Pain quotes
8.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside pain — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Smile, though your heart is aching Smile, even though it's breaking When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by If you smile through your pain and sorrow Smile and maybe tomorrow, You'll see the sun come shining through for you."
"If we can write or sing or create in some way, even when we are dealing with difficulties or pain, then it becomes something bigger than ourselves — and often beautiful."
"The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities."
"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. ... For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain."
"I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned. Adult. You have become adult."
"Adrenaline is wonderful. It covers pain. It covers dementia. It covers everything."
"For some people there is no comfort without pain. Thus; we define salvation through suffering. Hence, why we choose people who we know aren't right for ourselves."
"Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain."
"Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom."
"Pain is never permanent."
"When we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature's gift to us of gayness, we'll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is our talisman, our fairie wand, our gift we bring to the hetero world to....transform their pain into healings; ...transform their tears to laughter: ...transform their hand-me-downs to visions of loveliness."
"When you have walked through the hell of your negative thoughts and survived, no pain on this earth will ever again worry you."
"I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain."
"It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start."
"Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones."
"No gains without pains."
"Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer."
"Pain is certain, suffering is optional."
"We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment."
"Please, God. Help me. Take this pain away. Please fill this loneliness with your love. Help me, God, please, help me."
