Stronger than pain quotes (page 75) | Quotes of famous people

“It's going to be painful."
"It's a fun tradition."
"So was witch-burning," Melody said. "Unless you were the witch.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Rithmatist

“Life is both pain and pleasure. If this is the price you must pay for the hours you enjoy, is it too much?”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Context: We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

“You meet people who are in pain in life and love and you forgive them for behaving the way they do.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

“Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

The Callahan Chronicals (1996) [originally published as Callahan and Company (1988)] "Backword", p. xii
Context: In a culture where pessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raise hopes, like hothouse flowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick of Time was backward enough to think that the world can look just that essential tad better when seen through a flask, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.) Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.
Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or his love again.

“I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

“He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me. The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace.”

Joni Eareckson Tada (1949) American artist

Source: A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God's Sovereignty

“Pain los[es] its power when other things bec[o]me more important.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

“The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

“Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you're a genius -- Dostoyevsky perhaps.”

Larry McMurtry (1936) American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter

“There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken.”

Jonathan Franzen book Freedom

Source: Freedom

“In the face of all the inhumanity, their humanity feeds the capacity to endure and continue to pursue honorable solutions to our pain.”

Harry Belafonte (1927) American singer

Harry Belafonte and ‘The Long Road to Freedom’ YES! Magazine (2002) https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-does-it-mean-to-be-an-american-now/harry-belafonte-and-the-long-road-to-freedom-20180828

“aAs a creative artiste dedicated to a spiritual art form I was deeply pained by the communal violence in Gujarat.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Vyjayanthimala still cuts a striking figure tall

“There is no legitimate use whatsoever for marijuana. This is not medicine. This is bogus witchcraft. It has no place in medicine, no place in pain relief…”

Bob Barr (1948) Republican and Libertarian politician

"Drug War Chronicle" (17 May 2002), as quoted in "Barr Booed for Anti-Pot Remarks in Home District Event" http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/237/barrbooed.shtml.
2000s, 2002

“I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.”

Edmund Burke book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Part I Section XIV
Compare: Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections, xv: "In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which is not wholly displeasing to us"
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)