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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"When you're comfortable and secure, it's not enough. The mind doesn't stop there because it has to continue to focus itself as this body, so it moves to pleasure. And pleasure really is a non-existent thing. When we're experiencing pleasure, we're trying to hold onto it as it leaves, so it really isn't pleasure. Pleasure is pain because we're grasping."
"It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind."
"God has revealed to me that only the Paramatman, whom the Vedas describe as the Pure Soul, is as immutable as Mount Sumeru, unattached, and beyond pain and pleasure. There is much confusion in this world of His maya. One can by no means say that 'this' will come after 'that' or 'this' will produce 'that'."
"Heaven has no taste." "Now-" "And not one single sushi restaurant." A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face."
"I guess I was a combination of House of Pain and Bobby Brown: I was humpin' around and jumpin' around!"
"How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened."
"The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors."
"Marriage I think For women Is the best of opiates. It kills the thoughts That think about the thoughts, It is the best of opiates. So said Maria. But too long in solitude she'd dwelt, And too long her thoughts had felt Their strength. So when the man drew near, Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear. Poor Maria! Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain, For now she's alone again and all in pain; She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stay To trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day."
"What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball… I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears."
"Seal my lips on aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by."
"We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones."
"The cure for pain is in the pain. Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both, you don't belong with us."
"We are the mirror, as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste of eternity this minute. We are pain and what cures pain. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. Soul of the world, no life, nor world remain, no beautiful women and men longing. Only this ancient love circling the holy black stone of nothing. Where the lover is the loved, the horizon and everything within it."
"Just saying yes because you can't bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work."
"Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It's rage, it's creativity, it's pain, it's hurt, but it's the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music."
"The marathon always starts after 30K. That's where the problems start. You start without any problems, without any pain. All the pain comes after 30K. Sometimes, it's possible to have pain even in the finger."
"Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint."
"There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."
"Inflamed by greed, incensed by hate, confused by delusion, overcome by them, obsessed by mind, a man chooses for his own affliction, for others' affliction, for the affliction of both and experiences pain and grief."
"Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain."
