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“The majority of people I coach are unhappy or dissatisfied with their working lives. They describe their work in so many depressing ways – as ‘boring’, ‘tedious’, ‘mind-numbing’, ‘stressful’, ‘painful’ or even ‘scary’. I hear similar opinions as I travel the world from all types of people no matter what their background, education or choice of career.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

“Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.
That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 25 (p. 67)

“No wearisome days, no sorrowful nights; no hunger or thirst; no anxiety or fears; no envies, no jealousies, no breaches of friendship, no sad separations, no distrusts or forebodings, no self-reproaches, no enmities, no bitter regrets, no tears, no heartaches; "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 300.

“I'm weary, I'm weary. Oh! pleasure is pain
When its spell has been broken again and again.
I am weary of smiles that are bought and are sold,
I am weary of beauty whose fetters are gold,
I am weary of wealth—what makes it of me
But that which the basest and lowest might be?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
The Golden Violet (1827)

“If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

"On the Sufferings of the World"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism

“Shaw knows at any moment, on any subject, what he thinks, what you will think, what others have thought, what all this thinking entails; and he takes the most elaborate pains to bring these thoughts to light in a form which is by turns abstract and familiar, conciliatory and aggressive, obvious and inferential, comic and puzzling.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Source: Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943), II
Context: Shaw knows at any moment, on any subject, what he thinks, what you will think, what others have thought, what all this thinking entails; and he takes the most elaborate pains to bring these thoughts to light in a form which is by turns abstract and familiar, conciliatory and aggressive, obvious and inferential, comic and puzzling. In a word, Shaw is perhaps the most consciously conscious mind that has ever thought — certainly the most conscious since Rousseau; which may be why both of them often create the same impression of insincerity amounting to charlatanism.
Yet it is by excess of honesty that Shaw himself lent color to his representation as an inconsequential buffoon bent on monopolizing the spotlight.

“The early years of the United Nations have been difficult ones, but what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings?
Any great institution or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Context: The early years of the United Nations have been difficult ones, but what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings?
Any great institution or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth. We will not lose faith in the United Nations. We see it as a living thing and we will work and pray for its full growth and development. We want it to become what it was intended to be — a world society of nations under law, not merely law backed by force, but law backed by justice and popular consent.

Speech in Springfield Illinois (24 October 1952)

“She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
She hath hidden and marred and made sad
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
Of gods that were goodly and glad.
She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
She moves as a moon in the wane,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
Our Lady of Pain.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads

"Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)", line 353.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)

“Berlin says: "… You cannot combine full liberty with full equality—full liberty for the wolves cannot be combined with full liberty for the sheep…." …. Are women sheep ("led like sheep to the slaughter")? Must women become wolves? Is violence against women a direct result of the fact that there is no inevitable, painful, retaliatory consequence for hurting women?”

Andrea Dworkin book Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation

Source: Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (2000), pp. 245–246.

“Pain is good, I'd say, when it's incidental to Love. In 'I give up my life for my friend' it is my friend, not my death, that matters. And sometimes I needn't give up my life for him, I can live for him, and with him, and the power of the spirit is then equally manifested, I should think.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 285, to George Thomson, 1 August 1931
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“There is no guarantee of happiness, wisdom, or long life if you drink of me this evening,” she says, very softly. There is no nirvana. There is no salvation. There is no afterlife. There is no rebirth. There is only immense knowledge—of the heart as well as the mind—and the potential for great discoveries, great adventures, and and a guarantee of more of the pain and terror that make up so much of our short lives.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 20 (p. 408)

“Though a crucified life or an agonized death,
Though long, or quick and sharp,
I am firmly wrought in the endless thread
Of Destiny's woof and warp.
And I do not shrink, though a wave of pain
Sobs over me now and then,
As I think of those "saddest of all sad words,"
The pitiful "might have been."”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

“It seeks but will not be sought.
It finds but will not be found.
It holds the one who would touch,
Who would cut away pain and ill.
But its blade cuts two ways
and will not be turned.
If you value your well-being,
Impede not its way.
Treat the toucher doubly well,
For he bears the weight
Of the balance that must be struck.”

F. Paul Wilson book The Touch

Poem about the Dat-Tay-Vao
The Touch (1986)

“And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. — Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Shakespeare" (1849)

“I am throughly confused as to why muslims have such a great desire to inflict pain on those who are in a weaker position, such as animals, children and women. I think this pattern is pretty clear. Why do muslims jump around ululating with their dicks hard whenever heads get chopped off or someone gets whipped?”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2005), published in the blog Scripta Mietteitä kansainvaelluksesta http://www.halla-aho.com/scripta/mietteita_kansainvaelluksesta.html, April 20, 2005 <br class="br">2005-09

“No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

2.7 Why Be Negative? https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon2.htm#negative*Negative-utilitarianism is only one particular denomination of a broad church to which the reader may well in any case not subscribe. Fortunately, the program can be defended on grounds that utilitarians of all stripes can agree on. So a defence will be mounted against critics of the theory and application of a utilitarian ethic in general. For in practice the most potent and effective means of curing unpleasantness is to ensure that a defining aspect of future states of mind is their permeation with the molecular chemistry of ecstasy: both genetically precoded and pharmacologically fine-tuned. Orthodox utilitarians will doubtless find the cornucopian abundance of bliss this strategy delivers is itself an extra source of moral value. Future generations of native ecstatics are unlikely to disagree.<br><br>2.7 Why Be Negative? https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon2.htm#negative <br class="br"> The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

“The life of a mendicant during pilgrimages helped me to develop in a great measure forbearance, equal vision and a balanced mind in pleasure and pain. I met many Mahatmas and learnt wonderful lessons. On some days I had to go without food and walk mile after mile. With a smile I faced all hardships.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Introduction
Autobiography of Swami Sivananda

“I have a platform and a following of millions of people, many of whom I know have been through exactly what I have. And if I tell my story, as painful and flip floppy and flawed as it is, I know it will mean something to someone, as every time someone speaks openly about sexuality, it saves lives.”

Dan Howell (1991) British video blogger and radio personality

“The women's movement is like other political movements in one important way. Every political movement is committed to the belie that there are certain kinds of pain that people should not have to endure. They are unnecessary. They are gratuitous. They are not part of the God-given order. They are not biologically inevitable. They are acts of human will. They are acts done by some human beings to other human beings.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"Feminism: An Agenda" (1983)
Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987

“Changing the world for the better always comes with pain, with fatigue, with some heavy-hearted feeling of unfairness, with this unbreakable wall. But, as it turns out, there is always a flashlight that will sparkle at some point behind this dark spell, and you just walk towards this light hoping that you can peck a hole in that wall and squeeze your way through it.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

As quoted in "“Fostering Leadership”: online talk with Chulpan Khamatova" in Vladimir Potanin Foundation (7 August 2020) https://www.fondpotanin.ru/en/press/news/fostering-leadership-online-talk-with-chulpan-khamatova/