… It was the knowing that there had been a happier time, a place of joy and peace and security, that made the sudden absence of it all so agonizing… Not the agony of what was, but the agony of what was no longer; this was the source of all life’s pain--not the fear of a hell to come, but rather the knowledge of an Eden that is no more. Hell isn't the punishment… Eden was. Shalom Auslander
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain - Aeschylus

  2. Wisdom is not making life any harder than it has to be. - Marty Rubin

  3. Doesn't it seem that it is always by chance that these things happen, or is it because of the generosity of a shared knowledge of suffering that allows for it? - David Gianadda

  4. Thoughts are tyrants that return again and again to torment us. - Anonymous

  5. But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more. - Hans Christian Andersen

More Quotes By Shalom Auslander
  1. Kugel didn't like attics, he never did. The roofing nails overhead like fangs, waiting to sink into his skull; the cardboard boxes and plastic crates and leather trunks - tombs, sarcophagi - full of ghosts and regret and longing and loss; worse yet was the...

  2. It couldn't be an all-bad world, could it, not with birds who warble and call? Maybe that was the secret - to find the few things that made life just a fraction better, and to focus on those. Bird warbles. Peach fuzz. Puppies barking as...

  3. … It was the knowing that there had been a happier time, a place of joy and peace and security, that made the sudden absence of it all so agonizing… Not the agony of what was, but the agony of what was no longer; this...

  4. Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that until the age of thirteen, all of boy's sins are ascribed to his father.

  5. So desperate was Kugel for things to turn out for the best, proclaimed Professor Jove, that he couldn't stop worrying about the worst. Hope, said Professor Jove, was Solomon Kugel's greatest failing.

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