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Pain Quotes

This is another small page with no flagged entries. Suman Pokhrel, Shakespeare, Cesare Pavese, Sarah Williams and Sanu Sharma lead. The sourced lines vary a great deal. Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo (1819) says those who inflict must suffer, for they see the work of their own hearts. Edward Young’s Night-Thoughts (1742) has the neat paradox that a man of pleasure is a man of pains. Cesar Chavez’s Plan of Delano (1965) is a statement from a farm workers’ march, not a reflection: our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich.

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Our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich. The pilgrimage is a witness to the suffering we have seen for generations.

Cesar Chavez The Plan of Delano (1965)

So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish that he did not only sigh but roar.

Matthew Henry

Oh, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer.

William Shakespeare

Your pain comes upon the individual, one by one, to each man alone and no other, but my soul groans for the city, for me and you together.

Sophocles

There's a pang in all rejoicing,
And a joy in the heart of pain;
And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens,
Are singing the selfsame strain.

Bayard Taylor

4. Magga: In order to end suffering... follow the Eightfold Path ...a path for accomplishing this.

Gautama Buddha

I have trodden the wine-press alone.

Isaiah

They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Pain is universal. We all experience pain, loss, and death the same way.

Isabel Allende

For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.

Augustine of Hippo

To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

Thomas Gray Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742)

But pain...seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

Lois McMaster Bujold Barrayar (1991)

Look, the rich are bankrolled/where your suffering begins

Julia de Burgos Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos (1982)

Pain is good, I'd say, when it's incidental to Love. In 'I give up my life for my friend' it is my friend, not my death, that matters. And sometimes I needn't give up my life for him, I can live for him, and with him, and the power of the spirit is then equally manifested, I should think.

E. M. Forster Selected Letters (1983)

[F]alling from the stars: Drenched in my pain again; becoming who we are.

Billie Joe Armstrong

That piece of pagan anthropomorphism: the belief that, in order to educate us, God wishes us to suffer. How far from this is the assent to suffering when it strikes us because we have obeyed what we have seen to be God's will.

Dag Hammarskjöld

The beginning of freedom from the painbody lies first of all in the realization that you have a painbody. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the painbody in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you.

Eckhart Tolle A New Earth (2005)

No suffering is self-caused.
Nothing causes itself.
If another is not self-made,
How could suffering be caused by another? If suffering were caused by each,
Suffering could be caused by both.
Not caused by self or by other,
How could suffering be uncaused?

Nagarjuna

There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earth's face, but a line of suffering runs parallel with it; and they that read the lustrous syllables of the one, and stoop not to decipher the spotted and worn inscription of the other, get the.least half of the lesson earth has to give.

Frederick William Faber

Not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of God's word by the loss of earthly joys — sickness destroying the flavor of them all — did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ, and to know that I love Him — this is all.

Elizabeth Prentiss Stepping Heavenward (1869)

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