PAIN QUOTES III
quotations about pain
Pleasure is hard to come by, but pain is everywhere these days, I must learn to subsist on it.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
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, October 12, 1786
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
C. S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
JOHN KEATS
letter to George and Georgiana Keats, April 1819
Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other; and he only that knows how to accommodate himself to their periodical returns, and can wisely extract the good from the evil, knows how to live.
LAURENCE STERNE
attributed, Day's Collacon
There are cases in which it is necessary to inflict pain now to avoid greater pain later on, or to gain future pleasure that is worth the current pain.
SUSAN HUBBARD
The Society of S
So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.
MATTHEW HENRY
Commentaries
Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Often pains too long retained increase even to the breaking of the heart; if they could be exhaled we should see that they do not merit the bitterness which they have caused.
FRANCOIS FENELON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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"
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
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
That is true nobility, true elevation of soul, when man can rise superior to any suffering and every pain, by the indwelling power given to him.
JOHANN GEORGE FORSTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Pain is an outcry of sin.
ROBERT SOUTH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Pain addeth zest unto pleasure, and teachest the luxury of health.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
But for pain, bodies would be broken to pieces on the slightest shock.
ST. PIERRE
attributed, Day's Collacon