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“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
"God"
Lyrics, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
“Where your pain is, there your heart lies also.”
Anna Kamieńska (1920–1986) Poet, writer and translator
“Pain is a message, and you can choose to ignore that message.”
James Patterson (1947) American author
Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”
Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World
Source: NOS4A2
“As the thing more perfect is,
The more it feels of pleasure and of pain.”
Dante Alighieri book Inferno
Canto VI, lines 107–108 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno
“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”
Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 26
“Though life seems painful, at the same time it is wonderful”
Ritsuko Okazaki (1959–2004) Japanese singer
空色(Sorairo), Siki
Lyrics
“When the head aches, all the members partake of the pains.”
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 2.
“Ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain.”
Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher
§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
“The very word "sorrow" colours the fact of sorrow, the pain of it.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher
3rd Public Talk, Brockwood Park, UK (5 September 1981)
1980s
“If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
“There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 285.
“If pain does not die
we shall make it poetry.”
Juan Antonio Villacañas (1922–2001) Spanish poet, essayist and critic
From Sublimation of Disobedience (1998)
“Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
“Futility is the defining characteristic of life. Pain is proof of existence”
Stephen R. Donaldson (1947) Novelist
Thomas Covenant
“Pain doesn’t follow us; it walks up front.”
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
El dolor no nos sigue: camina adelante.
Voces (1943)
“That which they call love, it is nothing except the pain of longing.”
Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230) Middle High German lyric poet
Daz si da heizent minne,
Deis niewan senede leit.
"Friuntlîchen lac", line 19; translation from Gale Sigal Erotic Dawn-Songs of the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996) p. 36.