Quotes about pain
page 14

“The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity, let the blackguard Paine say what he will; it is resignation to God, it is goodness itself to man.”

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

(26 July 1796).
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

Wisdom, God, Religion, Time

“She tried to cry out: 'Will you, cruel man,
leave me alone here?' Pain choked off her cry,
and in her heart the plaintive words began
to echo in a yet more bitter sigh.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Volea gridar: dove, o crudel, me sola
Lasci? ma il varco al suon chiuse il dolore:
Sicchè tornò la flebile parola
Più amara indietro a rimbombar sul core.
Canto XVI, stanza 36 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Heart, Cry

“I spent the first fourteen years of my life convinced that my looks were hideous. Adolescence is painful for everyone, I know, but mine was plain weird.”

Uma Thurman (1970) American actress and model

Interview with Laura Yorke. Reader's Digest. July 2006

Life

“Maybe you can't make the whole body comfortable, but make at least part of the body comfortable and stay with that part. As for the pains, let them be in the other part. They have every right to be there, so make an arrangement with them. They stay in one part, you stay in another. But the essential point is that you have a place where the mind feels stable, secure, and comfortable in the present moment. These are the beginning steps in meditation.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1949) Theravadin Buddhist Monk and Scholar

"Meditation: The How and the Why" (2003)

Feeling, Parting

“We suffer: the external world begins to exist...; we suffer to excess: it vanishes. Pain instigates the world only to unmask its unreality.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

World, Suffering

“In this I saw matter of mirth and matter of moaning: matter of mirth: for our Lord, our Maker, is so near to us, and in us, and we in Him, by sureness of keeping through His great goodness; matter of moaning: for our ghostly eye is so blind and we be so borne down by weight of our mortal flesh and darkness of sin, that we may not see our Lord God clearly in His fair Blissful Cheer. No; and because of this dimness scarsely we can believe and trust His great love and our sureness of keeping. And therefore it is that I say we may never stint of moaning nor of weeping. This "weeping" meaneth not all in pouring out of tears by our bodily eye, but also hath more ghostly understanding. For the kindly desire of our soul is so great and so unmeasurable, that if there were given us for our solace and for our comfort all the noble things that ever God made in heaven and in earth, and we saw not the fair Blissful Cheer of Himself, yet we should not stint of moaning nor ghostly weeping, that is to say, of painful longing, till when we see verily the fair Blissful Cheer of our Maker. And if we were in all the pain that heart can think and tongue may tell, if we might in that time see His fair Blissful Cheer, all this pain should not aggrieve us.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72

Love, God, Soul, Understanding

“It pains me deeply, or more deeply than any of you can imagine, to be perceived by so many members of my race as doing them harm. All the sacrifice, all the long hours of preparation were to help, not to hurt. But what hurts more, much more, is the amount of time and attention spent on manufactured controversies and media sideshows when so many problems cry out for constructive attention.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Imagination, Problem, Time, Help

“The art of teaching is also to know when to stop. It is good when people want to be better, physically, morally, spiritually, intellectually. But a fashion? No! Yoga is a painful art. It’s not like dance or music, where the person watching gets pleasure. Only the person doing it finds joy. It has nothing to do with externals.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: BKS Iyengar – obituary http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11045993/BKS-Iyengar-obituary.html, The Telegraph, 20 August 2014

People, Pleasure, Art, Music

“Lady: How do's it fit? wilt come together? Prudence: Hardly. Lad: Thou must make shift with it. Pride feels no Pain.”

Ben Jonson The New Inn

Act II, Scene I
The New Inn, or The Light Heart (licensed 19 January 1629; printed 1631)

Feeling

“It is less important to escape pain than to avoid exceptionless rules.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#326
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

Life, Death, Men, Hate

“We know, since the theory of relativity at least, that empirical sciences are to some degree free in defining dynamical concepts or even in assuming laws, and that only a system as a whole which includes concepts, coordinating definitions, and laws can be said to be either true or false, to be adequate or inadequate to empirical facts. This "freedom," however, is a somewhat doubtful gift. The manifold of possibilities implies uncertainty, and such uncertainty can become rather painful in a science as young as psychology, where nearly all concepts are open and unsettled. As psychology approaches the state of a logically sound science, definitions cease to be an arbitrary matter. They become far-reaching decisions which presuppose the mastering of the conceptual problems but which have to be guided entirely by the objective facts.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. viii.

