Search

Topics

Quotes

“It’s all relative, I suppose. You think you know love, you think you know real pain, but you don’t. You don’t know anything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

“Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care… -Wintergirls”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

“Do you know what happened to the last person who took that tone with me? (Xypher)
Let me guess…Disembowelment. Probably painful. Definitely slow. (Simone)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

“You have someone in your life whom you honor and revere so much that every hurt on them is inflicted on you as well. And the closer they are to you, the greater the pain.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

“No one ever found out what was happening inside me. How the pain was eating me away. No one ever came to my rescue, or stood up for me.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“In life there are going to be some things that make it hard to smile. Through all the rain and pain you got to keep your sense of humor and smile for me now. Remember that.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“Roland La Starza was tough, but Ezzard Charles was the toughest man I ever fought. I learned what pain was all about when I fought him.”

Rocky Marciano (1923–1969) American boxer

Reminiscing about his opponents; quoted in "Sept. 17, 1954: Marciano vs Charles" by Eliott McCormick, in The Fight City (17 September 2019) https://www.thefightcity.com/sept-17-1954-marciano-vs-charles-ii-rocky-marciano-ezzard-charles-heavyweight-championship-joe-louis-jersey-joe-walcott/

“There's a pleasure to loving someone even when you know there's no chance in them loving you back. The pain I felt let me know I was still alive.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: Margarettown

“You can run away from home
But you can't run away from your pain
I sit here alone
There's always someone else to blame.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

Up to You Now.
Song lyrics, White Lies for Dark Times (2009)

“In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived. All Iraqis can now come together and reject violence and build a new Iraq.”

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

2000s, 2003, Remarks on the Capture of Saddam Hussein (December 2003)

“Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the surrounding universe — that conformity involves a certain amount of happiness in excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid for living.”

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

1860s, Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)

“How short our span!
If you once realized how brief,
you would refrain
from causing any beast or man
the smallest grief, the slightest pain.”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

“You're the pain in my —
The hurricane in my —
Supersensitive heart, dear.
Still I love you, I know,
And the reason is merely because
You irritate me so!”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"You Irritate Me So"
Let's Face It (1941)

“Whatever we are directed to pray for, we are also exhorted to work for; we are not permitted to mock Jehovah, asking that of Him which we deem not worth our pains to acquire.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 469.

“What I truly wish is for moderation to return to the country. This is my only wish. Extremism pains me greatly. We have suffered many blows as a result of extremism.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Presidential campaign, 2013

“One of the hardest things we must sometimes do is to be present to another person's pain without trying to fix it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person’s mystery and misery.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), pp. 61-63

“But the capacity to enjoy is impossible without the capacity to suffer; and the faculty of enjoyment is one with that of pain. Whosoever does not suffer does not enjoy, just as whosoever is insensible to cold is insensible to heat.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity

“O, my Russia! O, wife! The long road is clear to us to the point of pain. Our road – like a Tatar arrow of ancient will has pierced our breast.”

Alexander Blok (1880–1921) poet

"On Kulikovo Field" (1908); translation from Sarah Pratt Nikolai Zabolotsky (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000) p. 53.

“No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: A fresh look at empiricism, 1927-42 (G. Allen & Unwin, 1996), p. 217
Attributed from posthumous publications

“We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)