- Never a lip is curved with pain
- That can't be kissed into smiles again.
BRET HARTE, "The Lost Galleon"
There is no thornless path in the world.
Nature has placed in the front part of man, as he moves, all those parts which when struck cause him to feel pain; and this is felt in the joints of the legs, the forehead and the nose, and has been so devised for the preservation of man, because if such pain were not felt in these limbs they would be destroyed by the many blows they receive.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
- Unless our souls had root in soil divine
- We could not bear earth's overwhelming strife.
- The fiercest pain that racks this heart of mine,
- Convinces me of everlasting life.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Pain's Proof"
Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
- Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain
- Clings cruelly to us.
Pain is an interesting and off-putting thing. Few if any things in life concentrate our attention so completely and terribly, and few things are more boring to listen to or read about.
DAN SIMMONS, The Rise of Endymion
Pain is only what you allow it to be.
CASSANDRA CLARE, City of Ashes
- Merely to live without a pain
- Is little gladness, little gain,
- Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief--
- The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf.
HENRY VAN DYKE, "Thorn and Rose"
There is no tyrant as merciless as pain.
- Pain sends out long tentacles
- And sucks.
- When I have given up struggling
- He takes me into his arms.
Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved.
NEIL GAIMAIN, Anansi Boys
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Mrs. Cosway, Oct. 12, 1786
- Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief,
- Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul
- From height to height, from star to shining star,
- Shall climb and claim blest immortality.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Immortality"
Pain for the old was no longer a surprise.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
Pain is just another form of information.
- There is room in the halls of pleasure
- For a large and lordly train,
- But one by one we must all file on
- Through the narrow isles of pain.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Solitude"
We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, My Days
Just give me a pain that I'm used to.
DEPECHE MODE, "A Paint That I'm Used To"
Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, A Defence of Poetry
It is pain that changes our lives.
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