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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"The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil."
"To die in order to avoid the pains of poverty, love, or anything that is disagreeable, is not the part of a brave man, but of a coward."
"Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another."
"Hindsight is a wonderful thing but foresight is better, especially when it comes to saving life, or some pain!"
"All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions."
"All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another."
"Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life."
"Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like."
"Don’t worry about me handling the pain," I say. "I’ve had a lot of practice."
"I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!"
"There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light."
"I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."
"Suspicion is most often useless pain."
"On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points."
"Why have I so little control? It is the case of much waste and pain in my life."
"I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together."
"The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles can be developed, if on will only take the pains to train the mind to think."
"For a long time I thought-'I've got to buck up and be strong. I've got to put on a brave face-and get through this near burn-out or that discouraging time in my life,'" "God has really seriously changed my thinking on this. When you take off the mask, you relate at a base level to everyone else who has been through pain-and everyone has. Honesty promotes intimacy and promotes us together relying on God. True honesty is beautiful."
"If it's physical pain, you just deal with it the best way you can. But if it's more emotional, I don't know. I just try my best to feel it, take it in, and just allow myself to go through whatever may actually come from it. And then a certain amount of it, you can use to transform it through art, which is the healthy way of dealing with it, as well."
"I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise."
