Men are born to strive and suffer. Our woes only vanish when we die. I

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...

The more distinctly a man knows, the more intelligent he is, the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.

Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.

What is pain to a man? A privilege! Masking pain is the measure of a man.

If little labour, little are our gains:
Man's fortunes are according to his pains.

Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.

Man is so wretched that, while directing all his conduct towards satisfying his passions, he constantly moans about their tyranny: he cannot bear their violence, nor the violence he must use against himself in order to free himself from their yoke; he finds them disgusting, but so too their remedies, and he cannot come to terms with the pain of his illness, nor with the labour necessary for a cure.

Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.

How much can a man endure? How long could a man continue? These things I asked myself, for I am a questioning man, yet even as I asked the answers were there before me. If he be a man indeed, he must always go on, he must always endure. Death is an end to torture, to struggle, to suffering, but it is also an end to warmth, light, the beauty of a running horse, the smell of damp leaves, of gunpowder, the walk of a woman when she knows someone watches. . . these things, too, are gone.

Life is pain

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.