Pain

“ Thou art seen to sweat with pain, to turn pale and red, to tremble, to vomit blood, to suffer strange contractions and convulsions, at times to let great tears drop from thine eyes, to urine thick, black, and dreadful water, or to have it suppressed by some sharp and craggy stone, that cruelly pricks and tears the neck of the bladder, whilst all the while thou entertainest the company with an ordinary countenance; droning by fits with thy people; making one in a continuous discourse, now and then making excuse for thy pain, and representing thy suffering less than it is. ”

“ And the pain grows, expands,—fills all the skull,—forces you to cry out, replaces all other sensations except a weak consciousness, vanishing and recurring, that you are very sick, more sick than ever before in all your life. ”

“ Have you ever felt the sharp, stinging pain, the dull, heavy pain, the throbbing, jumping pain, the cramping, tearing pain, the sickening, nauseating pain? Then you know all about them. Nobody can tell you anything more. Experience is a perfect teacher. ”

“ I refer to the pain produced in the body by injury, as in cutting, tearing, concussion, compression, pinching, the stresses and strains produced by inflammation, the lesions of disease, and all the pains known as physical discomforts. Is the pain in the tooth a quality or a property? Is pain in the head a quality or a property? Is the pain from a bullet wound a quality or a property? We have already seen that all other pleasures and pains are derivative in the individual and in the race, and appear from the point of view. Is this true of physical pain? ”

“ If pain were for one single instant literally the dominant element in life, every man would be found hanging dead from his own bed-post by the morning. Pain, as the black and catastrophic thing, attracts the youthful artist, just as the schoolboy draws devils and skeletons and men hanging. ”

“ I question our right even to suppose a state of pain in the Absolute.
And this doubt becomes more grave when we consider another point. When we pass from the conditions to the effects of painful feeling, we are on surer ground. For in our experience the result of pain is disquietude and unrest. ”

“ The pain, of which the appetite desires the relief, is a sensation, as much as any other internal bodily pain which we feel,—a state or affection of the mind, arising, immediately and solely, from a state or affection of the body,—which is the only definition that can be given of a sensation. ”

“ There is such a thing as anesthesia of pain, engendered by pain too exquisite to be borne. ”

“ No cry escaped her, nor sound except a moan, half of mental pain, half of the deadly sickness, the actual nausea, which every one who has ever sustained a severe shock of pain or fear knows is its invariable accompaniment. ”

“ Is pain, like pleasure, the product of judgment? Am I conscious of a pain, or do I infer it by an habitual judgment when the signs of pain appear in the body? Is the animal body endowed with pain as an essential, or is pain also the child of experience? In order that we may examine this subject somewhat critically, it becomes necessary to repeat briefly that which has been set forth more elaborately in a former work. There we begin with the definition of consciousness, inference, and verification. ”

“ After great pain, a formal feeling comes —
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs —
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before? ”

“ His face is emaciated to painfulness; you see the traces of a sleepless night—the mind sleepless, and worse, seeking rest, and as yet finding none, but about to find it—and this takes away from what might otherwise be a plus of pain. ”

“ The real motive force of pain, however, is not the state of suffering, but the relief; and relief from pain is another form of pleasure. That pleasure stimulates, that pain depresses, that alleviation of pain stimulates, are all one and the same phenomenon—statements of the same law. ”

“ Kill not for food, and where Necessity Demands the sacrifice of sentient life, Kill with all kindness and with due regard To Physical—and Mental—feelings. Pain Is a nerve-racking, dread experience, Especially unto the dumb Creation, Who cannot question, yet are forced to bear That dread experience, all unwillingly. ”

“ We go on and on, and bear much—stoically—for weeks, months, years, indeed, and then—suddenly, we can bear no more! We reach the pinnacle of pain. We cry out—with the poignancy of it. But after that, I have a fancy, we can never suffer so much again. ”

“ Moreover, if we attend to the matter a little more closely, we see that what is called bodily pain is rather to be referred to the soul. For it is the soul, not the body, which is pained, even when the pain originates with the body,—the soul feeling pain at the point where the body is hurt. ”

“ Yet others, with deep, gaping wounds, in which inflammation had already set in, were delirious from their pain, and implored that they might be put out of their misery, and with drawn faces twisted themselves into indescribable positions in their supreme agony. ”

“ Why then do we hesitate to say that, if to be free from pain is the highest degree of pleasure, to be destitute of pleasure is the highest degree of pain? Because it is not pleasure which is the contrary to pain, but the absence of pain. ”

“ The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear, And sighs and cries by nature grow on pain. ”

“ Long days of suffering followed as the tortured nerves recorded their far-spread effects in the waste of the body and that failure of emotional control which even the most courageous feel when long under the tyranny of continuous pain. ”

“ But by and by the cause of my disease
Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is, again,
To live, and lack the thing should rid my pain. ”

“ I can say only that no combination of suffering possible to individual being could be likened to such pain,—the pain of countless lives interwoven. It seemed as if every nerve of me had been prolonged into some monstrous web of sentiency spun back through a million years,—and as if the whole of that measureless woof and warp, over all its shivering threads, were pouring into my consciousness, out of the abysmal past, some ghastliness without name,—some horror too vast for human brain to hold. ”

