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“I was also pained to notice an institution which I certainly did not expect to find in this country – I mean caste. Your rich people are really Brahmins, and your poor people are Sudras.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech at Hannover Square Rooms on the occasion of a Soiree held to bid him farewell on 12th September 1870.

“Right before bed, I spend twenty minutes in this place. Then I can sleep.”
“You mean you simply sit here, staring at everybody’s pain? All you do is look at it?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

“Uh-huh. Just like God.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 74)

“When Andranik went away… I saw that tears were in his eyes and his mouth was twisting with agony like the mouth of a small boy who is in great pain but will not let himself cry.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Inhale and Exhale (1936), Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia

“Now as before it is the vulgar and the vital and the possibility of its transformation into the beautiful which continues to challenge and fascinate me… Or perhaps the subject of my art is like the definition of humor — emotional pain remembered in tranquillity.”

Grace Hartigan (1922–2008) American artist

Statement to World Artists : 1950-1980 as quoted n "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008)
Unsourced variant: I have found "my subject", it concerns that which is vital and vulgar in American life and the possibility of its transcendence into the beautiful.

“I became a vegetarian many years ago after listening to The Smiths’ ‘Meat Is Murder.’ It opened my eyes to the painful lives of animals raised for food, and I knew I wanted no part of that.”

Brian Fair (1975) American singer

“Shadows Fall’s Brian Fair,” PSA for peta2.com (11 November 2011) https://www.peta2.com/news/shadows-falls-brian-fair/.

“We must at least allow the pain inflicted upon us by our enemies to be a megaphone to our own deafness to the world, waking us up to the needs of others, to the violence inflicted upon them.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), p. 92.

“We know that hockey is where we live, where we can best meet and overcome pain and wrong and death. Life is just a place where we spend time between games.”

Fred Shero (1925–1990) Former ice hockey player and coach

Jackson, Jim, Walking Together Forever: The Broad Street Bullies, Then and Now

“The light of love flows out of my soul, but it can go nowhere because it’s blocked by pain. I could inhale and exhale every morning for the rest of my life, but that wouldn’t solve anything.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“I'm convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country -- by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation. Sporadically, our eyes are open: When eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day; the countless more whose lives are forever changed -- the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife’s warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happen to some other place. The vast majority of Americans -- the majority of gun owners -- want to do something about this. We see that now. And I'm convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country -- by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace.

“I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

As quoted in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, & Other Fields (1982) by Ann Evory
Context: I talk about the things people have always talked about in stories: pain, hate, truth, courage, destiny, friendship, responsibility, growing old, growing up, falling in love, all of these things. What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads. I try to go into those places in me that contain the cauldrous. I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work. … It is a love/hate relationship I have with the human race. I am an elitist, and I feel that my responsibility is to drag the human race along with me — that I will never pander to, or speak down to, or play the safe game. Because my immortal soul will be lost.

“This light is measured discreetly, needfully standing to us in the night. The light is cause of our life; the night is cause of our pain and of all our woe: in which we earn meed and thanks of God.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 83
Context: Our faith is a light by nature coming of our endless Day, that is our Father, God. In which light our Mother, Christ, and our good Lord, the Holy Ghost, leadeth us in this passing life. This light is measured discreetly, needfully standing to us in the night. The light is cause of our life; the night is cause of our pain and of all our woe: in which we earn meed and thanks of God. For we, with mercy and grace, steadfastly know and believe our light, going therein wisely and mightily.

“Be still, my heart, away with pain!
Though passion stirs again
In blood that now flows slowly
And leads to paths once known,
These paths you tread in vain
For youth has flown.”

Hermann Hesse book Gertrud

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 165

“Let every man in mankind's frailty
Consider his last day; and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.”

Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian

Variant: Look upon him, O my Thebans, on your king, the child of fame! This mighty man, this Œdipus the lore far-famed could guess, And envy from each Theban won, so great his lordliness— Lo to what a surge of sorrow and confusion hath he come! Let us call no mortal happy till our eyes have seen the doom And the death-day come upon him—till, unharassed by mischance, He pass the bound of mortal life, the goal of ordinance. [ Tr. E. D. A. Morshead http://books.google.com/books?id=i7wXAAAAYAAJ (1885)] Variant: People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus. He solved the famous riddle, with his brilliance, he rose to power, a man beyond all power. Who could behold his greatness without envy? Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him. Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day, count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last. [quoted by Thomas Cahill in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea] Source: Oedipus Rex, Line 1529, Choragos.

“Every step, every effort, every test, every fall and every recovery has a sense within God’s design for salvation, as He wants life – not death – and joy – not pain – for His people”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Ash Wednesday General Audience (1 March 2017), as quoted in "Pope Francis: ‘we do not go to heaven in a carriage’" at Vatican Radio (1 March 2017) http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/03/01/pope_francis_‘we_do_not_go_to_heaven_in_a_carriage’_/1295741 2010s, 2017 Context: Every step, every effort, every test, every fall and every recovery has a sense within God’s design for salvation, as He wants life – not death – and joy – not pain – for His people … This doesn’t mean that he did everything and we don’t have to do anything.