Quotes about pain (3193 quotes, page 18)

“I call it to mind and delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time. We next to never know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,--for if we did, we should perhaps know better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes thought that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other. He who wrote, “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint agricolas,” might have written quite as truly, “O infortunatos nimium sua si mala norint”; and there are few of us who are not protected from the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done, what we are suffering, and what we truly are. Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 3

Way , Suffering , Appearance , Time

“I’m going out of my mind, oh, oh; with a pain that stops and starts; like a corkscrew to my heart; Ever since we’ve been apart”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), You're a Big Girl Now

Heart

“As the President of India, I had lots of experiences that were full of pain and helplessness. There were occasions when I could do nothing for people and for the nation. These experiences have pained me a lot. They have depressed me a lot. I have agonised because of the limitations of power. Power and the helplessness surrounding it are a peculiar tragedy, in fact.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Source: S. S. Shashi Encyclopaedia Indica: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Volume 100 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=bf8vAQAAIAAJ, Anmol Publications, 1996, p. 260

People

“Fool if you think it's over
'Cause you said goodbye
Fool if you think it's over
I'll tell you why
New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the mornin' sun
Fool if you think it's over
It's just begun”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

"Fool (If You Think It's Over)"
Song lyrics, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? (1978)

Fools , Thinking , Sun , Cry

“It is easy to explain. This is the first time I ever went into a season without aches and pains. One year I was bothered by a bad back and it carried into another season. Another year I hurt my hand. This year I feel good.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

On his vastly improved run production, as quoted in "3 Years Are Up and Clemente's At Top of Heap" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=J8MVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HBAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5046%2C533946&dq=easy by Oscar Fraley (UPI), in The Milwaukee Sentinel (Saturday, June 11, 1960), Page 6, Part 2
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>

Feeling , Time , Hurt , Season

“They have never felt pain … We don’t have their connections, but we’re ready to die.”

Nattawut Saikua (1975) Thai politician

As quoted in "Protests Urge Resignation of Leaders in Thailand" in The New York Times (15 March 2010).

“I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God, but we don't really love Him, and they don't really let Him love them. Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world. It's also the only thing that can bring us salvation. And it's like everything else that is really wonderful, there's a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Wheaton, Illinois http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/wheaton-illinois-sep1590-backup-copy.html (September 15, 1990)
In Concert

Love , God , People , World

“A command is distinguished from other significations of desire, not by the style in which the desire is signified, but by the power or purpose of the party to inflict an evil or pain in case the desire is disregarded.”

John Austin (legal philosopher) (1790–1859) legal philosopher

Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 6

Evil

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1866)

For Men , Men , Sadness , Intelligence

“Until now, neither the distinction between “worthy, since durable” and “vain, since transient,” nor the unbridgeable abyss separating the two, has disappeared for a moment from reflections on human happiness. Nonentity, the demeaning and humiliating insignificance of the individual bodily presence in the world by comparison with the unperturbed eternity of the world itself, has haunted philosophers (and non-philosophers, during their brief spells of falling into and staying in a philosophical mood) for more than two millennia. In the Middle Ages it was raised to the rank of the highest purpose and supreme concern of mortals, and deployed to promote spiritual values over the pleasures of the flesh—as well as to explain (and, hopefully argue away) the pain and misery of the brief earthly existence as a necessary and therefore welcome prelude to the endless bliss of the afterlife. It returned with the advent of the modern era in a new garb: that of the futility of individual interests and concerns, shown to be abominably short-lived, fleeting and vagrant when juxtaposed with the interests of “the social whole”—the nation, the state, the cause.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 31.

Pleasure , Age , World , Mood

“Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.”

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet

"The Marshes of Glynn" (1878).
Poetry

God , Knowledge , Suffering , Sun

“Into a land
Storm-wrought, a place of quakes, all thunder-scarred,
Helpless, degraded, desolate,
Peace, the White Angel, comes.
Her eyes are as a mother's. Her good hands
Are comforting, and helping; and her voice
Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring
Falls on the World, and there is no more pain.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Epilogue
Hawthorn and Lavender (1901)

