Quotes about pain
page 27

“When I lump all my sins together and confess them en masse, I neglect to feel the pain or embarrassment or shame that should be elicited in me.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Feeling

“I got a lot of benefit from auditing. It was the fastest and deepest way to handle situations that I had yet encountered. I immediately wanted to learn to do it. … With Scientology, I was able to characterize the Mind more accurately, and to cease justifying it. This greatly clarified what I was doing. … After my experience with Scientology, I saw what it means to see the Mind as a machine. I can now operate my Mind accordingly, with exactitude. I can do the familiar mind over matter experiments - the control of pain and bleeding, telepathy, those things. Many people can do such things, and they are well known in the yogic tradition.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 146-47, 0-517-53502-5]

People, Way, Learning

“As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth — whatever the truth may be — that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.”

June Jordan (1936–2002) Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist

"Life After Lebanon" (1984), later published in On Call : Political Essays (1985), and Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)

Life, Truth, Fear, Learning

“We are alike in many ways, you and I. There is a darkness in us. Darkness, pain, death. They radiate from us. If ever you love a woman, Rand, leave her and let her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

al'Lan Mandragoran to Rand al'Thor
(15 October 1993)

Love, Death, Way

“I'm actually very sensitive about those things, and it's personally painful…You know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph.”

Katherine Harris (1957) U.S. politician

On Sean Hannity's talk radio program, August 1, 2005, responding to Hannity asking Harris whether the jokes bothered her.

Color, Personality

“By this sinister elision, this slipping from true remorse, the belief that the suffering we have precipitated ought to ennoble us, or at least make us less ignoble from then on, to disguised self-forgiveness, the belief that suffering in some way ennobles life, so that the precipitation of pain comes, by such a cockneyed algebra, to equal the ennoblement, or at any rate the enrichment, of life, by this characteristically twentieth-century retreat from content into form, from meaning into appearance, from ethics into aesthetics, from aqua into unda, I dulled the pain of that accusing death; and hardened myself, to say nothing of it at Bourani. I was still determined to tell Julie, but at the right time and place, when the exchange rate between confession and the sympathy it evoked looked very likely to be high.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus (1965), Ch. 52

Life, Death, Way, Forgiveness

“By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy;
By the perfection of thine art
Which pass'd for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee! and compel
Thyself to be thy proper Hell!”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act I, scene i.
Manfred (1817)

Smile, Art, Soul, Hell

“…each individual appeared satisfied to stand alone. It seemed a sign of force; yet to stand alone is quite natural when one has no passions; still easier when one has no pains.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Nature, Appearance, Passion

“Our patients are the ones who express and live out the subconscious and unconscious tendencies in the culture. The neurotic, or person suffering from what we now call character disorder, is characterized by the fact that the usual defenses of the culture do not work for him — a generally painful situation of which he is more or less aware…”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 20

Suffering, Personality

“The moral sense is at the root of pity. Pity means compassion — the capacity to resent someone else's suffering as if it were one's own. The absence of pity is a mark of obtuseness: incapacity of identifying oneself with those who are in pain or downtrodden. Worthy of pity are mainly mistreated or bereaved children, the old, the sick, all those that are helpless and abused. This includes the majority of animals. And we mustn't ask ourselves whether or not they are able to go to heaven, whether or not they are able to reason, or to speak, or to count, or to vote, but we must ask ourselves only one question: "Are they able to suffer?"”

Hans Ruesch (1913–2007) Swiss racing driver

And it is their misfortune that they are only too able to suffer.
Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), pp. 328-329

Children, Question, Sense, Suffering

“I believe natural instincts “go awry”; what was I really seeking when scoring and using heroin? Heroin is an opiate; opiates are painkillers. I was in spiritual pain. I have come to believe that the reason I was using drugs was to treat a spiritual malady. A flailing, disconnected tendril searching for connection and, failing to find it, I had to be sedated. When I began my life in abstinence-based recovery, living one day at a time without the use of drugs and alcohol, the impulse that drove me to seek out oblivion remained. I believe it is the impulse for union that is denied by our atomized and secular culture.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Life, Alcohol, Search, Nature

“The marvelous is of necessity a lie, a distortion. At best it is a metaphor which leads to the truth. I think that I know what causes the World’s Pain, lady. Or at least I think I know what contributes to that Pain.”
“And what would that be, Ulrich von Bek?”
“By telling a single lie to oneself or to another, by denying a single fact of the world as it has been created, one adds to the World’s Pain. And pain, lady, creates pain. And one must not seek to become saint or sinner, God or Devil. One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one’s humanity.”
I became embarrassed. “That is all I have learned, lady.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“It is all that Heaven demands,” she said.
Source: The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 158)

