Oct 4, 2006

Random Quotes On Death & Suffering

Those we hold most dear never truly leave us ... they live on in the kindnesses they showed, the comfort they shared and the love they brought into our lives. Isabel Norton

A life that touches others goes on forever.

Those who live in the Lord never see each other for the last time.

When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.

God has not taken them from us – He has hidden them in His heart that they may be closer to ours.

Life is fragile ... handle with prayer.

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.

Out of suffering come the strongest souls. God’s wounded often make his best soldiers.

Faith is not believing that God can, it is knowing that He will.

If your day is hemmed with prayer, it is less likely to unravel.

Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not here, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glint on snow; I am sunlight on ripened grain; I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight; I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die. (old Indian prayer)

Togetherness Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name; speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Laugh as we always laughed at room at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of your mind because I am out of your sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before - only better, infinitely happier and forever - We will all be one together with Christ.

God saw you getting tired and a cure was not to be so he put his arms around you and whispered, " Come to Me." With tearful eyes we watched you pass away. Although we love you dearly, we could not make you stay. A golden heart stopped beating, hard-working hands at rest, God broke our hearts to prove to us - He only takes the best.

When I must leave you for a little while Please do not grieve and shed wild tears and hug your sorrow to you through the years. But start out bravely, with a gallant smile, And for my sake and in my name live on and do all things the same. Feed not your loneliness on empty days, but fill each waking hour in useful ways. Reach out your hand in comfort and in cheer and I in turn will comfort you and hold you near. And never, never be afraid to die, for I am waiting for you in the sky! Helen Steiner Rice

Remember Me to the living, I am gone.To the sorrowful, I will never return. To be angry, I was cheated. But to the happy, I am at peace. And to the faithful, I have never left. I can not be seen, but I can be heard. So as you touch upon a shore, gazing at a beautiful sea ... remember me. Remember in your heart, your thoughts, and your memories of the times we fought, the times we laughed ... for if you always think of me I will never have gone!

Memories keep those we love close to us forever. Hold fast to your memories, to all of the cherished moments of the past, to the blessings and the laughter, the joys and the celebrations, the sorrow and the tears. They all add up to a treasure of fond yesterdays that you shared and spent together, and they keep the one you loved close to you in spirit and thought. The special moments and memories in your life will never change. They will always be in your heart, today and forevermore. Linda E. Knight

· Into each life some rain must fall.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
· There can be no rainbow without a cloud and a storm.
-- John H. Vincent
· Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.
-- Oscar Wilde
· Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
-- Thomas Moore
· The world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.
-- Helen Keller
· Sorrow: a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away.
-- Samuel Johnson
· Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls.
-- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
· It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
· We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it in full.
-- Marcel Proust
· I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another.
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau
· It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
-- Robert Lynd
· The salvation of the world is in man's suffering.
-- William Faulkner
· How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
-- H. L. Mencken
· If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.
-- Elbert Hubbard
· Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
-- Aristotle

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Roberta Flack

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Kahlil Gibran

The most beautiful people we have known
are those who have known defeat,
known suffering, known struggle, known loss,
and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation,
a sensitivity and an understanding standing of life
that fills them with compassion, gentleness
and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations”

Through his griefs Job came to his heritage. He was tried that his godliness might be confirmed. Are not my troubles intended to deepen my character and to robe me in graces I had little of before? I come to my glory through eclipses, tears, death. My ripest fruit grows against the roughest wall. Job's afflictions left him with higher conceptions of God and lowlier thoughts of himself. "Now," he cried, "mine eye seeth thee.

And if, through pain and loss, I feel God so near in His majesty that I bend low before Him and pray, "Thy will be done," I gain very much. God gave Job glimpses of the future glory. In those wearisome days and nights, he penetrated within the veil, and could say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Surely the latter end of Job was more blessed than the beginning.--In the Hour of Silence

"Trouble never comes to a man unless she brings a nugget of gold in her hand."

Apparent adversity will finally turn out to be the advantage of the right if we are only willing to keep on working and to wait patiently. How steadfastly the great victor souls have kept at their work, dauntless and unafraid! There are blessings which we cannot obtain if we cannot accept and endure suffering. There are joys that can come to us only through sorrow. There are revealings of Divine truth which we can get only when earth's lights have gone out. There are harvests which can grow only after the plowshare has done its work.--Selected

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of Heaven. --Chapin

I shall know by the gleam and glitter
Of the golden chain you wear,
By your heart's calm strength in loving,
Of the fire you have had to bear.
Beat on, true heart, forever;
Shine bright, strong golden chain;
And bless the cleansing fire
And the furnace of living pain!
--Adelaide Proctor

Never forget that God tests his real friends
more severely than the lukewarm ones.
Kathryn Hulme

He is not dead, this friend; not dead,
Gone some few, trifling steps ahead,
And nearer to the end;
So that you, too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.
Robert Louis Stevenson

We are not the only ones who suffer. All humanity suffers. Still, suffering is not a natural phenomenon without feeling and sentiment. Nor is it a trick of cruel fate. It is God's providence. As Gandhi, a great soul of India, said, "Suffering is a principle of human life. " We cannot conceive of life without suffering. Death is an end of life, disease is a part of the body. The road to the cross is the way of life. Suffering cleanses sin. Suffering washes life clean as soda washes dirt away. A soul damaged and soiled by iniquity can be restored only by the bitterness of suffering. Suffering gives depth to life. When wrinkles appear on the forehead, deep wisdom is born inside. Only by letters written with blood, by pictures drawn with tears, by songs sung with sighs can the deep meaning of life be expressed. Anyone with a two dimensional, a purely secular world view has not tasted the bitter cup of suffering.

Suffering makes life greater. Life takes a step forward after enduring suffering. By enduring poverty and penalty one can obtain freedom and nobility of heart. At the onset of suffering one must become either an opponent of Satan or a friend of God. Suffering, while taking away from the flesh, refines the soul. Suffering brings loss and pain but for a time, while the worth and meaning it brings are eternal. For an individual great character is a gift of suffering.

Suffering leads life to God. People have sought God, source of life, only through 'suffering, just as the prodigal son sought his father only after he tasted hunger. If, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the way to God is paved with malice. Through the lens of eyes wet with tears will one see the kingdom of heaven. Only in suffering can one find the end of the thread leading to reason, and if one follows it, one can reach the gateway to eternity.

Suffering is, as Gandhi says, "an inevitable condition of our life. " He said in effect: Men have to offer self-sacrifice and endurance at the altar of freedom. Although mortification and oppression strain their strength of endurance to the breaking point, only those who endure to the end will be saved. These words are the truth. Only by doing so can people achieve true freedom, true swaraj (self-rule). Only by doing so can they find true happiness, only by doing so can they win true victory. Gandhi held that "purification through suffering" is an eternal verity.

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