quotations about pain
Physical pain is necessary to the progress of the human race.
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET
attributed, Building a Life of Value
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"
Never a lip is curved with pain
That can't be kissed into smiles again.
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
J. M. COETZEE
Waiting for the Barbarians
Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.
ALPHONSE DAUDET
La doulou
Pain is just another form of information.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
There is such a thing as anesthesia of pain, engendered by pain too exquisite to be borne.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A Defence of Poetry
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
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
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"
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
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
Pain sends out long tentacles
And sucks.
When I have given up struggling
He takes me into his arms.
EVELYN SCOTT
"Hectic"
Nature has placed in the front part of man, as he moves, all those parts which when struck cause him to feel pain; and this is felt in the joints of the legs, the forehead and the nose, and has been so devised for the preservation of man, because if such pain were not felt in these limbs they would be destroyed by the many blows they receive.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
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
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
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
Pain is the best cure for error.
JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE
"Harmonius", Tales from the German of Heinrich Zschokke