Law, Problem, Decision, Freedom

“That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 63
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

“If we would We must self forgo if God we would attain, his grace must in us grow and ease us from all pain God discern,
The world we must despise,
His love and hate must learn,
See all things with His eyes.
And we must self forgo
If God we would attain,
His grace must in us grow
And ease us from all pain.
So shall we sing His praise
And be at one with Him,
In peace our voices raise
In the celestial hymn,
That with quadruple harmony
And all mellifluous melody,
In Heaven resounds eternally.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 124-5

Love, God, Hate, World

“If that be your guiding spirit in eating of the heart of the Earth, then little does it matter what you eat. But if that be, indeed, your guiding spirit, then should you have the wisdom and the love not to bereave the Earth of any of her children, especially those which have come to feel the pleasure of living and the pain of dying – those that have arrived at the segment of Duality. For they, too, have their road to wend, slowly and laboriously, towards Unity. And their road is longer than yours. Delay them in their march, and they shall delay you in your march.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Love, Wisdom, Children, Pleasure

“The only justifiable stopping place for for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism. This means that all beings with the capacity to feel pleasure or pain should be included; we can improve their welfare by increasing their pleasures and diminishing their pains.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 4, Reason, p. 120

Pleasure, Feeling

“I have never understood why Catholics of culture take pains to deny or to explain away the fact that the Roman Church is not only a religion but also a secular system of government, and that the Church as representative of God upon earth may eo ipso claim — and always has claimed — absolute power in all things of this world.”

Houston Stewart Chamberlain book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) (1899)

God, World, Religion

“I am the one you saw to-day, who fell
Senseless before you, hearing a certain bell:
A bell that broke great memories in my brain.'
'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,
Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Secret, Memory

“3082. To what Purpose shouldest thou seek great Things for thyself in the World? or having obtained them, prize them at any considerable Rate? or value thyself upon them? seeing thou knowest not, but this Night thy Soul may be required of thee, when thou shalt be divested of them all. 'Twould be as vain and unreasonable, as for a Traveler, that is to stay at his Inn but for a night, to take great Thought and Pains about furnishing and adorning his Chamber, which the next Morning he must leave to the next Comer.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

World, Travel, Soul, Night

“Second, after a painful gap without any king, and a furious struggle by various foreign powers to elect men favorable to them, the Seym chose a pathetic Polish incompetent, who had the good sense to die rather promptly.”

James A. Michener book Poland

page 153
Poland (1983)

Men, Sense

“What is there new that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving; Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and indifference; Power, for as yet we have only accomplished weakness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Love, Life, War, Pleasure

“Pride and resentment are not indigenous in the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive.”

Hope Mirrlees book Lud-in-the-Mist

Lud-in-the-Mist (1926)

Love, Heart

“She gives me hope
When there's nothing but pain;
I can't explain it:
Two different leaves
But the branch is the same…
Forever let it be!
She takes the rain…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)

Hope

“I'm an agnostic, but I understand that a book like the Bible that has been around as long as it has, because there is wisdom in it. People don't read over two thousand years, four thousand years, a book that doesn't have wisdom. Think of the story of Genesis. Adam and Eve were given paradise. It's better than anything that Nanci Pelosi promises, the garden of Eden, they didn't have to work, there was no pain, they lived forever, plucked fruit from the trees, but, there was one rule, which was: "Do not eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil", don't eat from that tree. Well, our foreparents were too ornery to obey that law and so they were expelled from the garden, and God put an angel with a flaming sword in the entrance to Eden. This is a very important parable for understanding where we are. An angel with a flaming sword to prevent human beings from returning to Eden, only by a divine hand, could we return. The whole agenda of the left, is to return us to Eden.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

Young America's Foundation conference at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW2SFGIIqFI#t=06m45s 2013

Wisdom, God, People, Books

“Absence! is not the soul torn by it
From more than light, or life, or breath?
'Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet,—
The pain without the peace of death!”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

"Absence", The poetical works of Thomas Campbell (1837)

Life, Death, Peace, Soul

“I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man—but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So I approach it through division. So I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Epilogue.
Invisible Man (1952)