Love, God, Truth, Lie

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” p. 254 (originally published in New Dimensions 3, edited by Robert Silverberg)
Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1974
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

Happiness, Stupidity, Evil, Hurt

“He was not a friend to Paine's doctrines, but he was not to be deterred by a name from acknowledging that he considered the rights of man as the foundation of every government, and those who stood out against those rights as conspirators against the people. The dearest right of Englishmen was to the possession of their constitution, while it was maintained on its true principles; but if it was abused, the effect must infallibly be to inflame men's minds, and ministers alone would be responsible for the consequences which might ensue. If the people complained of grievances, let those grievances be removed, and their discontents would cease. If the people were put in possession of their rights, there would be no longer any fear of internal or foreign danger…The retreat of the duke of Brunswick, which he, along with his right hon. friend, and every friend of freedom, considered as matter of joy and exultation, had indeed thrown them into confusion.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (12 December 1792), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXX (London: 1817), pp. 41-42.
1790s

Men, People, Fear, Freedom

“I see the pain on your face when you say the word intellectual, because it has so many syllables in it.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

From an interview with Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central's "Colbert Report"
Television and radio

“I shall be most grateful to the gods if I am not disappointed in the opinion which I have of you. For, while we find that the great majority of other men seek the society of those friends who join them in their follies and not of those to admonish them, just as they prefer the most pleasant to the most wholesome, you, I think, are minded otherwise as I judge from the industry you display in your general education. For when one sets for himself the highest standard of conduct, it is probable that in his relation to others he will approve only of those who exhort him to virtue. But most of all you would be spurred on to strive for noble deeds if you should realize that it is from them most of all that we also derive pleasure in the true sense. For while the result of indolence and love of surfeit is that pain follows on the heels of pleasure, on the other hand, devoted toil in the pursuit of virtue, and self-control in the ordering of one's life always yield delights that are pure and more abiding. In the former case we experience pain following upon pleasure, in the latter we enjoy pleasure after pain.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verses 45-46.
To Demonicus

Love, Life, Men, God

“He who would ease the pain of his wound, should pay his doctor well. Isn’t it so, Doctor? And he who would be cured should pay him badly.”

Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543) Italian poet and litterateur

Act V., Scene II. — (Cornelio).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 274.
I Lucidi (published 1549)

“Every move she made, the soft turn of her neck, the large breasts swelling under the smock, her fine hands upon the bed, the fingers spread out, these things disturbed me, a sweet painful heaviness dragging me into stupor. Then the sound of her voice, restrained, hinting of mockery, a voice that talked to my blood and bones.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“A good communicator affects our physiology. The power of voice can entrance us – even induce or remove pain.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Communication

“I shudder at the very thought of being born again into this world. Life to me... has been a monstrous, painful, agonizing affair, and the idea of repeating such an existence — even if better in a way — is horrifying to me.... I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

"The Search for a Soul" by Jess Stearn
1970s-

Life, World, Way, Idea

“Indeed, if we set our hearts to answer but one very famous question, I am certain that all these questions and doubts will vanish from the horizon, and you will look unto their place to find them gone. This indignant question is a question that the whole world asks, namely, “What is the meaning of my life?” In other words, these numbered years of our life that cost us so heavily and the numerous pains and torments that we suffer for them, to complete them to the fullest, who is it that enjoys them?”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Assorted Themes, On the Meaning of Life

Life, World, Question, Suffering

“It is remarkable that whilst the Doctors of the Sorbonne were urging Francis the First absolutely to suppress printing even as late as 1533 and whilst this enlightened monarch had actually issued letters-patent January 3 1535 prohibiting under pain of death any person to print any book or books, and ordering all booksellers' shops to be closed under the same penalty, the Jews should have hailed with delight this invention as a Divine gift and sung its praises because it enabled them to multiply and circulate the word of God.”

Christian David Ginsburg (1831–1914) Polish-British Bible scholar

Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible, p. 779

Death, God, Books, Penalty

“Mere gook rule: The deaths and injuries of lesser breeds who stand in our way may be ignored in law and policy-making; technically, the marginal cost of a dead gook (Arab, etc.) is zero. The rule is based on the fact that gooks do not value life and feel pain like we do; besides which, they stand in our way.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, Doublespeak Dictionary (within Beyond Hypocrisy), p. 153.