World , Peace , Angels , Spring

“The Second came to my mind with contrition; Freely desiring that sickness so hard as to death, that I might in that sickness receive all my rites of Holy Church, myself thinking that I should die, and that all creatures might suppose the same that saw me: for I would have no manner of comfort of earthly life. In this sickness I desired to have all manner of pains bodily and ghostly that I should have if I should die, (with all the dreads and tempests of the fiends) except the outpassing of the soul. And this I meant for I would be purged, by the mercy of God, and afterward live more to the worship of God because of that sickness. And that for the more furthering in my death: for I desired to be soon with my God.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 2

Life , Death , God , Soul

“Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

Soul , Falseness

“The body knows no pain, not like the soul. At least a nerve has limits, a body part a name. But the soul … the soul … There is no bandage -- even crying is in vain.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"Only the Soul"
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Soul , Parting , Cry

“[I decided to go vegan] three and a half years ago. At first, I approached it from a scientific standpoint. However, I then came to have some ethical views about this diet. I love happy, living animals! … There are so many [benefits]. First, I no longer eat the suffering and pain of defenceless animals. Secondly, my body has become lighter, so to say “clearer”. Thirdly, in my profession, flexibility and elasticity are incredibly important, and I increased both of these. And fourthly, now I almost never suffer from a cold or flu.”

Alexey Voyevoda (1980) bobsledder

"Alexey Voyevoda: Russia’s Vegan Olympian" https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/alexei-voyevoda-russias-vegan-olympian/, interview with PETA (17 February 2014).

Love , Suffering , Animals , Happiness

“My dead go on suffering in me the pain of living.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Mis muertos siguen sufriendo el dolor de la vida en mí.
Voces (1943)

Suffering , Dead

“I just wanted to say something about (…) my resentment of the identification of this country of Britain with royalty. As if we have nothing else to offer as a culture – the country of my birth. The great contribution, of the English anyway, to the world is literature and language. That language and literature is, in fact, in its tradition quite extensively republican and democratic. I mean our Blake, Milton, our Shelley, many many other great writers, poetry and prose, have been against the idea that Britain is a feudal or monarchic system. One of the great aspects of that tradition is represented by the name Thomas Paine, who is the moral author of your Declaration of Independence. In fact, one of the great accomplishments of the English republican movement, if you like, is the American Declaration of Independence. So it has always struck me as rather bizarre that there is this cult in the United States of English royalism – just the sort of thing I left England to get away from.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

1997-05-09
Christopher Hitchens on Diana, Princess of Wales, the Royal Family, Dodi Fayed & Muslim Law (1997)
C-SPAN
Washington, D.C.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQK2d1TdTzk
1990s

World , Literature , Idea , Birth

“Pride, jealousy and possessiveness
3 pains of hell”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto CXIII
The Cantos

Jealousy , Hell

“Animals don’t have the ability to say how much pain they’re in or tell you not to rip their skin off for your ability to wear something. … Really get into the process of seeing what you’re putting not only inside your body, but outside, too.”

Dawn Richard (1983) American musician

“D△WN Poses Naked in Graphic Anti-Leather Ad,” video interview with PETA (27 September 2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILtC1gVN58.

Animals

“ However obvious these facts may appear at first glance, they are actually not so obvious as they seem except when we take special pains to think about the subject. Symbols and things symbolized are independent of each other; nevertheless, we all have a way of feeling as if […] there were necessary connections. For example, there is a vague sense we all have that foreign languages are inherently absurd; foreigners have such funny names for things, and why can't they call things by their right names? This feeling exhibits itself most strongly in those tourists who seem to believe that they can make the natives of any country understand English if they shout loud enough. Like the little boy who was reported to have said, "Pigs are called pigs because they are such dirty animals," they feel that the symbol is inherently connected in some way with the thing symbolized. Then there are the people who feel that since snakes are "nasty, slimy creatures" (incidentally, snakes are not slimy), the word "snake" is a nasty, slimy word.”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

</SPAN>
Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Language as Symbolism, p. 27

People , Way , Feeling , Boy

“The pain is legit. But Trump is a stupid vote. Because Trump won't solve any of those things, he'll make them all worse. You're voting against your pain. You're voting to create more. You're going for a kind of witch doctor of politics who is promising things based on magic.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

Stupidity

“Pain's nothing. Pain's what you give, not what you get.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here

