Quotes about pain
page 10

“But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by everybody at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Happiness, Education, Hope, Time

“This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book.

The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

Books, Boy, Thinking

“It's not easy to find a topic. Talking of home is painful. Talking of the present unbearable.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Home

“what was fang going to do BLOG about max throwing herself into space so she wouldn't have to kiss him again? NO instead he smashed his fist against the cave wall then grimaced at the pain and stupidity seeing his bloodied knuckles”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Stupidity, Kiss

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Future

“Most lead lives at worst so painful, at best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principle appetites of the soul.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Source: The Doors of Perception

Soul

“Jude remembered this pain. Every woman had felt some version of it: the end of first love. It was when you learned, for good and always, that love could be impermanent.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Night Road

Love, Learning

“The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

World

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Beauty, Birth, Heart

“It was a universal truth among males that anytime you saw a guy get it in the nuts, you experienced a shot of phantom pain in your own croquet set.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

Truth, Guy, Universe

“Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the moment there was nothing to do but to pretend.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Pleasure, Memory

“The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Loss, Cry

“Happy moments, PRAISE GOD
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD
Painful moments, TRUST GOD
Every moment, THANK GOD”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

God, Happiness

“Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Life, Way, Suffering, Learning

“The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Source: Selected Poems

Heart, Night

“It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Love, People, Forgetting

“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Happiness, Pleasure, Feeling, Animals

“We know there's going to be nothing but pain, but we go back again and again.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

“And so I wait. I wait for time to heal the pain and raise me to me feet once again - so that I can start a new path, my own path, the one that will make me whole again.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

Source: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II

Time, Waiting

“I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 40, The Rat Who Wound the Clock

Light, Suffering, Summer

“Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.”

Elena Ferrante book The Days of Abandonment

Source: The Days of Abandonment

Pleasure, Truth, Joy

“… mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“The man that I named The Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Love, Truth, Books, Color

“And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Pleasure, Time

“I can't understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there's already so much pain in the world.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

People, World, Religion, Understanding

“There is a painful difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event and its final certainty.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Source: The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

“You've got to use it, the pain. Use it as fuel to move past the torment, to the light at the end of the tunnel”

Thomas E. Sniegoski (1962) writer

Source: Aerie and Reckoning

Light, Past

“There is no shame in loving: it is the sign of a generous heart, and pain the price of an open soul.”

Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist

Source: The Naming

Love, Soul, Heart

“There is some pain that nothing heals" [Zarek}”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

“The time comes when each of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Life, Men, Youth, Learning

“Sometimes it seems to stand still. Like you’re in a bag and you can’t get out and somebody’s always telling you that it will get better with time and time just seems to stand still and laugh at you and your pain.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Time

“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Stupidity

“It is possible to avoid pain? Yes, but you'll never learn anything. Is it possible to know something without ever having experiencing it? Yes, but it will never truly be part of you.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Learning, Parting

“Belief in one’s identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one’s immortality…and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 186)

Youth

“As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Question, Solitude, Silence

“One day you’ll wake up and find that the pain’s still there but it doesn’t hurt quite so much.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Hurt

“The referee told me this league has never had a brawl of that magnitude," said Mr. Penderwick after a long, painful silence. "Of course, at the time I was pretending to be a casual passerby and not a father at all.”

Jeanne Birdsall (1951) American children's writer

Source: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

Silence, Time

“I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.”

Louise Penny book A Fatal Grace

Source: A Fatal Grace

Life, Wisdom, Age, Beauty

“You are human, you will make mistakes, and it’s one of the most beautiful things about being human, but you must learn from your mistakes, otherwise your life will have a lot of unnecessary pain.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Magic

Source: The Magic

Life, Beauty, Learning

“Nico’s anger turned as cold and dark as his blade. He’d been morphed into a few plants himself, and he didn’t appreciate it. He hated people like Bryce Lawrence, who inflicted pain just for fun.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Hate, People, Anger

“Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“you can't deny they ever happened. You can't deny you ever loved them, love them still, even if loving them causes you pain”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Love

“When pain brings you down, don't be silly, don't close your eyes and cry, you just might be in the best position to see the sun shine.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

Sun, Cry

“This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming of something else.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Life, Dreams, Way

“I was a heartless, ungrateful wench of a girl who promised everyone who came into contact with me a one-way ticket to pain and hurt. I didn’t know how to love and I didn’t deserve to be loved back.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Love, Way, Girl, Hurt

“Life is very interesting… in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Variant: In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.

