Pain quotes
8.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside pain — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I feel pain everyday of my life. When you see me perform, it's that pain you're seeing coming out. I put all my emotions, all my feelings, and my body on the line. People hurt me, I hurt myself - mentally, physically"
"I know that collector types can be a pain in the neck and seem perpetually frozen in time - or at least in their parents' basement - but someone has to look out for the past, lest it slip away forever."
"It is instilled in thousands of American males from an early age that one of their requirements is to be able to both dish out and take a lot of pain. They are taught the rules of this road in gyms, rings, backyards and fields all over America."
"Retirement in another country is your body is too racked with pain and your hands are too arthritic from the life in the rice patty fields, so you can't work anymore."
"I have no pride about anything I have done. It's just not the way I think about things. I do the work, always, as hard as I can, to the point of pain, injury, exhaustion, if that is what it takes. Once I am done, I move on."
"But ah! what once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again."
"Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it that is great, that belongs to greatness."
"But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?"
"Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people."
"O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!"
"When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled."
"Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby has he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph has he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain."
"The wheel and the brake have different duties, but also one in common: to hurt one another."
"You have not yet suffered enough! For you suffer only from yourselves, you have not yet suffered from man."
"The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion."
"Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se."
"Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain."
"There is nothing for which men ask to be paid dearer than for humiliation."
"Pain makes hens and poets cackle."
"One pays dearly for being immortal: one must die many times during his life."