“The professional and financial interest in continuing animal experimentation helps to explain at least some resistance to the notion that animals have a complex emotional life and are capable of experiencing the higher emotions, such as love, compassion, altruism, disappointment and nostalgia. To acknowledge such a possibility implies certain moral obligations. If chimpanzees can experience loneliness and mental anguish, it becomes more wrong to use them for experiments in which they are isolated and anticipate daily pain.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson book When Elephants Weep

Preface, p. 15
When Elephants Weep (1994)

Love , Life , Disappointment , Nostalgia

“Everything good, I deem too good to be true;
Everything else is just a bore.
Everything I have to look forward to
Has a pretty painful and very imposing before.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

O' Sailor
Song lyrics, Extraordinary Machine (2005)

“And this doth overpass all other pain,
To find that our last hope is all in vain.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Ed ogni altro martir passa ed avanza
Trovarsi vana l'ultima speranza.
XXIX, 13
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Hope

“I stood stonelike at midnight, suspended in my masquerade.
I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade.
I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch.
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Growin' Up"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

Soul , Night

“In one year I learned as much about anti-Semitism as would be enough for three mens' lifetimes. For you cannot wound the sacred convictions of a people, what their heart loves and respects, without causing deep pain and shedding the heart's blood. It was 17 years ago, and my heart bleeds yet.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

Love , Men , People , Learning

“Well it's bulls and blood,
It's dust and mud,
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd.
It's the white in his knuckles,
The gold in the buckle,
He'll win the next go 'round.
It's boots and chaps,
It's cowboy hats,
It's spurs and latigo.
It's the ropes and the reins,
And the joy and the pain,
And they call the thing rodeo.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Rodeo, written by Larry Bastian.
Song lyrics, Ropin' the Wind (1991)

Joy

“The person who grieves, suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.”

Edmund Burke book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Part I Section V
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

Love , Suffering , Passion , Time

“...he took his lesson of political morality as learned, his notice to quit as duly served, and supposed his education to be finished.

Everyone thought so, and the whole City was in a turmoil. Any intelligent education ought to end when it is complete. One would then feel fewer hesitations and would handle a surer world. The old-fashioned logical drama required unity and sense; the actual drama is a pointless puzzle, without even an intrigue. When the curtain fell on Gladstone's speech, any student had the right to suppose the drama ended; none could have affirmed that it was about to begin; that one's painful lesson was thrown away.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Chapter X Political Morality

World , Education , Feeling , Intelligence

“Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

July 28, 1763, p. 128
On Thomas Sheridan
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Stupidity , Nature

“As a physician I am embarrassed by the lack of initiative and obstructionist policies of my own medical profession toward healthier lifestyles. This is not surprising. Physicians lack training and knowledge of nutrition and are self-serving when they proclaim “patients won't follow plant-based nutrition.” Having counseled patients with severe coronary artery heart disease for over twenty years, I find the opposite to be true. Patients sent home to die by expert cardiologists after failing bypass or stents rejoice as they lose weight, eliminate angina chest pains, lessen their medication, lower their blood sugars, decrease or come off their insulin, revert their positive stress test back to normal, selectively diminish the plaque plugging their arteries, and resume a fully active life empowered by the knowledge that they, not their physicians, have become the locus of control for the disease that was destroying them.”

Caldwell Esselstyn (1933) American physician, author and rower

Foreword https://books.google.it/books?id=6Aosc1wlAXcC&pg=PA1 to No More Bull! by Howard Lyman (New York: Scribner, 2005).

Life , Disease , Home , Knowledge

“I suspect you are intent upon some sort of revenge, in response to this dreadful tragedy?’
‘And?’ I said.
‘Let me counsel you. In moments such as this, we are inclined to allow the animal aspect of our natures to take control. It is a mistake. … Because revenge can destroy a man as surely as the plague. It seems like a god, so pure and true, and full of its sense of justice and entitlement. But it is truly a monster. It feeds perpetually upon its own pain, and upon any pain it can find. And it can never be satisfied until everything has been destroyed utterly.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

Ch 11
The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011)

God , Justice , Revenge , Nature

“This writing wasn't painful. It was like being high.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 11, Making A Beast Of Himself, p. 166

“The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. I, ch. 3
History of England (1849–1861)

Hate , Pleasure

“The wind shrieks, the wind grieves;
It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again;
And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams
And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Dreams

“But where does by far the bulk, the whole ambulance load, of pain really come from? Where must it come from? Isn't the true poet or painter a seer? Isn't he, actually, the only seer we have on earth? Most apparently not the scientist, most emphatically not the psychiatrist.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

“Truth! stark naked truth, is the word, and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze-wrapper on it.”

