quotations about pain
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
J. M. COETZEE
Waiting for the Barbarians
Pain is the deepest thing we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and holy than any other.
ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM
Remains in Verse and Prose
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
Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A Defence of Poetry
Pain is just another form of information.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Pain sends out long tentacles
And sucks.
When I have given up struggling
He takes me into his arms.
EVELYN SCOTT
"Hectic"
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
Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.
ALPHONSE DAUDET
La doulou
If I call it pain, and try to touch it
With my hands, my own life,
It lies still and the music thins,
A pulse felt for through garments.
TRACY K. SMITH
"Duende"
Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters--pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do; on the one hand the standard of right and wrong; on the other, the chain of causes and effects are fastened to their throne.
JEREMY BENTHAM
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Physical pain is necessary to the progress of the human race.
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
DJUNA BARNES
Nightwood
Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
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"
The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently, endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is much greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme of pain, their happiness consisting entirely in present enjoyment.
THOMAS CHALMERS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Don't forget that in the midst of all your pain and heartache, you are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of creation, art, your music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
As foolish as it may appear, you are, in a sense, a prisoner of the pain, which was intolerable. You're thinking, what could I do to relieve myself of it. If it becomes intense enough, you're perfectly willing to accept cardiac arrest as a possible way of getting rid of the pain.
MICHAEL DEBAKEY
"Pioneering surgeon becomes patient", Yahoo! News, December 25, 2006
People come and go, pain comes and goes. But so does joy. And if our hearts are closed because we don't want to suffer, they won't be open enough to recognize the joy as it flies by.
GENEEN ROTH
Good Housekeeping, December 2008
Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved.
NEIL GAIMAIN
Anansi Boys