Love, Life, Hate, Forgiveness

“You know, the whole American culture is going down the drain, you can't turn on a television set and see anything, or walk in the street and not find garbage, or neighborhoods that were formerly beautiful now have McDonald's in them, and it's all a part of an enormous degeneration of culture in the United States. People that exist in that culture are forced to make moral decisions all the time about their lives, their occupations, their love-lives, and they make decisions that are commensurate with what's happening to them in this culture, and it's too bad that that's happening because that's what Manhattan is about, that New York used to be such a great city, so wonderful, and it has to fight every day for its survival against the encroachment of all this terrible ugliness that is gradually overcoming all the big cities in America.
This ugliness comes from a culture that has no spiritual center, a culture that has money and education, but no sense of being at peace with the world, no sense of purpose in life. They don't know what they're doing, or why they're here. They have no religious center, they have no philosophical center, and so they act, they do what's expedient at the moment. They have no long view of society. They only have the view of quick money, and kill the pain of the moment, and so instead of dealing with the real problems that exist, that are complicated, they sweep them under the rug by turning on the television set, or taking cocaine, or doing many things that enable them to escape confrontation with the unpleasant realities of the world.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

[Allen, Woody, France Roche, Woody Allen, ou L'Anhedoniste; le Plus Drole du Monde, New York, 1979, France 2, 05 January 2013]
Others

Love, Life, Money, People

“Every discord is a harmony not understood. Happiness is a disease, and pain, a medicine.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

The Way to Peace, Power and Long Life (1945), p. 121 (2001 edition)

Happiness, Disease

“If the object of all human investigation were but to produce in cognition a reflection of the world as it exists, of what value would be all its labor and pains, which could result only in vain repetition, in an imitation within the soul of that which exists without it?”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 365

World, Soul

“Immeasurable pain!
My dreaming soul last night was king again.
As in past days
I wandered through the Palace of Delight,
And in my dream
Down grassy garden-ways
Glided my chariot, smoother than a summer stream;
There was moonlight,
The trees were blossoming,
And a faint wind softened the air of night,
For it was spring.”

Li Yu (Southern Tang) (937–978) ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom in ancient China

《望江南》 ("Immeasurable Pain"), as translated by Arthur Waley in The Temple (1923), p. 144

Dreams, Way, Soul, Spring

“My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the "Socratici viri;" justice, temperance (to which he gave a very extended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounter pain and especially labour; regard for the public good; estimation of persons according to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one of self-indulgent sloth. These and other moralities he conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contemp. But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of man he was.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/47/mode/1up p. 47

Life, Justice, Time, Dependency

“No little appetite or pain, no carelessness or meanness in him escaped her; no thought or dream or longing in him ever reached her. And yet several times in her life she had seen the stars.”

John Steinbeck book The Moon Is Down

The Moon Is Down (1942), p. 7

Life, Dreams, Star, Time

“Look beyond your self-importance and pain. You will know yourself better.”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

““I want so much.”
Haakon laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “So do we all.”
The prince straightened. “And only in death do we find contentment.”
“Lowering thought. Is there to be no happiness in life then?”
“I think not. Each moment of joy must be paid for by a moment of equal pain.”
“You Dutch merchants, always keeping the books in balance. Do you see God as an accountant?”
William smiled slightly. “If he is he’s a shockingly bad one. I’m more than due for some joy.”
Haakon caught Barbarossa’s reins near the bit and drew the two chargers to a halt. “Then find it in the moment, H. H. Find it in the moment.””

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 7 (pp. 86-87)

Life, Death, God, Happiness

“All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists in bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 20

Death, Women, Men, Hunger

“As Love alone can exquisitely bless,
Love only feels the marvellous of pain;
Opens new veins of torture in the soul,
And wakes the nerve where agonies are born.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

The Brothers (1753), Act V, scene i.

Love, Feeling, Soul

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Paul of Tarsus (5–67) Early Christian apostle and missionary

Hebrews 12:11, as quoted in www.ewtn.com http://www.ewtn.com/ewtn/bible/search_bible.asp#ixzz2z6uWPJG3 Epistle to the Hebrews

Peace, Training

“Long ailments wear out pain, and long hopes joy.”

Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766) king of Poland

No. 8.
Maxims and Moral Sentences

Hope, Joy

“Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

“The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,
The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;
And drizzling drops, that often do redound,
The firmest flint doth in continuance wear:
Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,
And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,
That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,
Or look with pity on my painful smart:
But when I plead, she bids me play my part;
And when I weep, she says, "Tears are but water";
And when I sigh, she says, "I know the art";
And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;
So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,
Whiles she as steel and flint doth still remain.”