John Cleland book Fanny Hill

Page 39
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Truth

“You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me."
"I was ninety percent sure."
"I see," Clary said.
There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hand to his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

"The other ten percent."
Clary and Jace, pg. 83-4
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Hell

“Were we to still be circumcising the hood of the female clitoris, we would not have difficulty considering this a continuation of our tradition to keep girls sexually repressed. America’s reflexive continuation of [male] circumcision-without-research reflects the continuation of our tradition to desensitize boys to feelings of pain, to prepare them to question the disposability of their bodies no more than they would question the disposability of their foreskins.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 223.

Feeling , Girl , Boy , Question

“No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton's policies than African-Americans. If Hillary Clinton's goal was to inflict pain on the African-American community, she could not have done a better job. It's a disgrace. Tonight, I'm asking for the vote of every single African-American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future. The inner cities of our country have been run by the Democratic party for more than fifty years. Their policies have reduced only poverty, joblessness, failing schools and broken homes. It's time to hold Democratic politicians accountable for what they have done to these communities. At what point do we say, "enough?" It's time to hold failed leaders accountable for their results not just their empty words over and over again. Look at what the Democratic party has done to the city as an example and there are many others of Detroit: forty percent of Detroit's residents live in poverty. Half of all Detroit residents do not work and cannot work and can't get a job. Detroit tops the list of most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime. This is the legacy of the Democratic politicians who have run this city. This is the result of the policy agenda embraced by Hillary Clinton: thirty-three thousand emails gone. The only way to change results is to change leadership. We can never fix our problems by relying on the same politicians who created our problems in the first place. A new future requires brand new leadership. Look how much African-American communities suffered under Democratic control. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump. What do you have to lose? I say it again, what do you have to lose. Look, what do you have to lose? You're living your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed? What the hell do you have to lose? And at the end of four years, I guarantee you, that I will get over ninety-five percent of the African-American vote. I promise you.”

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

Speech to the African-American community in Dimondale, Michigan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5B5m1S5VTA (August 19, 2016)
2010s, 2016, August

Youth , School , Way , Home

“Teenage girls
with no life experiences
and boys who
call themselves punk
are on my radio
singing about
how much pain they've endured
and how hard
their lives are”

Damien Echols (1974)

Poem written on Death Row; from Arkansas Literary Forum, Volume 9 2007 http://www.wm3.org/live/thewm3/damien_details.php?id=30, as noted on the Free The West Memphis 3 web site. (url accessed on October 16, 2008).

Life , Girl , Boy , Singing

“I'll never let you see
The way my broken heart is hurting me.
I've got my pride and I know how to hide
All my sorrow and pain.
I'll do my crying in the rain.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Crying in the Rain (1962), Co-written with Howard Greenfield, first recorded by The Everly Brothers
Song lyrics, Singles

Way , Heart , Hurt , Cry

“It's very easy to feel someone's pain when you love them.”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

"Conversation with Salma Hayek" (2002)

Love , Feeling

“For some disputes, trials will be the only means, but for many claims, trial by adversarial contest must go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood. Our trials are too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for a truly civilized people.”

Warren E. Burger (1907–1995) Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986

Annual address to the America Bar Association winter convention, Los Vegas (February 12, 1984).

People , Way

“He willeth that we set our hearts in the Overpassing : that is to say, from the pain that we feel into the bliss that we trust.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 81

Feeling , Heart

“It does not frighten me to leave this life that my only son left five years ago, this life that insists we bear sorrow upon sorrow long after we can bear no more. No, I believe I shall gladly take my leave when the time comes. What frightens me, hamshira, is the day God summons me before him and asks, Why did you not do as I said, Mullah? Why did you not obey my laws? How shall I explain myself to him, hamshira? What will be my defense for not heeding His commands? All I can do, all any of us can do, in the time we are granted, is to go on abiding by the laws He has set for us. The clearer I see my end, hamsira, the nearer I am to my day of reckoning, the more determined I grow to carry out His word. However painful it may prove.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Talib Judge, p. 366
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Life , God , Law , Time

“Although one anthropologist mentioned that "undoubtedly these rituals are exceedingly painful," they are not usually considered traumatic to children. Since empathy with children's feelings is nearly absent, gratuitous mutilation of the children is common, such as tightly binding newborn infant's heads for months to elongate the skull, or […].”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 7, pp. 276-277.

