quotations about pain
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"
But for pain, bodies would be broken to pieces on the slightest shock.
ST. PIERRE
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
Just give me a pain that I'm used to.
DEPECHE MODE
"A Paint That I'm Used To"
Pain is an outcry of sin.
ROBERT SOUTH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
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
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
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Graveyard Book
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
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
Never a lip is curved with pain
That can't be kissed into smiles again.
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
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
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
So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.
MATTHEW HENRY
Commentaries
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
J. M. COETZEE
Waiting for the Barbarians
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
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