Life, Death, Law, Way

“The Rev. Jesse Jackson once said, “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, American Contempt for Liberty (2015)

Life, Feeling, Thinking

“We have known so much & shared & lost so much together—Even if it isn’t the way you wish now—I hope that bond of love and pain will never be cut.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

In a letter to David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech, as quoted in the article "The One That Got Away: A Trove of Jacqueline Kennedy’s Love Letters Has Been Found" (9 February 2017) http://www.vogue.com/article/jacqueline-kennedy-onassis-letters-david-ormbsy-gore

Love, Hope, Way

“What are the choices that we must make if we are now to succeed, and not to fail? […] Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial to tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives. One of those choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis proportions. […] The other crucial choice illuminated by the past involves the courage to make painful decisions about values. Which of the values that formerly served a society well can continue to be maintained under new changed circumstances? Which of these treasured values must instead be jettisoned and replaced with different approaches?”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "Reasons for hope" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 522-523, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Failure, Courage, Problem, Thinking

“Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such pain
At any hand but hers?”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Symptoms of Love" from More Poems (1961).
Poems

Lovers, Courage

“Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life, Dreams, Soul, Imagination

“A heavy task, but there was light relief
In the Germanic ambience, boisterous, brash,
Torchlit parades and pogroms, guttural grief
In emigration queues, the smash and crash
Of pawnshop windows by insentient beef
In uniform, the gush of beer, the splash
Of schnapps, the joy of being drunk and Aryan,
Though Hitler was a teetotalitarian.
Human pain meant
But little in the Gulf War's visual grammar, a
Big feast of death to feed the cinecamera”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Byrne
Poetry

Death, War, Beer, Light

“For many Americans, these four months have brought sorrow, and pain that will never completely go away. Every day a retired firefighter returns to Ground Zero, to feel closer to his two sons who died there. At a memorial in New York, a little boy left his football with a note for his lost father: Dear Daddy, please take this to heaven. I don't want to play football until I can play with you again some day.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Feeling, Boy, Memory, Football

“Summer was gone and now Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and light the gas and close the shatters, and he would go down the path and on to the village. To these two life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness, but pity; not disillusion, but only pain.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"The Lees of Happiness"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Life, Light, Grass, Summer

“Little by little it ebbs, this life,
if by any chance I am still alive;
my brief time passes before my eyes.
I mourn the past in whatever I say;
as each day passes, step by step
my youth deserts me—what persists is pain.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Foge-me pouco a pouco a curta vida (se por caso é verdade que inda vivo); vai-se-me o breve tempo d'ante os olhos; choro pelo passado e quando falo, se me passam os dias passo e passo, vai-se-me, enfim, a idade e fica a pena. "Foge-me pouco a pouco a curta vida" http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/8451, tr. Landeg White in The Collected Lyric Poems of Luis de Camoes (2016), p. 330 Lyric poetry, Sestina

Life, Youth, Chance, Time

“Oh, are not the pleasures in life, in this daily round, trifling compared with the pains!”
Satin parva res est voluptatum in vita atque in aetate agunda praequam quod molestum est?

Plautus Amphitryon

Amphitryon, Act II, scene 2.
Amphitryon

Life, Pleasure

“No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time — he can never return to simplicity.”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Source: Sweet Thursday (1954), Ch. 36

Life, Lie, Sleep, Change

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html 2010s

Death, Women, People, Pleasure

“I got to know Asia Argento ten months ago. Our commonality is the shared pain of being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. My heart is broken. I will continue my work on behalf of victims everywhere.
None of us know the truth of the situation and I’m sure more will be revealed. Be gentle.”

Rose McGowan (1973) American actress

5:46am https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/1031477689947967489 and 9:35am https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/1031535197433602048 20 August 2018 reaction to accusations against Asia Argento according to Deadline https://deadline.com/2018/08/rose-mcgowan-asia-argento-jimmy-bennett-heart-broken-sexual-assault-payoff-report-reaction-1202448340/, E! https://www.eonline.com/ca/news/961510/rose-mcgowan-reacts-to-asia-argento-reportedly-paying-off-sexual-assault-accuser, Entertainment Weekly https://ew.com/movies/2018/08/20/rose-mcgowan-asia-argento/, Variety https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/rose-mcgowan-asia-argento-sexual-assault-accusation-1202909955/ and Vulture http://www.vulture.com/2018/08/rose-mcgowan-responds-to-asia-argento-assault-allegations.html.

Truth, Heart

“Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.”