Children , Feeling

“Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book I, Ch. 14
Attributed

Pleasure

“By your faith in people, you will someday be betrayed.
I thought it was the same as being rejected.
At the time I didn't have that kind of strength.
Certainly, I knew too much.
It was said that I was a strong child.
I was praised, saying "you must have strength not to cry"
The more things like that were said,
the more even laughing was painful.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

A Song for XX
Lyrics, A Song for XX

People , Faith , Strong , Time

“God himself has made it possible for you to live without the dark place and the pains that rush out and flood out and take you over. Your choice of wanting to see and work is essential to you if you want to get rid of your feeling of emptiness, of futility. You've lied to yourself and said, 'I know what to do to get rid of the pain.' You've never gotten rid of the pain and that's evidence of self-deceit. You have to stop playing cruel tricks on yourself. So stop. Now.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Your Power of Natural Knowing

God , Feeling

“The majority, who through the blindness of their reason do not discern the damages which the soul has sustained, only feel the pain of external injuries, because the faculty of judgment, which alone can enable them to apprehend the damage to the mind, is taken from them.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

55.
Every Good Man is Free

Feeling , Soul

“Our government has the weirdest bias against cannabis. There's no reason for everybody to be so afraid of it. It's not the antichrist the DEA makes it out to be. Industrial hemp is a very useful plant. I challenged the attorney general to get rid of the criminal stigma associated with hemp so we can look at it in terms of how it might be useful. And government has no business telling us what we can and can't use for pain relief.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)

Business

“My view [is] that what morality boils down to is, “Don’t harm, and do help.” And now the question is, “Can creatures like chickens and cows be harmed?” And the answer is, “Of course they can.” Consequently, I think it’s immoral to harm them. And that seems to me to provide a very strong moral reason to be vegetarian, to not wear leather… it seems to me that our treatment of animals is morally appalling… and that we ought to radically revise the way we live, precisely because they feel pain, they can be hurt, and we’re constantly hurting these creatures!”

Shelly Kagan (1956) American philosopher

Debate: Is God Necessary for Morality? (2011)

Way , Feeling , Question , Thinking

“Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), pp. 4-5

Life , Death , Men , Hope

“Normally, when one passes someone on the street who is in pain, one either tries to help him, or one simply looks the other way. With a photo there's no human decision; you're not there; you can't turn away; you simply gape. It's a form of voyeurism.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 247

Way , Photo , Decision , Help

“With me, sir, there is no alternative. Painfully convinced of the unutterable wrongs and woes of slavery; profoundly believing that, according to the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of the fathers, it can find no place under our National Government — that it is in every respect sectional, and in no respect national — that it is always and everywhere the creature and dependent of the States, and never anywhere the creature or dependent of the Nation, and that the Nation can never, by legislative or other act, impart to it any support, under the Constitution of the United States; with these convictions, I could not allow this session to reach its close, without making or seizing an- opportunity to declare myself openly against the usurpation, injustice, and cruelty, of the late enactment by Congress for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Full well I know, sir, the difficulties of this discussion, arising from prejudices of opinion and from adverse conclusions, strong and sincere as my own. Full well I know that I am in a small minority, with few here to whom I may look for sympathy or support. Full well I know that I must utter things unwelcome to many in this body, which I cannot do without pain. Full well I know that the institution of slavery in our country, which I now proceed to consider, is as sensitive as it is powerful — possessing a power to shake the whole land with a sensitiveness that shrinks and trembles at the touch. But, while these things may properly prompt me to caution and reserve, they cannot change my duty, or my determination to perform it. For this I willingly forget myself, and all personal consequences. The favor and good-will of my fellow-citizens, of my brethren of the Senate, sir, — grateful to me as it justly is — I am ready, if required, to sacrifice. All that I am or may be, I freely offer to this cause.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," speech in the Senate (July 27, 1852).

