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John Keats photo

“Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart
Made purple riot.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 16
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Stephen Baxter photo

“Relentless Pleistocene selection was shaping everything that would make up humanity. Even love was a by-product of evolution. Love, and the pain of loss.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 10 “The Crowded Land” section II (p. 308)

Frederick William Faber photo

“Dear Lord! in all our loneliest pains
Thou hast the largest share,
And that which is unbearable,
Tis Thine, not ours to bear.”

Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) British hymn writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 99.

Julian of Norwich photo

“I saw that two contrary things should never be together in one place. The most contrary that are, is the highest bliss and the deepest pain.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72
Context: I saw that two contrary things should never be together in one place. The most contrary that are, is the highest bliss and the deepest pain. The highest bliss that is, is to have Him in clarity of endless life, Him verily seeing, Him sweetly feeling, all-perfectly having in fulness of joy. And thus was the Blissful Cheer of our Lord shewed in Pity: in which Shewing I saw that sin is most contrary, — so far forth that as long as we be meddling with any part of sin, we shall never see clearly the Blissful Cheer of our Lord. And the more horrible and grievous that our sins be, the deeper are we for that time from this blissful sight. And therefore it seemeth to us oftentimes as we were in peril of death, in a part of hell, for the sorrow and pain that the sin is to us. And thus we are dead for the time from the very sight of our blissful life. But in all this I saw soothfastly that we be not dead in the sight of God, nor He passeth never from us. But He shall never have His full bliss in us till we have our full bliss in Him, verily seeing His fair Blissful Cheer. For we are ordained thereto in nature, and get thereto by grace. Thus I saw how sin is deadly for a short time in the blessed creatures of endless life.

Gloria Steinem photo

“Erotica is as different from pornography as love is from rape, as dignity is from humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure is from pain.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Erotica and Pornography: A Clear and Present Difference. Ms. November 1978, p. 53. & Pornography—Not Sex but the Obscene Use of Power. Ms. August 1977, p. 43. Both retrieved November 16, 2014.

Maddox photo

“President Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Good I say, global stability was getting to be a pain in the ass.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Bush: making political satirists obsolete since 2000 http://maddox.xmission.com/limits_to_freedom.html
The Best Page in the Universe

Marilyn Ferguson photo

“Because we have not understood the brain's ability to transform pain and disequilibrium, we have dampened it with tranquilizers or distracted it with whatever was at hand.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

Teal Swan photo

“Pain that is not properly addressed, either becomes directed externally or internally or both. In the worst cases of all, this means suicide, murder or both.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Governments have meddled incessantly with money, which in our time has been the fruitful parent of intricate discussions and painful changes.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827), p. 179

Doris Veillette photo

“The earth does not stop turning, because you are unhappy, as well swallowing your tears and smiling, even if the pain is still burning.”

Doris Veillette (1935–2019) Quebec journalist

Chronicle "Interdit aux hommes" (Forbidden to men), by Doris Veillette-Hamel, Journal Le Nouvelliste, January 8, 1972, page 11.
Chronicle "Forbidden to men", 1972

Julian of Norwich photo

“It is God’s will, as to mine understanding, that we have Three Manners of Beholding His blessed Passion. The First is: the hard Pain that He suffered”

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

with contrition and compassion. And that shewed our Lord in this time, and gave me strength and grace to see it.
The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 21

Prevale photo

“Go back and touch the past remembering emotions, mistakes, loves, shortcomings and pains it's a way to have clarity on the future that awaits us.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Tornare indietro e toccare il passato ricordando emozioni, errori, amori, mancanze e dolori è un modo per avere chiarezza sul futuro che ci aspetta.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“The mind is the greatest amplifier of the human body. It has the power to increase pain, but also pleasure. Whenever possible, oriented your thinking.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La mente è il più grande amplificatore del corpo umano. Ha il potere di aumentare il dolore, ma anche il piacere. Quando è possibile, orientate il vostro pensiero.
Source: prevale.net

Karel Appel photo

“You can see the roughness of structure and the spots like wounds from battles on the canvas. The tops of skyscrapers with windows like eyes constantly remind you that there are laws surrounding the wastelands, and so you hide in the deep grass when you make love to a girl in dirty clothes, and experience how your nerves of seeing become stronger and stronger and every little sound more and more intense. That's what Pasolini's poetry is partly about; he was a street guy and therefore I avoided beautiful new wood or metal for his sculpture... The wasteland was Pasolini's other side; the boys, the knives, the nights, the tensions.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel is referring to the Italian movie-maker Pasolini
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Kirk Douglas photo

“Unfortunately, once I did learn to smoke, I couldn't stop. I escalated to two packs a day very quickly, and stayed that way for about ten years. When I decided to stop, I adopted the method that my father had used when he quit. He would carry a cigarette in his shirt pocket, and every time he felt like smoking, he would pull out the cigarette and confront it: «Who stronger? You? Me?» Always the answer was the same: «I stronger.» Back the cigarette would go, until the next craving. It worked for him, and it worked for me. ”

Kirk Douglas (1916–2020) American stage and film actor
Maurice Maeterlinck photo

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Our Eternity, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Thomas Hobbes photo

“He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Mankind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be only to consider, if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Introduction, p. 2
Leviathan (1651)

David Mitchell photo

“I hear my father-in-law's response…"Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, Monday, 13th January —, p. 528-529.
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Eugene J. Martin photo

“Rather than programming children as if they were computers, parents should be something like art instructors. Because life is like a clump-of-clay, you can’t make it into an expression of beauty, unless you take it into your hands. While sprinkling their lives with painful and playful diversions, people wait their lives miserably into old age, for the skills to live-life, to–come as did life- itself.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Bill Bryson photo

“But what is life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 336
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)