Quotes

John Lennon photo

“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)

Anna Kamieńska photo
James Patterson photo

“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

Joe Hill photo

“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

Dante Alighieri photo

“As the thing more perfect is,
The more it feels of pleasure and of pain.”

Canto VI, lines 107–108 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Samuel Johnson photo

“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”

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

Susan Kay photo

“I wanted to cry, loud and wet with the pain of love.”

Geek Love (1989)

Miguel de Cervantes photo

“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.

Antisthenes photo

“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

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“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

William Cowper photo

“There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 285.

Juan Antonio Villacañas photo

“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)

Joseph Joubert photo
Stephen R. Donaldson photo

“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)

Walther von der Vogelweide photo

“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.

William Cowper photo

“Detested sport,
That owes its pleasures to another's pain.”

Of fox-hunting.
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 326