it is for an individual to restore the health of his body.

This is why you should welcome everything that happens to you, even the most bitter things, for the meaning of such accidents is the health and integrity of the universe. Animated by its reason, nature does things for a reason, and everything that comes from it unfailingly helps preserve its unity.

— Marcus Aurelius

3

Suffering is a call to action, and it is only through action that we experience our life.

— Kant

4

It is a blessing for a human being to bear the sufferings of this world, for this draws him into the sacred privacy of his heart, where he finds himself like an exile from his homeland, compelled to abandon worldly pleasures. It is also his blessing to be reproached, to be thought and spoken of badly, even if his intentions are pure and his deeds righteous, for such things keep him humble and are an antidote to empty fame. And the main reason why this is a blessing is because in these minutes, when the world despises us, disrespects us and deprives us of love, we can converse with the God that dwells within us.

— Thomas à Kempis

5

If God gave us mentors whom we knew for certain were sent by him, then we would obey them freely and joyfully.

But we do have such mentors: they are necessity and all of life’s misfortunes in general.

— Pascal

6

Only in a storm does the sailor fully show his skill, only on the battlefield is the warrior’s bravery tested; a person’s courage can only be discovered by his conduct in life’s difficult and dangerous situations.

— Daniel

7

What we call fortune and what we call misfortune are equally useful to us if we view both the former and the latter as trials.

8

Do not get used to prosperity—it is transient: the one who has must learn to lose, the one who is happy must learn to suffer.

— Schiller

9

Suffering and torments are felt only by someone who, having separated himself from the life of the world and not seeing the sins with which he brought suffering to the world, thinks that he is guiltless, and who therefore feels indignation at the sufferings which he bears for the sins of the world.

One could imagine a legend that would be as just as the one about the Wandering Jew—which tells of a man man doomed to eternal life—about a man punished by being doomed to a life without suffering.