Edmund Spenser Amoretti

Amoretti (1595), Sonnet XVIII https://www.bartleby.com/358/784.html

Art, Tear, Laughter, Water

“Creation of absolutely the first rank — in philosophy, in music, in much of literature, in mathematics — continues to occur outside the American milieu. It is at once taken up and intelligently exploited, but the "motion of the spirit" has taken place elsewhere, amid the enervation of Europe, in the oppressive climate of Russia. There is, in a good deal of American intellectual, artistic production (recent paining may be a challenging exception) a characteristic near-greatness, a strength just below the best. Could it be that the United States is destined to be the "museum culture?"”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Tomorrow".
In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

Music, Intelligence, Literature, Mathematics

“I arrived at as an undergraduate with two driving passions: a consuming interest for a politics of justice grounded in a Christian theology and acting, as a ‘revelation of the treasures of the human soul’ not as a form of exhibitionism. My search for justice grew out of the pain I experienced when I saw the ridicule my malformed brother elicited. I became aware of the evil that is prejudice, a form of injustice. My urge to redress this prejudice took a more social dimension during my years as a boarder at St Dominic’s Convent, where the great Barbara Hogan matriculated a year later than me though I only got acquainted with her at Wits.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

Justice, Soul, Search, Passion

“It's no coincidence that the worst published writer in the world today is also one of the world's most successful writers… Dan Brown. Now Dan Brown is not a good writer, The Da Vinci Code is not literature. Dan Brown writes sentences like "The famous man looked at the red cup." …and it's only to be hoped that Dan Brown never gets a job where he's required to break bad news. "Doctor is he going to be alright?" "The seventy five year old man died a painful death on the large green table… it was sad".”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 1 Episode 1: "Toilet Books"

Death, World, Sadness, Hope

“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 26

Marriage, Pleasure

““Every creature has fear,” Jared said. “Even the non-conscious ones.”
“No,” Boutin said. “Every creature has a survival instinct. It looks like fear but it’s not the same thing. Fear isn’t the desire to avoid death or pain. Fear is rooted in the knowledge that what you recognize as yourself can cease to exist. Fear is existential.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 13 (p. 286)

Death, Fear, Knowledge

“Of joys departed,
Not to return, how painful the remembrance!”

Robert Blair The Grave

Part I, line 109.
The Grave (1743)

Joy

“If you were not to be its victim, this book and body would amuse you with its arrogance. It would make you laugh. Because you were not its victim, you could feel no pain of betrayal.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the eighth book, "The Book of the Seducer"
The Pillow Book

Books, Feeling, Betrayal

“Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know. I’m here today because I am gay. And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. I also do it selﬁshly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.”

Ellen Page (1987) Canadian actress

Coming Out Speech (2014)

Love, People, Health, Hope

“[My family] suffer so much. My mother was much older when I came out [of detention]. She had problems with her hearing and high blood pressure. But they still support me. When you make somebody disappear and you don’t announce it to the family, what is this? You make people desperate and bring them close to death. If our cat or dog is lost, it makes us desperately want to know where it is—so for humans disappearing, you can barely imagine the pain. What kind of society is this? If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection, then? That’s why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or so charming. People feel, This guy is fighting for us.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ Ai Weiwei: Artistic Licence http://www.economist.com/node/21554178.” Economist, May 5, 2012. 2010-, 2012

Death, People, Family, Beauty

“People have asked me to speak on being sick, and even specifically on chronic pain diseases. … And I don't know what to tell you, except this — this is something I have discovered. Your body is fighting to live. This is in your very blood, in your heart, in your bones — your body is trying to live, it's fighting to live — and don't give up without a fight, you know? Do what you can do. Figure something out. If you have to, fight with people to get help — whatever it is, but don't give up without a fight. You remember — mark my words — you are here — you should be here — stay.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Youtube Live? Album?" (3 November 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWapPazv0j4

People, Disease, Help, Heart

“The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Life, History, Optimism, Light

“We must at least allow the pain inflicted upon us by our enemies to be a megaphone to our own deafness to the world, waking us up to the needs of others, to the violence inflicted upon them.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), p. 92.

World

“Societies which inflict pain and discomfort upon their infants tend to neglect them as well.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" (1975)

“It was the waste of a trip. She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead." I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss and Buttercup (p. 386)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Stupidity, Cats, Tear, Cry

“Harry Dresden: Hers was a beauty so pure that it was nearly painful to behold--Athena heading out on a Friday night.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 7

Beauty, Night

“I may begin by laying down as a principle that ‘all pain of human or rational beings is to be avoided’; and then afterwards may be led to enunciate the wider rule that ‘all pain is to be avoided’; it being made evident to me that the difference of rationality between two species of sentient beings is no ground for establishing a fundamental ethical distinction between their respective pains.”

Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) English philosopher

"The Establishment of Ethical First Principles" (1879), in Essays on Ethics and Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 30 https://books.google.it/books?id=Ci9x5WY3NesC&pg=PA30

“In my job, you expect to suffer. That's why when I go to hell one day, it will be less painful for me than you, because I'm used to suffering.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

On Arsenal's summer, (2011) http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/14859401 Arsenal (1996–present)

Hell, Suffering

“The idea for [his sculpture] 'The Warrior' came to me at the end of 1952 or very early in 1953. It was evolved from a pebble I found on the seashore in the summer of 1952, and which reminded me of the stump of a leg, amputated at the hip. Just as Leonardo says somewhere in his notebooks that a painter can find a battle scene in the lichen marks on a wall, so this gave me the start of The Warrior idea. First I added the body, leg and one arm and it became a wounded warrior, but at first the figure was reclining. A day or two later I added a shield and altered its position and arrangement into a seated figure and so it changed from an inactive pose into a figure which, though wounded, is still defiant... The head has a blunted and bull-like power but also a sort of dumb animal acceptance and forbearance of pain... The figure may be emotionally connected (as one critic has suggested) with one’s feelings and thoughts about England during the crucial and early part of the last war. The position of the shield and its angle gives protection from above. The distance of the shield from the body and the rectangular shape of the space enclosed between the inside surface of the shield and the concave front of the body is important... This sculpture is the first single and separate male figure that I have done in sculpture and carrying it out in its final large scale was almost like the discovery of a new subject matter; the bony, edgy, tense forms were a great excitement to make... Like the bronze 'Draped Reclining Figure' of 1952-3 I think 'The Warrior' has some Greek influence, not consciously wished…”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote from Moore's letter, (15 Jan. 1955); as cited in Henry Moore on Sculpture: a Collection of the Sculptor's Writings and Spoken Words, ed. Philip James, MacDonald, London 1966, p. 250
1940 - 1955

War, Feeling, Idea, Thinking

“[ Cruelty is more cruell if we defer the pain. ]”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“The lone wolf who knows no peace, these victims of unceasing pain to whom the urge for tragedy has been denied and who can never break through the starry space, who feel themselves summoned thither and yet cannot survive in its atmosphere-for them is reserved, provided suffering has made their spirits rough and elastic enough, a way of reconcilement and an escape into humor. Humor has always something bourgeois in it, although the true bourgeois in capable of understanding it.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

Peace, Way, Feeling, Understanding

“Forgotten? No, we never do forget:
We let the years go; wash them clean with tears,
Leave them to bleach out in the open day,
Or lock them careful by, like dead friends' clothes,
Till we shall dare unfold them without pain, —
But we forget not, never can forget.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

"A Flower of a Day"
Poems (1866)

Tear, Clothes, Dead, Forgetting

“I don't eat or wear animals and I have a pretty simple reason; because they are animals. They have lives, they feel pain, and I don't think they should give those lives nor feel pain for humans. As humans, we have the ability to understand that not only do we not need to eat meat; in fact we can live healthier lives without it.”

John Norris (reporter) (1959) American reporter

“John Norris: Vegetarian Testimonial,” video ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (26 August 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LnCbT3ayvM.

Feeling, Understanding, Thinking, Animals

“If, when Christ was on his way to Calvary, some brave soul had rescued him from the pious mob, he would not only have been damned for his pains, but would have rendered impossible the salvation of any human being. The Christian world has been trying for nearly two thousand years to explain the atonement, and every effort has ended in an admission that it cannot be understood, and a declaration that it must be believed. Has the promise and hope of forgiveness ever prevented the commission of a sin? Can men be made better by being taught that sin gives happiness here; that to live a virtuous life is to bear a cross; that men can repent between the last sin and the last breath; and that repentance washes every stain of the soul away?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Some Reasons Why (1881)

Life, Men, Happiness, World

“I think with all the odd jobs I ever had, there was some kind of enlightenment but, yes, a lot of pain and suffering that I don't want to re-live.”

