Quotes about pain
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“Words don't hurt you." Which is one of the hugest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

Children, World, Hurt

“I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Way, Understanding

“To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

From books
Source: Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, 2001

Death, People, Feeling, Loneliness

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 10, p. 110
Source: What Is the What

Youth, Shoe, Boy

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.

If you care about something enough, it's going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

World, Fear, Tear, Parting

“You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Appearance

“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Fear, Hope, Feeling, Soul

“Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Source: Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

Life, Happiness

“You'd be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Smile, Tear

“Well, the rain had stopped but the pain was still there.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

“Envy hurt exponentially more than heartbreak because your soul was torn in two, half soaring with happiness for another person, half mired in a well of selfpity
and pain.”

Diana Peterfreund (1979) American writer

Source: For Darkness Shows the Stars

Happiness, Soul, Envy, Hurt

“I'd been blindsided with the most painful knowledge: the first man to ever say he loved me had never loved me at all.

His passion had been artificial.

His pursuit of me had been choreographed.”

Charlaine Harris book Definitely Dead

Source: Definitely Dead

Love, Knowledge, Passion

“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Idea, Success, Training

“Beauty that arose out of pain.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Beauty

“Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, Hurt, Anger

“Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

World, Time

“Think of your pain like a bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Beauty, Thinking

“For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Life, Memory

“To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.”

William Nicholson movie Shadowlands

Source: Shadowlands

God, World, Dreams, Way

“Pain was a fascinating horror”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.”

Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian

Source: Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People

Love

“There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. (67)”

Tom Perrotta book The Leftovers

Source: The Leftovers

“and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Variant: The gun slipped on Emily's temple, and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart.
Source: The Pact

Heart

“In our moments of pain and trial, I guess we would shudder to think it could be worse, but without the atonement it not onlybe worse, itbe worse.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

Thinking

“She had never experienced the pain of unsatisfied desire before. It hurt. It hurt like nothing she'd ever felt, and there seemed to be no remedy.”

Lisa Kleypas book Dreaming of You

Source: Dreaming of You

Hurt

“…the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Love

“But hurting ourselves to inflict pain on others is just another cry to be loved.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Love, Hurt, Cry

“I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

Way, Water

“Kindness eases change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
The most intense
Of our chosen struggles.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents

Love, Fear, Rage, Change

“You have to learn to smile through your pain. Sometimes it’s all we got.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Smile, Learning

“If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

“There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Taxation No Tyranny https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Taxation_No_Tyranny (1775)

Communication, Parting

“If you wake up feeling no pain, you know you're dead. (Russian expression)”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Feeling, Dead

“I needed her to stop. Needed not to hear the pain in her voice--to see the way she was twisting the pocketbook strap. If she kept talking, she might break down and tell me everything.”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Way

“… when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Pleasure, Sad, Hurtful

“I'm not really sure why. But… do you stop loving someone just because they betray you? I don't think so. That's what makes the betrayal hurt so much - pain, frustration, anger… and I still loved her. I still do.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Love, Thinking, Betrayal, Hurt

“All liars… lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.”

Aminatta Forna book The Memory of Love

Source: The Memory of Love

Truth, Lie

“Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

pg 129
Source: Identity (1998)

“When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Variant: Live, laugh, love.

When you can feel someone else's pain and joy as if it's your own, thats when you know you really love them - Tina Lowell
Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Love, Feeling, Joy

“In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.”

Ishmael Beah book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Source: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Suffering, Joy

“pain is absurd because it exists, nothing more.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“It seems that the rebels found the chaos of transition more difficult to accept than the tyranny they had known before. They joyfully welcomed back authority-even oppressive authority-for it was less painful for them than uncertainty.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

“She'd expected some backlash; it happened every time she shared her strength. But she hadn't anticipated so much raw anguish from Nico di Angelo… If this was only a portion of Nico’s pain… how could he bear it?”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Time

“The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

Life

“I find now, swallowing one teaspoon
of pain, that it drops downward
to the past where it mixes
with last year’s cupful
and downward into a decade’s quart
and downward into a lifetime’s ocean.
I alternate treading water
and deadman’s float.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: The Complete Poems

Water, Past

“To lose an arm or a leg would be painful, but to lose the central truth of your life felt—fatal.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Life, Truth

“I feel the stars. Each sparkle sets aflame the pain in my heart.”

Donna Jo Napoli (1948) American children's writer and linguist

Source: Sirena

Feeling, Star, Heart

“It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Feeling, Sense

“They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Robert McAfee Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McAfee_Brown. Preface for the 25th anniversary edition of Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29. Page v, Bantam Books paperback; 1982 reissue edition.

People, Suffering, Loss