“Stoicism will teach you to smile at pain and frown at the sight of too much pleasure.”

“But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns. Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Life is both pain and pleasure. If this is the price you must pay for the hours you enjoy, is it too much?”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

“Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

“How do you do that?” Mennis asked, frowning.
“What?”
“Smile so much.”
“Oh, I’m just a happy person.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

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

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

“When Fortune smiles, I smile to think
How quickly she will frown.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

“Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

“If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain
We'd hunt down Love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

“Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist