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“I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.”

Louise Penny book A Fatal Grace

Source: A Fatal Grace

“Just like the good old days: marching together into the unknown, searching for missing magical weapons and risking painful death. I’d missed my buddies!”

Rick Riordan book The Hammer of Thor

Source: The Hammer of Thor

“He must love me, i thought, amazed. A faint whiff of nausea hit me at seeing pain as proof of love, but it seemed true. Unavoidable.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Source: Geek Love

“I've always protected myself when it comes to love. And maybe that's the problem. By not letting myself get hurt now, it ripples into much bigger pain later.”

Carolyn Mackler book The Future of Us

Source: The Future of Us

“Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

“He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“Never had she danced so beautifully; the sharp knives cut her feet, but she did not feel it, for the pain in her heart was far greater.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

Source: The Little Mermaid

“Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow, do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?”

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

“Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

“What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.”

Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998) journalist from the United States

“If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.”

Diane Wood Middlebrook (1939–2007) biographer

Source: Anne Sexton: A Biography

“Even when he was going through some painful times of his own, he was always incredibly funny and cheerful and always making me laugh.”

Matthew Perry (actor) (1969) American actor

Elizabeth Hurley, reported in The Star-Ledger staff (August 21, 2002) "Co-stars' relationship is only screen-deep", The Star-Ledger, p. 30.
About

“Your high beauty, which has no equal in the world, is painful to you except insofar as it seems to adorn and set off your lovely treasure of chastity.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

L'alta beltà ch'al mondo non à pare
noia t'è, se non quanto il bel thesoro
di castità par ch'ella adorni et fregi.
Canzone 263, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

“If we [are to] reach a situation of true peace, real peace, peace for generations, we will have to make painful concessions. Not in exchange for promises, but rather in exchange for peace.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

2000s <br class="br">Source: "Report: Sharon willing to make 'painful concessions," at cnn.com, April 2003 ( online) http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/13/sharon.settlements/

“I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As quoted in "Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi" http://en.mfethullahgulen.com/content/view/1820/49/ by Fethullah Gülen in The Fountain #24 (July-September 2004) <br class="br">Variant translation: I want a heart which is split, chamber by chamber, by the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longings and desires to it.

“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)

“Seven years ago we all went through the flames. And the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Jonathan Harker
Dracula (1897)