quotations about pain
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
The lessons we learn from pain are the ones that make us the strongest.
LIONEL LUTHOR
"Hidden", Smallville, 2005
Just give me a pain that I'm used to.
DEPECHE MODE
"A Paint That I'm Used To"
It is pain that changes our lives.
STEVE MARTIN
Shopgirl
But for pain, bodies would be broken to pieces on the slightest shock.
ST. PIERRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
He knew that scar, that pain, that shame, that degradation that no metaphor could contain, inscribing it on his body. And yet beyond that, he was that scar, carved by hate and smallness and fear onto the world's face. He and everyone like him, until the earth was aflame with scarred black men dying in trees of fire.
CHRIS ABANI
Graceland
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
There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.
R. D. LAING
attributed, The Quotable Quote Book
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Graveyard Book
Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to kindness and wisdom we make promises only; pain we obey.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
J. M. COETZEE
Waiting for the Barbarians
Never a lip is curved with pain
That can't be kissed into smiles again.
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
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"
Pain is the best cure for error.
JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE
"Harmonius", Tales from the German of Heinrich Zschokke
If thou take pain in what is good, the pains vanish, the good remains; if thou take pleasure in what is evil, the evil remains, and the pleasure vanishes. What art thou the worse for pains, or the better for pleasure when both are past?
FRANCIS QUARLES
Enchiridion
When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
JANE AUSTEN
Persuasion
So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.
MATTHEW HENRY
Commentaries
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