David Boreanaz (1969) American actor, famous for Angel and Buffy

BBC interview

Thinking, Suffering

“I want to move forward, I don't want to move back. And I don't want to hurt the Clintons. I really don't. She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways. And I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious. They say it was the most vicious primary and the most vicious campaign. I guess, added together, it was definitely the most vicious; probably, I assume you sold a lot of newspapers. … It's just not something that I feel very strongly about. … I'm not looking to look back and go through this. This was a very painful period. This was a very painful election with all of the email things and all of the foundation things and all of the everything that they went through and the whole country went through. This was a very painful period of time.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

About not prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Way, Feeling, Suffering, Time

“There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

"Evolution of the Human Brain" (1964), p. 3

Pleasure, Color, Understanding, Science

“I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points:1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond.
2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain.
3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to push interest rates down.
4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Keynesianism Explained http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/keynesianism-explained (September 15, 2015) The Conscience of a Liberal blog

Money, Question, Loss

“His own power and magic — overwhelmed him for a moment with a feeling of the purest, highest, and most glorious happiness that life can yield — the happiness that is at once the most selfish and the most selfless — the happiness of the artist when he sees that his work has been found good, has for itself a place of honour, glory, and proud esteem in the hearts of men, and has wrought upon their lives the spell of its enchantment. At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being — the reward he seeks — the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.”

Thomas Wolfe book Of Time and the River

Of Time and the River (1935)

Life, Men, Happiness, Feeling

“What self-righteous persons take to themselves, is the same work that Christ was engaged in when He was in His agony and bloody sweat, and when He died on the cross, which was the greatest thing that ever the eyes of angels beheld. Christ could accomplish other parts of this work without cost; but this part cost Him His life, as well as innumerable pains and labors. Yet this is the part which self-righteous persons go about to accomplish for themselves.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 541.

Life, Angels, Christ, Parting

“So, when a raging fever burns,
We shift from side to side by turns;
And 't is a poor relief we gain
To change the place, but keep the pain.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Hymn 146, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II.
Attributed from postum publications, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1773)

Rage, Change

“Home influences alone never saved the New England boy from ruin, though sometimes they may have helped to ruin him; and the influences outside of home were negative. If school helped, it was only by reaction. The dislike of school was so strong as to be a positive gain. The passionate hatred of school methods was almost a method in itself. Yet the day-school of that time was respectable, and the boy had nothing to complain of. In fact, he never complained. He hated it because he was here with a crowd of other boys and compelled to learn by memory a quantity of things that did not amuse him. His memory was slow, and the effort painful. For him to conceive that his memory could compete for school prizes with machines of two or three times its power, was to prove himself wanting not only in memory, but flagrantly in mind. He thought his mind a good enough machine, if it were given time to act, but it acted wrong if hurried. Schoolmasters never gave time.

In any and all its forms, the boy detested school, and the prejudice became deeper with years. He always reckoned his school-days, from ten to sixteen years old, as time thrown away.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Hate, School, Home, Boy

“When we feel overwhelmed by all the suffering in the world, or just drained by the stress of the day, do this. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and know that the very breath you are taking is the same miracle of life that pervades all creation. He who gives you this breath, despite your anxieties, fears and pain, knows you. He knows you better than you will ever understand yourself. Breathe in, breathe out. You are experiencing the miracle. The most amazing miracle of all. The gift of life. All things will find harmony in this knowing, in this, is the whisper of not only all creation, but of the Creator.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Life, World, Fear, Feeling

“At present there is an extremely exaggerated formation of groups (students on the School of Art in Vitebsk) around 'trend'; there are 1. young people following Malevich and 2. young people following me. We both belong to the left-wing artistic movement, although we have different ideas about ends and means. Obviously it would take too long to talk about this problem now… But there is one thing I will tell you: Although I was born in Russia - and what is more: in the "settlement territory" – I was trained abroad and am all the more sensitive to everything that is taking place here in the field of art (the fine arts). The memory of the splendour of the original is much to painful for me.. [to live – crossed out]”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Chagall's letter to Pavel Davidovitch Ettering, 2 April, 1920, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 73
1920's

People, School, Art, Idea

“But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Three

Life, Hope, Learning, Time

“Why, alas! is life decreed
Full of pain and full of sorrow?
All uncertain as it is,
Can we rest upon to-morrow?
Why should blessings yet in store,
Hold us still in expectation?
Leading thro' succeeding sorrows,
By some fond anticipation:
'Tis to give a tender interest
To the scenes in which we're moving:
While those hopes so often blasted,
Sensual pleasures are reproving.”