Support , Strong , Change , Dependency

“Many times, God speaks blessing and breakthrough through pain and disappointment.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Message to Tanzanian Presidential candidate Edward Lowassa - "VIDEO - Accept Election Results, TB Joshua Urges Tanzanian Opposition Leader" http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/11/08/video-accept-election-results-tb-joshua-urges-tanzanian-opposition-leader/ PM News, Nigeria (November 8 2015)

God , Disappointment , Time

“Writing is Crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain & sorrow to commemorate an event which is intransmissible.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

“Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions and phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own. And thus, the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 1: Childhood and Early Education (pp. 21-22)

People , Youth , Education , Boy

“Meanwhile, the Wheel turns. The humble are exalted and the mighty are humbled. The best are inevitably defeated, and the scum always rises to the top. Here is the source of all the world’s pain, that restless turning, ever accelerating, always bringing us around again to where we were before, but older, changed, scarred, and sorrowful. Had I only known the identity of the whisperer, I would never have listened. The Wheel would not have been set in motion.”

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 13 (p. 232)

World , Change

“And for one desperate moment
There he crept back in her memory.
God it's so painful, something that's so close
Is still so far out of reach.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

American Girl
Lyrics, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1974)

God , Memory

“No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.”

William Penn book No Cross, No Crown

No Cross, No Crown (1682)

“The Musalmans of Hindustan (and) Musalmans of the whole world were looking to Pakistan with hope and longing eyes for guidance and help. Indian Muslims were also affected by whatever was happening in Pakistan or any other Muslim country. Indian Muslims were greatly pained at the defeat of Pakistan in 1971.”

Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi (1913–1999) Indian islamic scholar

Karachi in July 1978 at the First Islamic Asian Conference. Addressing the delegates of the Conference. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

World , Hope , Help , Country

“Pain—one of the most pressing issues of out time.”

John Bonica (1917–1994) Anesthesiologist; pioneer in pain management

(1974) as quoted by Dennis C. Turk, Donald Meichenbaum, Myles Genest, Pain and Behavioral Medicine: A Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective (1983) p. 73

Time

“That which they call love, it is nothing except the pain of longing.”

Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230) Middle High German lyric poet

Daz si da heizent minne,
Deis niewan senede leit.
"Friuntlîchen lac", line 19; translation from Gale Sigal Erotic Dawn-Songs of the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996) p. 36.

Love

“There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), Apology

Hunger , Food , Hope , Disappointment

“The very thing that is causing you pain is building you up.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 41

“People who suffer beyond the formulas of expression,— who are crushed into silence, and beyond pain,— want no display of emotion,— no bleeding heart,— no weeping at the foot of the Cross,— no hysterics,— no phrases! They want to see God, and to know that he is watching over his own.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

God , People , Silence , Suffering

“Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or in a search of enriching states (an experimental, aesthetic attitude), it cannot have any other concern nor other goal than itself. Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority (in the realm of mind). Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.
I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.
Inner experience has always had objectives other than itself in which one invested value and authority. … If God, knowledge, and suppression of pain were to cease to be in my eyes convincing objectives, … would inner experience from that moment seem empty to me, henceforth impossible without justification? …
I received the answer [from Blanchot]: experience itself is authority.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 7

God , Search , Communication , Knowledge

“The music, yearning like a God in pain.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 7
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

God , Music

“I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind blows soft through the springing grass,
And the river floats like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!”

Paul Laurence Dunbar Sympathy

Sympathy, in the 1913 collection of his work, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar; the poem inspired the title of Maya Angelou's book, Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Feeling , Spring , Bird , Grass

“Louis Althusser puts it this way: because "class instinct is subjective and spontaneous," the class instinct of the middle classes and "thus of intellectuals" must undergo a painful and "revolutionary" transformation in order to become oppositional—that is, in order to become aligned with the methodology of the oppressed.”

Chela Sandoval (1956) Chicana and post-colonial feminist and theoretician

Methodology of the Oppressed (2000), p. 181

Way

“I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

The Trouble With Testosterone (1997) ISBN 068483409X

Love , Art , Feeling , Nature

“I've been blessed with playing the drums and having a young mind and staying healthy. I’m a vegetarian, I take good care of myself. I'll be the last Skynyrd standing. All those guys smoke themselves to death. They all drank themselves to death, drugs. … I still have stainless steel from the knee down in my right leg; I have bone against bone against stainless steel against nerve ending. Every step I take is painful, but when I play drums I push everything away, I get into the zone and I do what I’m supposed to do. … I play Lynyrd Skynyrd music because that's who I am. Everything else has been taken from me, my reputation, my world, my money has all been stolen from me by people that I thought loved me. However they can't take away my ability to play drums.”