Graham Greene book Our Man in Havana

Pt. 1, ch. 3, sct. 3
Our Man in Havana (1958)

Childhood

“No one else knew how she'd longed for extinction, how much part of her had hungered simply to quit. To end. She'd once intended, coldly and logically, to do just that… She'd sacrificed her naval career… and a corner of her mind suspected she'd actually wanted to sacrifice it — that she'd planned to use the loss of the vocation she loved so much as one more reason to end her dreary existence. It had seemed only reasonable then; now the memory was one more coal of contempt for her own weakness, her willingness to surrender to her own pain when she'd always refused to surrender to anyone else.”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", Flag in Exile (1995)

Love, Hunger, Memory, Loss

“He had a bitter pain in his heart, for he knew that she was still a stranger to him and his hungry love was destined ever to remain unsatisfied.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"The pool", p. 127
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Love, Heart

“His speech is clumsy, with a toadlike indolence, long winded, pedantic, choppy. The words tumble from his mouth in sentence fragments, which he holds back as much as possible, as if they were earning interest. It takes forever and a day for him to push out a clump of hardened brain snot. Then he writhes in painful ecstasy, as if he had sugar on his rotten teeth. A very slow blab machine. An obsolete model with a non-working switch — it can't be turned off unless you cut off the electric power altogether. So I'd have to smash him in the kisser. No, I'd have to knock him unconscious. But even if he were unconscious he'd keep talking. Even if his vocal cords were sliced through, he'd keep talking like a ventriloquist. Even if his throat were cut and his head were chopped off, speech balloons would still dangle from his mouth like gases emitted by internal decay.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On Werner Herzog, p. 213
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

“When I remember again
How my Philip was slain,
Never half the pain
Was between you twain,
Pyramus and Thisbe,
As then befell to me.
I wept and I wailed,
The tearės down hailed,
But nothing it availed
To call Philip again
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.”

John Skelton (1460–1529) English poet

Source: Jane Scroop (her lament for Philip Sparrow) (likely published c. 1509), Lines 17-27.

Cats

“Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor improved, could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they had suffered. God’s purposes were usually mysterious, but this scourge had been too terrible to be accepted without questioning. If a disaster of such magnitude, the most lethal ever known, was a mere wanton act of God or perhaps not God’s work at all, then the absolutes of a fixed order were loosed from their moorings. Minds that opened to admit these questions could never again be shut. Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 123

Death, God, People, Age

“The cause why He suffereth is for He will of His goodness make us the higher with Him in His bliss; and for this little pain that we suffer here, we shall have an high endless knowing in God which we could never have without that.”

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

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 21

God, Suffering

“At the end of the current five-year presidential term and the “Trente-Six Dispendieuses” (36 years of uninterrupted deficits from 1981 to 2017) far-reaching public expenditure reforms will be required. These will be all the more painful as they are far too late.”

Éric Pichet (1960) economist

La trajectoire des finances publiques de 2014 à 2017 : impuissance du droit et vérité des comptes http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2563481 Article in Revue de Droit Fiscal n48 (2014). Budgetary policy, From the Expensive 30 toe the Expensive 36, The Expensive 36

“In my eyes, the year 1942 already has behind it the most fateful trial of our people. That was the winter of '41 to '42. I may be permitted to say that in that winter the German people, and in particular its Wehrmacht, were weighed in the balance by Providence. Nothing worse can or will happen. That we conquered that winter, that "General Winter," that at last the German fronts stood, and that this spring, that is, early this summer, we were able to proceed again, that, I believe, is the proof that Providence was content with the German people… You do not realize what is hidden beneath these words in the way of human heroism, and also of human pain, and suffering, and we may say, often anxiety too, naturally, deathly anxiety on the part of all those who, especially for the first time, are placed before the trial of God in this highest court.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Address at the Opening of the Winter Relief Campaign http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-address-at-the-opening-of-the-winter-relief-campaign-september-1942 (September 30, 1942) 1940s

God, Fate, People, Way

“The progress of the colored people on this continent is one of the marvels of modern history. We are perhaps even yet too near to this phenomenon to be able fully to appreciate its significance. That can be impressed on us only as we study and contrast the rapid advancement of the colored people in America with the slow and painful upward movement of humanity as a whole throughout the long human story.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Progress of a People (1924)

People, Color, History, Study

“I know I've caused you trouble,
I know I've caused you pain.
But I must do the right thing;
I must do myself a favour
And get real, get right with the Lord.”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Get Real Get Right"
Lyrics, The Age of Adz (2010)

“Being poor is a little like having an earache over a Bank Holiday. All you can think about is the pain and how long it will be before a healing hand can be found to take away the anguish.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Thinking, Holiday

“It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 14

Friendship, People

“You may have heard of a character from the batman movies, called the Joker. The joker just lives a normal life like you or me, going to the grocery store, and the office or what have you. But WHen the joker puts his mask on, he becomes the joker, and he mercilessly goes out there and gets Paid. Thats what I try to do in my life and the way I live life, and I do do it every day, and it is the essence of understanding my pain.”

