quotations about pain
We have a bitter power who laugh at pain,
Who laugh and laugh -- for tears are shed in vain.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.
MATTHEW HENRY
Commentaries
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET
attributed, Building a Life of Value
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
A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations. A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.
SIGMUND FREUD
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
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"
It's impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Inheritance
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Graveyard Book
Never a lip is curved with pain
That can't be kissed into smiles again.
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
It is pain that changes our lives.
STEVE MARTIN
Shopgirl
In medical nomenclature, pains are said to be of various degrees and kinds. A pain may be slight, or it may be agonizing, with all the intervening grades of moderate, severe, violent, intense, excruciating, etc. Various figurative expressions are also used to designate the several varieties of pain, such as pungent, stinging, cutting, lancinating, tearing, rending, splitting, boring, gnawing, etc. Pains are also said to be heavy, dull or obtuse, sharp or acute, aching, throbbing, smarting, pricking, pulsating, burning, etc.
JOEL SHEW
The Hydropathic Family Physician
Physical pain is necessary to the progress of the human race.
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
When we are suddenly released from an acute absorbing bodily pain, our heart and senses leap out in new freedom; we think even the noise of streets harmonious, and are ready to hug the tradesman who is wrapping up our change.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender is the Night
Pain is a coward. He flees when faced by the irresistible power of the will-to-live, which is more strongly rooted in the flesh than the intensest passion is rooted in the spirit.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
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"
Pain sends out long tentacles
And sucks.
When I have given up struggling
He takes me into his arms.
EVELYN SCOTT
"Hectic"