Dan Simmons Quotes
We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, those limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain.
Quotes to Explore
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At school, I'd refuse to take part in biology lessons when animals were being dissected. One time, the teacher announced that we would be gassing worms. So I ran around the room, gathered up all the worms and set them free in the fields. I just loved animals and couldn't bear the thought of them suffering.
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I chose to present myself as one who comes from among the people, and I can be touched by their pain because I have my own.
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Suffering passes, while love is eternal. That's a gift that you have received from God. Don't waste it.
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In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not matter either. Seeking 'enlightenment' meant cultivating an attitude of detachment, even indifference.
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Risk is the sort of word that is easy to discuss upfront but tough to handle when it comes time to pay the piper. There will always be some who wimp out and second-guess when the pain hits, but that is a childish reaction.
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It's odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don't quite fully share the hell of someone close to you.
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Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.
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Suffering from dysentery at sea was no picnic.
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I lived for four years in the 1930s with these individuals and the only time that I wasn't thinking about dealing with physical suffering is when I was working on this book. I've never been more alive as when I worked on this book.
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The calls that I have received from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the fact that there are other people that are suffering every bit as much as I am, and that our whole nation is going through a tragedy together, I think we have to think about those things.
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If our hearts are ready for anything, we will spontaneously reach out when others are hurting. Living in an ethical way can attune us to the pain and needs of others, but when our hearts are open and awake, we care instinctively.
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The role of a clown and a physician are the same - it's to elevate the possible and to relieve suffering.
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Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.
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Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.
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God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
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There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
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The cause of suffering is that the unbounded Self is overshadowed by the world.
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Mum says that, since I was a tiny baby, I've had the most strong-willed and stubborn personality known to man. Although that was a real pain for her, she admired my resolve.
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You can't remove that layer of pain by just saying, "Okay, I'm not going to wallow in it." The only way to remove that layer of pain is to face what it says and to recognize it as the look in the mirror that it is, reflecting the things you did that you wish you hadn't done and the things you didn't do that you wish you had done.
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My reporting in Africa wouldn't be political per se, but it's certainly the point of my reporting - and of a lot of other reporters I know: Human suffering is bad, and if reporting stories about it brings it to light and someone does something, that's part of the point of journalism. And it's a thin line between that and activism, and you have to be careful about that.
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Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye that's watching. In any situation, a little part of me is observing it, to see if there are any raw materials to create something else later.
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The Heavenly Father does not ask for golden vessels. He does not ask for silver vessels. God asks for yielded vessels.
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We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, those limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain.