Dril Twitter user

[ "We Interviewed the Guy Behind @dril, the Undisputed King of Twitter", Caffier, Justin, August 24, 2018, Vice, August 25, 2018, http://archive.today/2018.08.26-011141/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kymv8/we-interviewed-the-guy-behind-dril-the-undisputed-king-of-twitter, August 25, 2018, no https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kymv8/we-interviewed-the-guy-behind-dril-the-undisputed-king-of-twitter,] dril in interviews

Life, Way, Understanding

“But I escaped from reality
Escaped from the pain
I said to myself
"Some day, I'll be as I should be
Though I'm far from there now"
After such excuses, my eyes were opened
All I could do was to live in the present time.”

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

Walking Proud
Lyrics, My Story

Reality, Time

“Animals cry. At least, they vocalise pain or distress, and perhaps call for help. Most people believe, therefore, that animals can be unhappy and also that they have such feelings as happiness, anger and fear. But there is a tremendous gap between the common sense viewpoint and that of official science on this subject. The ordinary layperson readily believes that his dog, her eat, their parrot or horse, feels. They not only believe it but have constant evidence of it before their eyes. All of us have extraordinary stories of animals we know well. Yet, by dint of rigorous training and great efforts of the mind, most modern scientists — especially those who study the behaviour of animals — have succeeded in becoming almost blind to these matters.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson book When Elephants Weep

Preface, p. 11
When Elephants Weep (1994)

Happiness, People, Fear, Dogs

“For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be. For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail. But to die for my love so often that the number passeth creature’s reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man’s soul, as to my sight. Then meaneth He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for thy love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for thy love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?”

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

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

Love, God, Soul, Suffering

“To prolong pain is to miss the next lesson.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

“Looking at the Temple and the Courts and the mountain road that winds below, we see this picture of human evolution, and the track along which the race is treading, and the Temple that is its goal… along that road round the mountain stands a vast mass of human beings, climbing indeed, but climbing so slowly, rising step after step; sometimes it seems as though for every step forward there is a step backward, and though the trend of the whole mass is upwards it mounts so slowly that the pace is scarcely perceptible. And this aeonian evolution of the race, climbing ever upwards, seems so slow and weary and painful that one wonders how the pilgrims have the heart to climb so long…”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

p. 10

Mountain, Heart

“Even when one has climbed up into those levels of bliss where pain vanishes, it still survives disguised as intolerable ecstasy.”

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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Bhakti

“You see a skeleton in a lab, and they need wires to hold the spine in place. Well, in your body the wires are muscles. When there is a loosening on one side, your pelvis tilts. A spasm occurs when this tilt results in one side of the body supporting more weight than the other. Look at a telephone pole. If the supporting wire on one side is slack and loose, then the wire on the other side becomes tense and tight. In the case of the body, this is the muscle. And it will give you pain. If a man weighs 180 pounds and one side of him supports 90 and the other side 90, he is able to function. If one side supports 110 and the other supports only 70, a problem arises. For one thing, your leg on one side is shorter than the leg on the other.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Dr. Clemente, I Presume" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fL1HAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZoAMAAAAIBAJ&pg=6750%2C4033368 by Jim Murray, in The Los Angeles Times (March 24, 1972), p. E1 Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

Support, Problem

“The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Der allgemeine Ueberblick zeigt uns, als die beiden Feinde des menschlichen Glückes, den Schmerz und die Langeweile.
Personality; or, What a Man Is
Essays

Happiness

“The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy, but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism. As a form the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"Richard Wright's Blues" (1945), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 129.

Personality

“In my creation/evolution ministry, I say there are only two philosophies of health and medicine; creation and evolution. If evolution is true, your body's a collection of chemicals that got together by chance over billions of years, so you treat diseases by adding more chemicals. That's the whole philosophy behind the drug therapy; you have a pain? Take a pill. The other, totally different philosophy is "hey, you're created by God, and he designed the food, and the herbs (Psalm 104:14)."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

The herbs are for the service of man, and so you treat, or you prevent problems with what you eat. Dr. Kent Hovind Intro to Mary Tocco's info on the dangers of Vaccinations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BJvPcHGFGI, Youtube (April 9, 2016)

God, Health, Disease, Food

“Judging itself brings the pain of being judged. The wicked judge mistakes this for another crime of the accused and lengthens his sentence.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#441
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter VII (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

Truth

“I can’t think why Delio [son] has not been told that I’m in prison, and why no one reflected that he might then find out about it indirectly, that is, in the most disagreeable way for a child, who then begins to doubt the truthfulness of those educating him, to think about it on his own account and draw apart. At least, that was my experience as a child: I remember it perfectly... I believe in treating children as rational creatures with whom it is possible to discuss even the most serious matters. This makes a very profound impression on them, it strengthens their character and above all it avoids leaving their development at the mercy of random environmental pressures and casual, impersonal encounters. It really is very strange how grown-ups forget they were children themselves, and make no use of their own experiences. For my part, I recall vividly how offended I was at every discovery of a subterfuge, even if it was meant to keep painful facts from me, and how this shut me up within myself and made me withdraw.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci cited in Fiori, 1970, pp. 22-23.

