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Pain quotes

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“There are no gains without pains.” Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” - 1791

“Grief makes one hour ten.” William Shakespeare, “Richard II” - 1595

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.” George Eliot, “Middlemarch” - 1872

“Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“Pain does not matter to a man.” Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea” - 1952

“By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“She found a dark satisfaction in pain—because that pain came from him.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“Weary of liberty, he suffered himself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death for his pains.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” - 1774

“It has ever been my fate to give pain to those whose happiness I should have promoted.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” - 1774

“Thus its life swings like a pendulum backwards and forwards between pain and ennui.” Arthur Schopenhauer, “The World as Will and Representation” - 1819

“Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein” - 1818

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.” John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars” - 2012

“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Diary” - 2003

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Crime and Punishment” - 1867

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” Jane Austen, “Persuasion” - 1816

“To become the spectator of one's own life . . . is to escape the suffering of life.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“When we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes.” William Shakespeare, “King Lear” - 1623

“Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new...” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“it is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.” Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist” - 1838

“He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely.” Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist” - 1838

“Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.” Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist” - 1838

“Although I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process one expected it to be.” Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” - 1969

“We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last!” H. G. Wells, “The Time Machine” - 1895

“Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needs be delightful and rejoicing.” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors and hereafter she may suffer, both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“But there is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.” John Muir, “Stickeen” - 1897

“Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.” Thomas Hardy, “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” - 1891

“Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to show it.” Louisa May Alcott, “Little Women” - 1868

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“They suffer, of course ... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter” - 1850

“Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” - 1774

“For this is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver. Thus passed with the lonesome one months and years; his wisdom meanwhile increased, and caused him pain by its abundance.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” - 1891

“And then, again, the more distinctly a man knows, the more intelligent he is, the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.” Arthur Schopenhauer, “The World as Will and Representation” - 1819

“Life was not so horrible if it was meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“There be other simple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz. PLEASURE or DELIGHT, and its opposite, PAIN, or UNEASINESS; POWER; EXISTENCE; UNITY mix with almost all our other Ideas.” John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” - 1689

“Moral wounds have this peculiarity,—they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.” Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo” - 1845

“Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.” Samuel Johnson, “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” - 1759

“Perhaps it was more painful to think of a guilty man than of a dead man.” Albert Camus, “The Plague” - 1947

“The pain was brilliant, like a poisonous inspiration.” Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” - 2000

“And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” - 1984

“He was a different Edward than the one I had known. And I felt all the more besotted by him. It would cause me physical pain to be separated from him now.” Stephenie Meyer, “Twilight” - 2005

Related topics

life death grief suffering love pleasure freedom genius sweetness wisdom happiness wound hope sorrow heart power joy change hurt youth

Related authors

Charlotte Brontë (3)
Charles Dickens (3)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (3)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (3)
John Steinbeck (3)
William Shakespeare (2)
Jane Austen (2)
John Green (2)
Bram Stoker (2)
Ayn Rand (2)
Arthur Schopenhauer (2)
W. Somerset Maugham (2)
Stephenie Meyer (2)
Mary Shelley (2)
Oscar Wilde (1)
Ernest Hemingway (1)
Mark Twain (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
George Orwell (1)
George Eliot (1)

Related sources

Jane Eyre (3)
Oliver Twist (3)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (3)
East of Eden (3)
The Fault in Our Stars (2)
Dracula (2)
The Fountainhead (2)
The Brothers Karamazov (2)
The World as Will and Representation (2)
Of Human Bondage (2)
Twilight (2)
Frankenstein (2)
Persuasion (2)
King Lear (1)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1)
Richard II (1)
The Old Man and the Sea (1)
A Game of Thrones (1)
1984 (1)
Middlemarch (1)