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To have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt.

— Elaine Scarry The Body in Pain (1985)

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Pain

More quotes by Elaine Scarry

How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things. (p. 15)

On Beauty and Being Just (1998)

Physical pain has no voice, but when it at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story. (Introduction, p3)

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985)

The structure of one’s position with regards to the suffering of others shapes one’s perceptions and thinking almost completely.

with Bidoun (2006)

Pain is not a verbal construct. When something like suffering becomes almost impossible to put into language, it’s a disaster.

with Bidoun (2006)

Beauty brings copies of itself into being. (p. 3)

On Beauty and Being Just (1998)

All Elaine Scarry quotes →

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A man who only becomes a husband brings pain to his parents, and a person who only becomes a son brings pain to his wife.

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A portion of life, every moment gets torn out of me hurting, and flees away.

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Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems (1844)

If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?

Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower (1993)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Elaine Scarry (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.