Stronger than pain quotes (page 71) | Quotes of famous people

“I hear my silence talked of in every lane;
The suppression of a cry is itself a cry of pain.”

Darshan Singh (1932)

“Work. Like pain, I sensed that this was an experience I would want to avoid as often as possible.”

Joanne Harris book The Gospel of Loki

Source: The Gospel of Loki

“You aren’t old enough to have such regrets.”
“Pain doesn’t respect age, my lady.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

“I am a rock.
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

I Am a Rock
Song lyrics, Sounds of Silence (1966)
Source: Lyrics 1964-2008
Context: I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock.
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.

“Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

“Because even though the truth can set you free, that doesn't mean it won't be painful.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

“Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

“Art is a hideously painful business, you know. Pity me! Or at least buy me a drink.”

Kevin Barry (1902–1920) 18 year old medical student and Irish republican, executed by Britain.

Interview with Kevin Barry (c. 2012)

“The love that made Him to suffer passeth as far all His pains as Heaven is above Earth.”

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

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

“No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours and excise our brains.”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

Night, an Epistle to Robert Lloyd (1761), line 271

“He was not accustomed to thinking about these things so bluntly, but the facts were as obvious as they were painful.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Memory Wire

Source: Memory Wire (1987), Chapter 21 (p. 181)

“Pain is hard to bear," he cried,
"But with patience, day by day,
Even this shall pass away.”

Theodore Tilton (1835–1907) American newspaper editor

All Things shall pass away, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. I, ch. 3
History of England (1849–1861)

“No revolution, no heresy is comfortable or easy. For it is a leap, it is a break in the smooth evolutionary curve, and a break is a wound, a pain.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: A new form is not intelligible to everyone; many find it difficult. Perhaps. The ordinary, the banal is, of course, simpler, more pleasant, more comfortable. Euclid's world is very simple, and Einstein's world is very difficult — but it is no longer possible to return to Euclid. No revolution, no heresy is comfortable or easy. For it is a leap, it is a break in the smooth evolutionary curve, and a break is a wound, a pain. But the wound is necessary: most of mankind suffers from hereditary sleeping sickness, and victims of this sickness (entropy) must not be allowed to sleep, or it will be their final sleep, death.
The same disease often afflicts artists and writers: they sink into satiated slumber in forms once invented and twice perfected. And they lack the strength to wound themselves, to cease loving what they once loved, to leave their old, familiar apartments filled with the scent of laurel leaves and walk away into the open field, to start anew.
Of course, to wound oneself is difficult, even dangerous. But for those who are alive, living today as yesterday and yesterday as today is still more difficult.

“The Face was painful to see. It was too intricate, too involved with emotions complex beyond our grasp.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Source: The Time Axis (1949), Ch. 3 : The Vision Of Time
Context: I closed my eyes again, thinking of the Face. I had to force my mind to turn around in its tracks and look, for it didn't want to confront that infinite complexity again. The Face was painful to see. It was too intricate, too involved with emotions complex beyond our grasp. It was painful for the mind to think of it, straining to understand the inscrutable things that experience had etched upon those mountain-high features.
"Is it a portrait?" I asked suddenly. "Or a composite? What is the Face?"
"A city," De Kalb said. "A nation. The ultimate in human destiny — and a call for help. And much more that we'll never understand."

“The Censor deludes us with the belief that the pain we are in will go away if we don't name it or speak of it.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
Context: The Censor, whose core issue is isolation and connection, splits us into Silencer and Secret-to-be-kept, tells us, "Don't speak of it; don't see it; you're the only one who ever felt that." Possessed by the Censor, we feel shame confusion, and blame, often for the victim, or we live in denial. The Censor deludes us with the belief that the pain we are in will go away if we don't name it or speak of it.