quotations about 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
It is pain that changes our lives.
STEVE MARTIN
Shopgirl
The lessons we learn from pain are the ones that make us the strongest.
LIONEL LUTHOR
"Hidden", Smallville, 2005
Pain is an outcry of sin.
ROBERT SOUTH
attributed, Day's Collacon
But for pain, bodies would be broken to pieces on the slightest shock.
ST. PIERRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
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
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
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
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
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"
Pain is the best cure for error.
JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE
"Harmonius", Tales from the German of Heinrich Zschokke
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
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
As an enemy is made more fierce by our flight, so pain grows proud to see us truckle under it; she will surrender upon much better terms to those who make head against us.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
attributed, Day's Collacon
When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
JANE AUSTEN
Persuasion
There is such a thing as anesthesia of pain, engendered by pain too exquisite to be borne.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
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"