“ The touch throughout the whole body will suffer great torments from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, so that in it will be joined together the pains of the eyes, ears and teeth, of the side, of the heart, and of the gout, and of all others that torment us in this life. Now if the pain of one sense alone cause so great agony in this life, how much agony shall that pain cause that is made up of the pains of all the senses entering together? ”

“ Pain. Part of the sentence of toil is pain. "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow, and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; [93] and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Gen. iii. 16.) The fountain-head of pain is travail. It begins at birth, it ends in death; life on the whole, between the limits, is one long struggle to endure. "Men must work, and women must weep." ”

“ But although pleasure of mind brings us joy, and pain causes us grief, it is still true that each of these feelings originates in the body, and is referred to the body; and it does not follow on that account that both the pleasures and pains of the mind are not much more important than those of the body. ”

“ The thesis that pain is only a symptom, and altogether, in spite of the sovereign part it plays in human life, a superficial phenomenon in relation to the tendencies which lie at the basis of the affective life, finds support in the facts of analgesia, the disappearance of capacity to feel pain. ”

“ The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called “Living” That burned in my brain. ”

“ Pain, hunger, and thirst are the internal senses with which we are most familiar. Pain is evidently a protective sense. It is never aroused unless something is amiss; for that reason pain should never be neglected. ”

“ Pain is less subject than pleasure to caprices of expression. The torments of disease, and the grief for irremediable misfortunes, sometimes are such as no words can declare, and can only be signified by groans, or sobs, or inarticulate ejaculations. ”

“ Pain.—To dream you are suffering great pain from toothache, headache, rheumatism, or in any part or your body, denotes that you are about to receive some glad tidings from one who has been long absent from you. ”

“ But there is still the difficulty to explain why it should be exactly the very feeling of pain,—suffering properly so called,—that in objects of pity attracts us with the greatest force, while, according to those elucidations, a less degree of suffering ought evidently to be more favorable to those causes to which the source of the emotion is traced. ”

“ They talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so—
Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace; ”

“ Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short. [5] 8. The severest pains have their seat in the most slender parts of our body; nerves, joints, and any other of the narrow passages, hurt most cruelly when they have developed trouble within their contracted spaces. ”

“ Thus the appearance of a cheerful countenance gives us pleasure, and of a melancholy one makes us sorrowful. Yawning, and sometimes vomiting, are thus propagated by sympathy; and some people of delicate fibres, at the presence of a spectacle of misery, have felt pain in the same parts of their bodies, that were diseased or mangled in the object they saw. ”

“ Pain and tears are certainly among man's teachers, but they have not been an unmixed good. Pain has crushed, perhaps, as many souls as it has educated. How many have come and gone to whom pain was simply pain, and who derived no benefit from it whatever? ”

“ The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost —
The Summit is not given
To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill —
But He who has achieved the Top —
All — is the price of All — ”

“ Then from the lowest, weakest tone of suffering, up to the loftiest pitch, the divinest acme of pain, there is not one pang to which the sensorium of the universe does not respond; ”

“ In a biologic sense pain is closely associated with the emotional stimuli, for both pain and the emotions incite motor activity for the good of the individual. The frequent occurrence of post-operative and post- traumatic pain is accounted for by the fact that the operation or the injury has lowered the threshold of the brain- cells to trauma; the brain and not the local sensitive field is the site of the pain. ”

“ Still, the more numerous and violent pleasures which reach the soul through the body are generally of this sort—they are reliefs of pain. ”

“ The Uses of Pain.—The dread of pain is a valuable monitor to the body. It puts us on our guard in the presence of danger; teaches moderation in the use of our {181}powers; indicates the approach of disease ”

“ I have not words to tell my grief;
To vent my sorrow would be some relief; 150
Light sufferings give us leisure to complain;
We groan, but cannot speak, in greater pain. ”

“ Pain, and not Cruelty, the Essential Element in Sadism and Masochism—Pain Felt as Pleasure—Does the Sadist Identify Himself with the Feelings of his Victim?—The Sadist Often a Masochist in Disguise—The Spectacle of Pain or Struggle as a Sexual Stimulant.
VI.
Why is Pain a Sexual Stimulant?—It is the Most Effective Method of Arousing Emotion—Anger and Fear the Most Powerful Emotions—Their Biological Significance in Courtship—Their General and Special Effects in Stimulating the Organism—Grief as a Sexual Stimulant—The Physiological Mechanism of Fatigue Renders Pain Pleasurable. ”

“ It is not that I must not suffer pain, but that the pain must not come from without. Your lips would punish a fault with words that shame and sting for a day, a summer, a year; your hand must never inflict a sting that may smart for ten minutes. ”

“ And pain, it is true, transmuted, so to say, by its own fiery heat into anger, loses every appearance of depression and feebleness; the angry man makes a show of energy, as the man in a high fever does of natural heat, while, in fact, all this action of the soul is but mere diseased palpitation, distention, and inflammation. ”