Elizabeth Bath (1776–1844) English poet

"An Effusion", from Poems, on Various Occasions (1806)

Life, Pleasure, Hope

“Fear is bound to disappear when you realize that failure is not something shameful, damaging, destructive, or painful, but something natural.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

The Wings of Joy (1997)

Fear, Failure, Nature

“It pained him to think how naive he had once been.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (p. 328)

Thinking

“Young, blond fags with powder-blue eyes and soft shoes skipped along arm-in-arm. Chinese girls with long hair and black stockings carried metal pots into Ernie’s Delicatessen for bean cake, barbequed duck, Chinese curds and steamed rice. Art students from the Art Institute, draftsmen from Heald’s College and law students from S. F. Law School walked by in carefree abandon, none of them in pain, all with beautiful girls in red slippers. They had leather, beads and books and pipes and scabs of hair on their interesting faces. Polk Street at night was always Christmas Eve for lonely men such as myself.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 51.

Men, Books, School, Law

“Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans. Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Subsidies Distort the Housing Market, September 10, 2003 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr091003.htm 2000s, 2001-2005

Loss, Housing

“If every soul should lose it's way
If every face should lose it's name
If no one tries to end this game
Or find a way to ease the pain
Who's gonna stop the rain?”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Who's Gonna Stop the Rain
Not That Kind (2000)

Way, Soul, Game

“He imposed obligatory military service for men over eighteen, declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory. In order that no one would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot a scarecrow. At first no one took him seriously.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 104, Referring to Arcadio

Men, Victory, Animals, Housing

“Don't forget your second wind;
Sooner or later you'll get your second wind.
It's not always easy to be living in this world of pain.
You're gonna be crashing into stone walls again and again.
It's alright, it's alright.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

You're Only Human (Second Wind).
Song lyrics, Greatest Hits - Volume I & Volume II (1985)

World, Forgetting

“Jocelyne clicked her barbell on her teeth. I was watching her closely for signs of collapsing romance. Her tongue was pierced, (a process, she had elaborated, that had taken two weeks of painful healing) and it put me in mind of the tongue-piercing ceremony endured on October 28, 709 AD by the principal wife of Shield Jaguar, Blood Lord of Yaxchilan (Lintel 24); i. e. to my eye, pointless, but if it's good enough for the Mayans …
"Why did you do it?"
"To punish my tongue, for saying things it shouldn't have." Click.
"But surely it was only obeying orders?"
"It has to learn to be warier of its mistress. And it's also a symbol." Click.
"What of?"”

Tibor Fischer book The Thought Gang

"That changes from day to day. It's a multi-purpose symbol."
See wikipedia on Yaxchilan.
The Thought Gang (1994)

Learning, Change

“The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Books and Reading

Light, Joy, Childhood

“Friends are true Twins in Soul; they Sympathize in every thing, and have the Love and Aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change Bodies, they take their turns in Pain as well as in Pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse Conditions. What one enjoys, the other cannot Want. Like the Primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no Property but in one another.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

108 - 110
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Love, Happiness, Pleasure, Soul

“In this word: Suddenly thou shalt be taken, — I saw that God rewardeth man for the patience that he hath in abiding God’s will, and for his time, and that man lengtheneth his patience over the time of his living. For not-knowing of his time of passing, that is a great profit: for if a man knew his time, he should not have patience over that time; but, as God willeth, while the soul is in the body it seemeth to itself that it is ever at the point to be taken. For all this life and this languor that we have here is but a point, and when we are taken suddenly out of pain into bliss then pain shall be nought.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 63

Life, God, Soul, Time

“Oh yes, I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
I am invincible
I am woman”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

"I Am Woman"; written and sung by Reddy
Lyrics, "I Don't Know How To Love Him"(1971)

Wisdom, Strong

“I became a vegetarian many years ago after listening to The Smiths’ ‘Meat Is Murder.’ It opened my eyes to the painful lives of animals raised for food, and I knew I wanted no part of that.”

Brian Fair (1975) American singer

“Shadows Fall’s Brian Fair,” PSA for peta2.com (11 November 2011) https://www.peta2.com/news/shadows-falls-brian-fair/.

Food, Animals, Parting

“Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should — not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

Outside (1955)

Idea, Time

“Pain is never permanent.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) edited by John Cook, Steve Deger, and Leslie Ann Gibson, p. 333

“I’ve always felt that animals are the purest spirits in the world. They don’t fake or hide their feelings, and they are the most loyal creatures on Earth. And somehow we humans think we’re smarter—what a joke. Every time I had to do a report or a debate in school, I would research the topic of animal rights. I was horrified to find the cruelty and pain that they were forced to endure at our hands. … I aspire to have a lot of land one day, where I will rescue and board many animals.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

“P!nk Tells Circus, ‘Pack Your Trunks!’”, interview with PETA (18 July 2011) https://www.peta2.com/news/pink-tells-circus-pack-your-trunks/.