Artimus Pyle (1948) American musician

"Rock Survivor: Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle keeps the music alive his way" http://tbrnews.com/lifestyle/rock-survivor-lynyrd-skynyrd-drummer-artimus-pyle-keeps-the-music/article_1c30bfee-1501-11e3-8bdb-001a4bcf887a.html, interview with The Beach Reporter (4 September 2013).

Love , Death , Money , People

“Thus we have reached the point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic.”
Quin eo deventum est ut iam (proh dolor!) non existimentur sapientes nisi qui mercennarium faciunt studium sapientiae.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

24. 155; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Wisdom , Personality

“How can anyone believe that you can "learn" how to feel and learn how to express it? How can anyone teach another person how to laugh and how to cry? How to be cheerful and how to be sad? Teach them what pain is, and despair, and desire, and passion? Hate and love? How can anyone waste their own and somebody else's time with that idiocy? But far worse than the morons who think they can learn these things are the people who claim they can teach them. In the end, they teach bad manners. If one of their trained poodles sits down in public, he doesn't sit, he slouches - which is supposed to mean that his behavior is "natural." He or she scratches his or her head then picks his or her nose, which is supposed to mean that he or she has no complexes and acts very spontaneously. So this is what New York talk shows look like.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On method acting. p. 313
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

Love , Hate , People , Sadness

“There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Solitude
Poetry quotes

Pleasure , Training

“I know the reason why you keep your silence up,
No you don't fool me.
The hurt doesn't show
But the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you and me.”

Phil Collins (1951) English musician, songwriter and actor

"In the Air Tonight"
Face Value (1981)

Fools , Silence , Hurt

“Confession,” he said, “must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.”

Keith Roberts book Pavane

Third measure “Brother John” (pp. 108-109)
Pavane (1968)

God , Soul , Question , Heart

“The idea that lack of paternal guidance can explain today's masculinity crisis doesn't make sense. I suspect rather that underneath the sons' charge that their fathers did not teach them how to be men lies another, unadmitted complaint — that their fathers taught them only too well how to be men, and they are choking on the lesson. These men, as boys, faced the age-old tradeoff: If you undergo the painful process of renouncing the "feminine" aspects of your humanity and follow your father into manhood (and what choice do you have, really?) you will share in the spoils of the superior half of the race. Now, as men, they find that the spoils are far more meager than expected. No wonder they feel betrayed.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"How Now, Iron Johns?", The Nation (13 December 1999) http://www.thenation.com/article/how-now-iron-johns/

Men , Age , Feeling , Boy

“A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste. A departmental head and his chief reach a state of symbiosis; the clever official knows that words must never be spoken in the chief's presence because they stir up painful complexes or rouse his anger. He knows how to present a proposition so that the chief will be interested and give a favorable opinion. He is clearly aware of the latter's mistakes and weaknesses, respects him no less for them, but he does his best to make up for deficiencies.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Time , Anger

“When raging love with extreme pain
Most cruelly distrains my heart;
When that my tears, as floods of rain,
Bear witness of my woful smart;
When sighs have wasted so my breath
That I lie at the point of death:
I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troyè town:
And how the boisterous winds did beat
Their ships, and rent their sails adown;
Till Agamemnon's daughter's blood
Appeased the gods that them withstood.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"The Lover Comforteth Himself with the Worthiness of his Love", line 1.

Love , Death , God , Lie

“In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter III, Part II, p. 531.

People , Question , Sense , Country

“Born and brought up in New York City and having survived and thrived there, I carry with me a cargo of memories, some painful and some pleasant, which have remained in the hold of my mind. I have an ancient mariner’s need to share my accumulation of experience and observations. Call me, if you will, a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak and the never-ending struggle to prevail…or at least to survive.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XIII, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Life , Death , Memory

“Endless brooding over a question undermines you as much as a dull pain.”

