“Painful feeling is suffering in itself; pleasant feeling brings suffering through its transiency and its unsatisfying and unsatisfactory nature.”

— Nyanaponika Thera

Source: The Vision of Dhamma (1994), p. 220

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Nyanaponika Thera 30

German Buddhist monk 1901–1994

Diane Wood Middlebrook (1939–2007) biographer

Source: Anne Sexton: A Biography

“Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

...in der ganzen Natur, mit dem Grad der Intelligenz die Fähigkeit zum Schmerze sich steigert, also ebenfalls erst hier ihre höchste Stufe erreicht.
The Wisdom of Life. Chapter II. Personality, or What a Man Is: Footnote 19
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Not yet placed by volume, chapter or section

“I was long ago undeceived that protesting
could bring redress. But whoever suffers
is bound to complain if the pain is great.
So I did! But the cry that could offer
relief is itself feeble and exhausted,
and it is not through weeping that pain abates.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Já me desenganei que de queixar-me
não se alcança remédio; mas, quem pena,
forçado lhe é gritar, se a dor é grande.
Gritarei; mas é débil e pequena
a voz para poder desabafar-me,
porque nem com gritar a dor se abrande.
"Vinde cá, meu tão certo secretário", trans. by Landeg White in The Collected Lyric Poems of Luis de Camoes (2016), p. 297
Lyric poetry, Hymns (canções)

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.”

Alphonse Daudet book In the Land of Pain

Douleur toujours nouvelle pour celui qui souffre et qui se banalise pour l'entourage.
La doulou: (la douleur), 1887-1895 (Paris: Librairie de France, 1930) p. 16; Julian Barnes (ed. and trans.) In the Land of Pain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) p. 19.