World, School, Feeling, Thinking

“But the world moves on, and the piteous Earth
Still groans in the monster pain;
And the star that leads me points onward yet,
Though the red drops fall like rain!”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

World, Star

“In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organization, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

Visions of the Poets, p. 247
Book Sources, The American Poet Who Went Home Again (2008)

Age, World, Heart

“Talk about a "higher consciousness" superior to reason naturally comforts persons who find mental exertion painful, and notions about transcendental powers naturally console persons who do not have the courage or stamina to confront the realities of a universe that was not made for man. These ideas, in the form in which they are peddled by Uspenski and Orage, are derived from the early Hindu mystics of the Vedas and Upanishads. They did reach a state of exalted consciousness -- by the use of what they called soma, which, as R. G. Weston has shown, was simply the Amanita muscaria, a mushroom that has been for millennia a prime source of religiosity.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Orage and New Age Consciousness", private letter, February 1977, published on National Vanguard http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=6657 (October 25, 2005) 1970s

Idea, Courage, Nature, Reality

“MR. PANSCOPE. (suddenly emerging from a deep reverie.) I have heard, with the most profound attention, everything which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considerable degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the authority of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the controversy; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St Chrysostom, St Jerome, St Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Cibber, Bojardo, Gregory Nazianzenus, Locke, D'Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a-Kempis.
MR. ESCOT. I presume, sir, you are one of those who value an authority more than a reason.
MR. PANSCOPE. The authority, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.
SQUIRE HEADLONG. Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.
MR. ESCOT. It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible.
MR. PANSCOPE. I am not obliged, Sir, as Dr Johnson remarked on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.
MR. ESCOT. I fear, Sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock.
MR. PANSCOPE. 'Sdeath, Sir, do you question my understanding?
MR. ESCOT. I only question, Sir, where I expect a reply, which from what manifestly has no existence, I am not visionary enough to anticipate.
MR. PANSCOPE. I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd.
MR. ESCOT. I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd.
MR. PANSCOPE. Death and fury, Sir!
MR. ESCOT. Say no more, Sir - that apology is quite sufficient.
MR. PANSCOPE. Apology, Sir?
MR. ESCOT. Even so, Sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the worst of the argument.
MR. PANSCOPE. Lightnings and devils!”

Thomas Love Peacock book Headlong Hall

Headlong Hall, chapter V (1816).

Death, Men, Fear, Understanding

“The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient;
the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing:
there is no pain as great as being alive,
no burden heavier than that of conscious life.”

Rubén Darío (1867–1916) Nicaraguan poet and writer

Fatalidad (Fatality).
Los Cisnes y Otros Poemas (The Swans and Other Poems) (1905)

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Tree

“An exacting leader can always command more affection that one who is indifferent. The best way to impose severity is to have about one only those whose qualities one values. Any man ca easily endure criticism if his character and intelligence are clearly not called into question. To say quickly and forcefully what one feels strongly is the wise course. A sever reproach, if rapidly spoken, is less painful than hostile and sulky dissatisfaction. Subordinates must realize that if an order is not carried out they will suffer, but also that they will be exonerated if its execution leads to disaster. A true leader will always take full responsibility for his actions.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

Hostility, Way, Feeling, Intelligence

“One of the most unfortunate things about being an unfit Englishman cycling long distances in France is the number of signs that yell 'PAIN' down every high street.”

Tim Moore (1964) British travel writer and humorist

French Revolutions (2001)

“I want play but back hurt. If I no can play good, I no help team. So I wait until pain goes away. I no swing bat good, no run good, no catch ball like old times. I try but pain, she too much. Some days, no pain. Other days, pain all time. Some days pain so much I theenk maybe I quit baseball. But I need money so I play baseball.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted and paraphrased in "Aching Back Puts Clemente On Bench Again" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nUEqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BU4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7330%2C2562781 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Friday, July 26, 1957), p. 20 Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1957</big> Context: "I want play but back hurt. If I no can play good, I no help team. So I wait until pain goes away. I no swing bat good, no run good, no catch ball like old times. I try but pain, she too much. Some days, no pain. Other days, pain all time. Some days pain so much I theenk maybe I quit baseball. But I need money so I play baseball." Clemente doesn't even want to think of an operation on his back. He says he had two brothers and a sister who died following surgery and his family opposes operations.

Money, Time, Waiting, Help

“Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan,
For we are born in other's pain,
And perish in our own.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Daisy http://www.bartleby.com/103/26.html (1893), st. 15.

Quotes about pain page 14

Quotes about pain
page 14