Children, Truth, Education, Way

“Alas! by some degree of woe
We every bliss must gain;
The heart can ne'er a transport know
That never feels a pain.”

George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton (1709–1773) British politician

Song; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Feeling, Heart

“We know, that, in the individual man, consciousness grows from a dim glimmer to its full light, whether we consider the infant advancing in years, or the adult emerging from slumber and swoon. We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own. I confess that, in view of the struggle for existence which goes on in the animal world, and of the frightful quantity of pain with which it must be accompanied, I should be glad if the probabilities were in favour of Descartes' hypothesis; but, on the other hand, considering the terrible practical consequences to domestic animals which might ensue from any error on our part, it is as well to err on the right side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren, who are bound, like the rest of us, to pay their toll for living, and suffer what is needful for the general good.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

World, Error, Feeling, Light

“I have succeeded in structuring my intimate life according to my own standards and I make no secret of my love experiences anymore than does a man. Above all, however, I never let my feelings, the joy or pain of love take the first place in my life inasmuch as creativity, activity, struggle always occupied the foreground.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love, Life, Secret, Feeling

“We would die before you would feel pain.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

El-Sisi addressing the Egyptians http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/10/07/egyptian-people-will-never-forget-who-stood-with-them-or-against-them-al-sisi 2013

Feeling

“There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.”

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

Hymn 66, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II.
Attributed from postum publications, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1773)

Pleasure, Night

“There is no guarantee of happiness, wisdom, or long life if you drink of me this evening,” she says, very softly. There is no nirvana. There is no salvation. There is no afterlife. There is no rebirth. There is only immense knowledge—of the heart as well as the mind—and the potential for great discoveries, great adventures, and and a guarantee of more of the pain and terror that make up so much of our short lives.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 20 (p. 408)

Life, Wisdom, Happiness, Drink

“You see a lot — your eyes get very painful.”

John le Carré book Smiley's People

Smiley's People (1979)

“The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

The Poet and the World (1996)

People, World, Feeling, Star

“This is his [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus'] conclusion (II. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature."”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Death, Pleasure, Feeling, Nature

“Don Conroy died with exemplary courage, as one would expect. He never complained about pain or whimpered or cried out. His death was stoical and quiet. He never quit fighting, never surrendered, and never gave up. He died like a king. He died like The Great Santini. I thank you with all my heart.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Letter to his readers (1998)

Death, Courage, Heart, Fight

“For I consider that the sufferings of the present time do not amount to anything in comparison with the glory that is going to be revealed in us. For the creation is waiting with eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but through the one who subjected it, on the basis of hope that the creation itself will also be set free from enslavement to corruption and have the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that all creation keeps on groaning together and being in pain together until now.”

Paul of Tarsus book Epistle to the Romans

Romans 8:18-22 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/romans/8/, NWT Epistle to the Romans

God, Children, Hope, Freedom

“And what is the middle? Division that strives towards a multiple unity, ignorance that labours towards a flood of varied light, pain that travails towards the touch of an unimaginable ecstasy. For all these things are dark figures and perverse vibrations.”

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

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Light

“My whole life I have suffered from poverty and have faced many disappointments and pain, like a man is used to. That is why I want to make other people happy and want them to feel at home.”

Jim Jones (1931–1978) founder and the leader of the Peoples Temple

(1978). Translated back from Dutch to English, indirectly sourced, Messiahs: The vision and prophecies for the Second coming by John Hogue

Life, Happiness, People, Disappointment

“You can verbalize what happens to these animals a thousand times, but [when] you see it, it definitely clicks in—and it did for me. … I’m an animal lover. I was definitely one of those people who wore fur years ago. I was looking online and I [saw] how these animals are tortured and skinned, and you don’t really realize the hurt and the pain they go through just for fashion. I want to be a voice for them. I think that parents should show what’s done to these animals. People who do wear fur, I would like for them to do the research for themselves.”

Evelyn Lozada (1975) American reality show participant, model, spokesmodel.

"Cross Fur off Your Shopping List With Evelyn Lozada" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBiicjOS80A, video interview with PETA (11 December 2012).

