Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Alan Brennert

Quote by Alan Brennert

“Gaman was a word rooted in Buddhism that meant "enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity." Ruth had heard her father use it often after they moved to California. And now, after they had endured so much already, here they were, once more forced to gaman.”

Quote by Alan Brennert

Book:Daughter of Moloka'i
Create image

Work

Daughter of Moloka'i

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Alan Brennert
Alan Brennert

Alan Brennert is an American author known for his historical novels. His works, often set against the backdrop of Pacific island history and culture, have won the hearts of readers. more

You May Also Like

“The spectacle takes us away from our routines. For at least a time, we feel part of something big, colorful, exciting. It is perhaps understandable that civilians are often more enthusiastic during wartime than soldiers who have experienced battle. The soldiers know that war is often boring and dirty as well as terrifying and colorful. Even so, after some years, an old soldier like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., could brush aside his earlier description of the pain, boredom, and death of war and declare that “its message was divine.” The stench disappears, but the spectacle remains in memory’s eye.”

WarPainSufferingSoldierMemoryEnthusiasmExcitementRoutineDisgustCivilian
Book:Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War
Create image

“As a fact, we cannot give suffering precedence in either our individual or collective lives. We have to get on with things, and those who give precedence to suffering will be left behind. They fetter us with their sniveling. We have someplace to go and must believe we can get there, wherever that may be. And to conceive that there is a 'brotherhood of suffering between everything alive' would disable us from getting anywhere. We are preoccupied with the good life, and step by step are working toward a better life. What we do, as a conscious species, is set markers for ourselves. Once we reach one marker, we advance to the next — as if we were playing a board game we think will never end, despite the fact that it will, like it or not. And if you are too conscious of not liking it, then you may conceive of yourself as a biological paradox that cannot live with its consciousness and cannot live without it. And in so living and not living, you take your place with the undead and the human puppet.”

SufferingConsciousnessProgressDepression
Book:The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
Create image

“We are not a voice for the voiceless. The truth is that there is a lot of noise out there drowning out quiet voices, and many people have stopped listening to the cries of their neighbors. Lots of folks have put their hands over their ears to drown out the suffering. Institutions have distanced themselves from the disturbing cries.. It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. One of the verses I have grown to love is the one where Jesus is preparing to leave the disciples and says, "I no longer call you servants.... Instead, I have called you friends" (John 15:15). Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships. Someday, perhaps we can even say those words that Ruth said to Naomi after years of partnership: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried" (Ruth 1:16-17).”

SufferingCommunityChristianityGenuine Relationships
Author:Shane Claiborne
Create image

“But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering ― curious as it may sound to you ― is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity.”

SufferingSorrowPrison
Book:Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
Create image

“I loathe, detest, hate and abominate the block, the gibbet, the rack, the pillory and the faggots with equal passion," said the old man vehemently. "Not only are they devilishly cruel but they are not even common sense. They do not lesson the evil in the world, they increase it, by making those who handle these cruelties as wicked as those who suffer them. No, I'm wrong, more wicked, for there is always some expiation made in the endurance of suffering and none at all in the infliction of it.”

SufferingWickednessCruelties
Book:The White Witch
Create image