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.
"The pain is always bringing me a lesson. If I listen to the lesson when the pain is manageable, the pain won't get gargantuan and flatten me entirely, because I will have received the message at the center. I receive it as gently as I can, because the cruelest thing that I do to myself is try to push myself through an experience."
"I have to welcome the pain like I welcome the joy."
"Coquettes are, but too rare. It is a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. 'T is the coquette who provides all the amusements,--suggests the riding-party, plans the picnic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms,--the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet."
"We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us while they afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge or in doing good to our fellow-creatures, is a kind of benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance and answer none of these intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we get rid of them. Death is that way."
"The honest Man takes Pains, and then enjoys Pleasures; the knave takes Pleasure, and then suffers Pains."
"Men take more pains to mask than mend."
"Whoever feels pain in hearing a good character of his neighbor, will feel a pleasure in the reverse. And those who despair to rise in distinction by their virtues, are happy if others can be depressed to a level of themselves."
"There's no gain, without pain."
"O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse."
"For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life."
"Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length?"
"Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"
"We all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can alow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple."
"Anger is remembered pain, fear is anticipated pain, guilt is self directed pain, depression is depletion of energy. Cure-return to love& joy"
"I was very afraid at the beginning, until Master told me that pain isn't the truth; it's what you have to get through in order to find the truth."
"I can bear pain myself, he said softly, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have."
"People are born, they have a limited amount of time going around thinking life is dandy but then, inevitably, tragedy strikes and they realize life equals loss! The whole point of the game is to minimize the pain caused by that equation! Now some people do it by having kids, or making money, or taking up coin collecting, and others do it by getting wasted."
"The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men's pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish."
"There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first."
"Most of us have developed a fairly extensive vocabulary for describing pain, as though the journal were a doctor requiring much detail to make the correct diagnosis. The roundness of the spiritual journey cannot be expressed without developing an equally extensive vocabulary for talking to ourselves and others about the nature of wonder, joy, ecstasy, love, transfiguration."