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

The New Gods (1969)

Question

“I don't have to begin, as I would have if I were speaking for the Church, with any apologies. We don't have a lot to apologize for. It wasn't we who framed Galileo, it wasn't we who said that God wanted the Crusades, it wasn't we who mounted the Inquisition, it wasn't we who sponsored Pavoloch, Salazar, Mussolini, Dollfuss, Hitler, Vichy, Franco, and the rest of it; and it wasn't we who preached the Easter sermon saying who was responsible for the death of a mythical figure, and creating ludicrous pain to real people, in the real world. We don't have to begin by proving that our institutions and our beliefs are human, as all human institutions are; that we are only mammals, as his holiness the Pope is only a mammal. We don't make a mystery where none exists. We say that we face the heavens, and we find them empty; and that some of us, at any rate, are not alarmed to find this emptiness; and would be more alarmed to find the heavens full of permanent supervision and invigilation; and that an ethical life may be led by someone with no supernatural means of support, without the fear, if it is a fear, or the hope, if it is a hope, of celestial invigilation.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Life , Death , God , People

“It was glorious to see—if your heart were iron,
And you could keep from grieving at all the pain.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Book XIII, lines 355–356
Translations, Iliad (1997)

Heart

“The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say.
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away.Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain.”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

Same Old Lang Syne.
Song lyrics, The Innocent Age (1981)

School , Way , Home , Beer

“Behold love, thy power how she despiseth:
My great pain, how little she regardeth
The holy oath, whereof she taketh no cure
Broken she hath : and yet she bideth sure
Right at her ease, and little she dreadeth.”

Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) English poet and diplomat (1503-1542)

Rondeau 1 http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Wyatt1.htm.

Love

“And it wasn't just ripping, but twisting and pulling in different directions. Because Melanie's heart broke, too, and it was a separate sensation, as if we'd grown another organ to compensate for our twin awarenesses. A double heart for a double mind. Twice the pain.”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Wanderer, p. 188
The Host (2008)

Heart

“His face was tense with pain. But then, who notices when they meet a theatre critic whose face is tense with pain? It is one of the marks of the profession.”

Robertson Davies book Murther and Walking Spirits

Part 1, section 2.
Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)

“No education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 3: A Georgian Boyhood, Ch. 24: Vale (p. 259)

Life , Education

“I've been lookin' for someone
Between the fire and the flame.
We're all lookin' for somethin'
To ease the pain.
Now who can you turn to
When it's all black and white?
And the winners are losers.
You see it every night.I need somebody,
Somebody like you.
Everybody needs somebody.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Somebody
Song lyrics, Reckless (1984)

“For years this rule has kept me out of hopeless despair:
You simply do not feel what is always there.
I ask my brain to entertain that pain is the same,
that if I feel it all the time, can you really call it pain?”

Hank Green (1980) American vlogger

A Song About An Anglerfish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek_wCaBZTCg
Songs

Feeling , Time , Despair

“If I were a young man
And young was my Lily,
A smart girl, a bold young man,
Both of us silly.
And though from time before I knew
She'd stab me with pain,
Though well I knew she'd not be true,
I'd love her again.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Brittle Bones".
Country Sentiment (1920)

Love , Girl , Time

“If you ask me abruptly
Why write poetry
Why not do
Something useful
Then I won't know
How to answer you
I am like a goldsmith hammering day and night
Just so I can extend pain
Into a gold ornament as thin as a cicada's wing
I don't know if working so hard
To transform sorrows into
Shimmering words and phrases
Is also
Beautifully worthwhile.”

Xi Murong (1943) Taiwanese poet and painter

"Poetry's Value", in Where Books Fall Open: A Reader's Anthology of Wit & Passion (David R. Godine Publisher, 2003), p. 56

Night

“Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow willhave to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange andgrotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and corruption is rampant. If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of Europeanculture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkersin Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defendingundesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha andour Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have butone task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.”

S. N. Balagangadhara (1952) Indian philosopher

Foreword by S. N. Balagangadhara in "Invading the Sacred" (2007)
Source: Balagangadhara, S.N. (2007), "Foreword." In Ramaswamy, de Nicolas & Banerjee (Eds.), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America . Delhi: Rupa & Co., pp. vii–xi.

Women , World , School , Way

“Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure;
Rich the treasure;
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Source: Alexander’s Feast http://www.bartleby.com/40/265.html (1697), l. 57–60.

Pleasure , Drink

Quotes about pain page 18

Quotes about pain
page 18