People, Lovers, Fashion, Thinking

“De Bellaigue is at pains to portray Mossadegh as — in the words of the jacket copy — “one of the first liberals of the Middle East, a man whose conception of liberty was as sophisticated as any in Europe or America.” But the trouble is, there is nothing in Mossadegh’s career — spanning half a century, as provincial governor, cabinet minister, and finally prime minister — to portray him as even remotely a lover of liberty. De Bellaigue quotes Mossadegh as saying that a trusted leader is “that person whose every word is accepted and followed by the people.” To which de Bellaigue adds: “His understanding of democracy would always be coloured by traditional ideas of Muslim leadership, whereby the community chooses a man of outstanding virtue and follows him wherever he takes them.” Word for word, that could have been the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s definition of a true leader. Mossadegh also made a habit of appearing in his street meetings with a copy of the Koran in hand. According to de Bellaigue, Mossadegh liked to say that “anyone forgetting Islam is base and dishonourable, and should be killed.” During his premiership, Mossadegh demonstrated his dictatorial tendency to the full: Not once did he hold a full meeting of the council of ministers, ignoring the constitutional rule of collective responsibility. He dissolved the senate, the second chamber of the Iranian parliament, and shut down the Majlis, the lower house. He suspended a general election before all the seats had been decided and chose to rule with absolute power. He disbanded the high council of national currency and dismissed the supreme court. During much of his tenure, Tehran lived under a curfew while hundreds of his opponents were imprisoned. Toward the end of his premiership, almost all of his friends and allies had broken with him. Some even wrote to the secretary general of the United Nations to intervene to end Mossadegh’s dictatorship. But was Mossadegh a man of the people, as de Bellaigue portrays him? Again, the author’s own account provides a different picture. A landowning prince and the great-great-grandson of a Qajar king, Mossadegh belonged to the so-called thousand families who owned Iran. He and all his children were able to undertake expensive studies in Switzerland and France. The children had French nannies and, when they fell sick, were sent to Paris or Geneva for treatment. (De Bellaigue even insinuates that Mossadegh might have had a French sweetheart, although that is improbable.) On the one occasion when Mossadegh was sent to internal exile, he took with him a whole retinue, including his cook… As a model of patriotism, too, Mossadegh is unconvincing. According to his own memoirs, at the end of his law studies in Switzerland, he had decided to stay there and acquire Swiss citizenship. He changed his mind when he was told that he would have to wait ten years for that privilege. At the same time, Farmanfarma secured a “good post” for him in Iran, tempting him back home.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Myths of Mossadegh" https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/302213/myths-mossadegh/page/0/1, National Review (June 25, 2012).

Children, People, Family, Law

“When I thought I was dying in rehab in 1994, 'I Won't back Down' was my mantra. It lifted my up out of the pain and made me fight through it. 'The Waiting'… summed up my life. We can't stand waiting, we rock 'n' roll men and women. Tom Petty's songs are like a great book that you revisit when you need help. His songs make me better.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

"Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers", Billboard, Vol. 118, http://books.google.com/books?id=GBYEAAAAMBAJ No. 12 (25 March 2006), p. 38

Life, Women, Men, Books

“Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 476 (5 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Men, Support, Learning

“Yes, it is a painful lot to be a poet and to love both God and man by the farthest northern seas!”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

Love, God, Sea

“Truth does not hurt, rather, it is our resistance to its message that causes pain.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

40 Inspiring Guides to a New Life

Truth, Hurt

“Simon, a man of the sect of the Essens, desired leave to speak his mind freely, and said that the vision denoted a change in the affairs of Archelaus, and that not for the better; that oxen, because that animal takes uneasy pains in his labors, denoted afflictions, and indeed denoted, further, a change of affairs, because that land which is ploughed by oxen cannot remain in its former state; and that the ears of corn being ten, determined the like number of years, because an ear of corn grows in one year; and that the time of Archelaus's government was over. And thus did this man expound the dream. Now on the fifth day after this dream came first to Archelaus, the other Archelaus, that was sent to Judea by Caesar to call him away, came hither also.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 17.13.3
Antiquities of the Jews

Dreams, Affliction, Change, Time

“How do we tell them that one not be discouraged by the imperfection of the world and the inevitability of death and diminishment. How do we tell them when they lose a child, or are crippled, or know that they will themselves die too soon — that God permits pain and sickness and unfairness and evil to exist, only in order to permit us to test our mettle and to earn a fulfillment that would otherwise not be possible?”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Address at Iona College (1984)

Death, God, World, Evil

“Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 2, pg. 48

“A boy in his teens! What did I know about death? This is a problem for Irish writers — our literary forebears are enormous. They stand behind us like Easter Island statues, and we keep trying to measure up to them, leaping towards heights we can't possibly reach. I suppose that's a good thing, but it makes for a painful early life for the writer. Anyway, hunched there over my Aunt Sadie's Remington, I was starting to learn how to write. Now, fifty years later, I'm still learning.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Life, Death, Boy, Problem

“What kind of God can one infer from the sort of phenomena epitomized by the species on Darwin's Galapagos Islands? The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror.… The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.”