Life, Motivational, For women, Deep

“Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.”

Mary Tyler Moore (1936–2017) American actress, television producer

As quoted in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 128 (1986), p. 137; later in Quotable Quotes (1997) by Editors of Reader's Digest

Courage

“Keep me preoccupied
Keep me busy, busy, busy
So I won't have to think
I don't want to think
Because it only brings me pain
I just keep running away from
My problems
Keep me busy
Give me a million things to do
So I can keep running away from myself.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Business, Problem, Thinking

“Love is like cigarettes. It gives you a little pleasure while you're at it, but leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth and a pain in your chest.”

Loraine Despres (1938) Novelist/screen writer

Source: The Southern Belle's Handbook: Sissy LeBlanc's Rules to Live By

Love, Pleasure

“My old tutor used to say that the hearts of Nephilim were like the hearts of angels: They felt every human pain, and never healed”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Angels, Heart

“Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“My prize, my pleasure and pain, my endless desire. I've never know anyone like you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Pleasure

“To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

“Better to know the quick pain of truth than the ongoing pain of a long-held false hope.”

Trudi Canavan (1969) Australian writer

Source: Voice of the Gods

Truth, Hope, Falseness

“Silence is a protective coating over pain.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Silence

“Come, see the true
flowers
of this pained world.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho

World, Flowers

“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1770s
Source: Letter to Abigail Adams (27 April 1777), published as Letter CXI in Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife (1841) edited by Charles Francis Adams, p. 218

Hope, Freedom

“Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Hurt

“People in pain don’t always see things as clearly as they should”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

People

“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Baltimore Evening Sun (9 August 1926)
1920s
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy

War, Sense

“I'm Irish!… When I feel well I feel better than anyone, when I am in pain I yell at the top of my lungs, and when I am dead I shall be deader than anybody.”

Morgan Llywelyn (1937) Irish writer

Feeling, Dead

“I had discovered that there was something more painful than falling in love with someone who hasn't fallen for you; hurting that person-hurting him and not being able to do anything about it.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Legacy of Lies & Don't Tell

Love, Hurt, Personality

“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Life, Past

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

Pleasure, Imagination

“There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Life, World, Joy

“Even if it’s dangerous, and painful, and so very, very lonely. One must go on fighting- It is the only honorable thing to do”

David Klass book You Don't Know Me

Source: You Don't Know Me

Fight

“Unforgiveness denies the victim the possibility of parole and leaves them stuck in the prison of what was, incarcerating them in their trauma and relinquishing the chance to escape beyond the pain.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Chance

“I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Life, Happiness

“The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Age

“You've got to have as many good times as bad, or it all becomes too painful and too much work.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Time

“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Solitude, Suffering, Distant

“If you love someone, truly love them, you should never cause them pain. Never fill their eyes with something so close to grief.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

Love

“Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Source: The Eternal Now

Solitude, Loneliness

“No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Hope

“For how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Pleasure, Feeling

“If life is an illusion it's a pretty painful one.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Life

“She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Life, Feeling, Hurt

“Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends.”

Jenna Blum book Het familieportret

Source: Those Who Save Us

Love, Life

“The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

World, Light

“Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Rococo

Joy

“May be she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life but the end of pain.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

Life, Death, Learning, Memory

“I was starting to come to grips with the fact that I had created a lot of pain and suffering around me, not just within me.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Suffering

“Beauty was deceptive. I would rather wear my pain, my ugliness. I was torn and stitched. I was a strip mine, and they would just have to look. I hoped I made them sick. I hoped they saw me in their dreams.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Beauty, Dreams, Hope

“One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970) by Jerome Agel, p. 300
1970s
Context: One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic — hardware and technology — to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later.

People, Science, Reading, Future

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

People, Way

“In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: At Seventy: A Journal

Food, Past, Night

“It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.”

Orson Scott Card book Shadow Puppets

Source: Shadow Puppets

Happiness, Future, Hurt

“The purpose exceeds the pain.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Self-Portrait" (1936), p. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950) <br class="br">Variant: I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Youth, Solitude