David Hull (1935–2010) American philosopher

Reviewing Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial for Nature in 1992, as quoted in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith Vol. 45, p. 47 (1993) by American Scientific Affiliation

Death, God, Indifference

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.”

Khalil Gibran book The Prophet

The Prophet (1923)

Understanding, Sun, Heart

“Chorus of the Eumenides: …
Never by lapse of time
The soul defaced by crime
Into its former self returns again;
For every guilty deed
Holds in itself the seed
Of retribution and undying pain.

Never shall be the loss
Restored, till Helios
Hath purified them with his heavenly fires;
Then what was lost is won,
And the new life begun,
Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

Life, Soul, Passion, Loss

“Pain is good, I'd say, when it's incidental to Love. In 'I give up my life for my friend' it is my friend, not my death, that matters. And sometimes I needn't give up my life for him, I can live for him, and with him, and the power of the spirit is then equally manifested, I should think.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 285, to George Thomson, 1 August 1931
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Love, Life, Death, Thinking

“It is God’s will, as to mine understanding, that we have Three Manners of Beholding His blessed Passion. The First is: the hard Pain that He suffered, — with contrition and compassion. And that shewed our Lord in this time, and gave me strength and grace to see it.”

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

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 21

God, Understanding, Suffering, Passion

“Make no mistake about it, making a good record is pure, unadulterated pain. If you fall and break your leg--that's pain. But I'm telling you, the phase between pain and death? That's making a good record. It's extreme.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

Roots Radical http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-57534351.html, Guitar Player (December 1, 1999).

Death

“When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural to them merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to London merchant Peter Collinson (9 May 1753); reported in Labaree: "Papers of Benjamin Franklin", vol 4, pp 481-482.
Epistles

Life, Men, Sex, Imagination

“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Battlefield http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page222 (1839), st. 9

God, Truth, Error

“I'm knowing this could be our last event
Jaweh, Jaweh, Jaweh
I'm knowing I am your youngest descent
I don't want to know your pain
I don't want to play the game.”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

"Angel Fire" · True Music with Katie Daryl performance on HDNet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vfVyMW1bQI Are You Listening? (2007)

Game

“Heaven bent to take my hand
And lead me through the fire.
Be the long awaited answer
To a long and painful fight.Truth be told I've tried my best,
But somewhere along the way
I got caught up in all there was to offer,
And the cost was so much more than I could bear.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Fallen
Song lyrics, Afterglow (2003)

Way

“To see the Convulsions, Agonies and Tortures of a poor Fellow-Creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify Luxury, and scratch callous and rank Organs, must require a rocky Heart, and a great Degree of Cruelty and Ferocity. I cannot find any great Difference on the Foot of natural Reason and Equity only, between feeding on human Flesh, and feeding on brute animal Flesh, except Custom and Example. I believe some rational Creatures would suffer less in being fairly butcher'd, than a strong Ox, or red Deer; and in natural Morality and Justice, the Degrees of Pain here, make the essential Difference; for as to other Differences, they are relative only, and can be of no Weight with an infinitely perfect Being.”

George Cheyne (physician) (1671–1743) British doctor

Did not Use and Example weaken this Terror, and make the Difference, Reason alone could never do it. An Essay on Regimen (London: C. Rivington, 1740), pp. 70 https://books.google.it/books?id=ezswAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA70-71.

Justice, Nature, Strong, Suffering

“In order to protect our jobs, our visas, our profits, our chances of receiving good grades, our sanity, we pretend not to see, we sanitise our own perception, filtering out the pain, pretending that it is not here but out there, far away, in Africa, in Russia, a hundred years ago, in an otherness that, by being alien, cleanses our own experience of all negativity.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

Chance

“And can it be, that I should gain
An Int'rest in the Saviour’s blood!
Dy'd He for Me? ---- who caus'd his Pain!
For Me? ---- who him to Death pursu'd!
Amazing Love! how can it be
That Thou, my GOD shouldst die for Me?”

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) English Methodist and hymn writer

Wesley J and Wesley C (1743), "Hymns and Sacred Poems", 4th edition, page 78, at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/hymnsandsacredpo00wesliala Wikisource Full text. Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739)

Love, Death, God

“Azarius, for his part, had not made her voyage to the depths of pain to understand that death and birth, in that place, have almost the same tragic meaning.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 367

Death, Birth, Understanding, Parting

Quotes about pain page 27

Quotes about pain
page 27