Pain

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[F]alling from the stars: Drenched in my pain again; becoming who we are. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong

Pain is an unpleasant sensation which may be associated with actual or potential tissue damage and which may have physical and emotional components.

Quotes[edit]

  • Sunny days wouldn't be special, if it wasn't for rain. Joy wouldn't feel so good, if it wasn't for pain.
  • The sword of time will pierce our skin
    It doesn't hurt when it begins
    But as it works its way on in
    The pain grows stronger watch I bring
    That suicide is painless
    It brings so many changes
    And I can take or leave them if I please.
  • The pain was what it was. Beyond that there is nothing to say. Qualities of feeling are as incomparable as they are indescribable. They mark the limit of the capacity of language to communicate. If someone wanted to impart his physical pain, he would be forced to inflict it and thereby become a torturer himself.
    • Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (1966)
  • Pain is temporary, glory is forever.
    • Anonymous, quoted as an anonymous proverb in Preaching Proverbs : Wisdom for the Pulpit‎ (1996) by Alyce M. McKenzie, p. 84.
  • Pain is weakness leaving the body.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

    • James Baldwin as quoted in "Doom and glory of knowing who you are" by Jane Howard, in LIFE magazine, Vol. 54, No. 21 (24 May 1963), p. 89
  • PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.
  • But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
  • If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?
  • Beauty is pain and there's beauty in everything, what's a little bit of hunger? I can go a little while longer.
  • Douleur toujours nouvelle pour celui qui souffre et qui se banalise pour l'entourage.
    • Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.
    • Alphonse Daudet, La doulou: (la douleur), 1887-1895 (Paris: Librairie de France, 1930) p. 16; Julian Barnes (ed. and trans.) In the Land of Pain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) p. 19.
  • In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.
  • It never occurred to me to call 911 or my physician. […] As foolish as it may appear, you are, in a sense, a prisoner of the pain, which was intolerable. You're thinking, what could I do to relieve myself of it. If it becomes intense enough, you're perfectly willing to accept cardiac arrest as a possible way of getting rid of the pain.
  • Wait another minute, can't you see what this pain has fucking done to me? I'm alive and still kicking.
  • So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.
  • Pain is just Mother Nature’s little way of telling you not to do something again in a way you’ll remember.
    • Tim Huntley, One on Me (1980), Chapter 11
  • Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!
  • The term 'psychogenic' assumes that medical diagnosis is so perfect that all organic causes of pain can be detected; regrettably, we are far from such infallibility... All too often, the diagnosis of neurosis as the cause of pain hides our ignorance of many aspects of pain medicine.
  • 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.
  • A portion of life, every moment gets torn out of me hurting, and flees away.
  • My heart itself is a wound,
    no medicine can cure it.
    It deepens further if stared at,
    and hurts more if touched.
  • For I consider that the sufferings of the present time do not amount to anything in comparison with the glory that is going to be revealed in us. For the creation is waiting with eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but through the one who subjected it, on the basis of hope that the creation itself will also be set free from enslavement to corruption and have the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that all creation keeps on groaning together and being in pain together until now.
  • Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole?
    For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.
  • The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind.
    • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p. 26
  • When you create a problem, you create pain. All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems. Although it is a simple choice, it is also very radical. You won' t make that choice unless you are truly fed up with suffering, unless you have truly had enough. And you won't be able to go through with it unless you access the power of the Now. If you create no more pain for yourself, then you create no more pain for others. You also no longer contaminate the beautiful Earth, your inner space, and the collective human psyche with the negativity of problem-making.
    If you have ever been in a life-or-death emergency situation, you will know that it wasn't a problem. The mind didn't have time to fool around and make it into a problem. In a true emergency, the mind stops; you become totally present in the Now, and something infinitely more powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds. In any emergency, either you survive or you don't. Either way, it is not a problem.
  • Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space. Either stop doing what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no purpose whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Recognizing its futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real change. Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless they are immune - that is, highly conscious. Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is... p. 53
  • Deep unconsciousness, such as the pain-body, or other deep pain, such as the loss of a loved one, usually needs to be transmuted through acceptance combined with the light of your presence - your sustained attention. Many patterns in ordinary unconsciousness, on the other hand, can simply be dropped once you know that you don't want them and don't need them anymore, once you realize that you have a choice, that you are not just a bundle of conditioned reflexes. All this implies that you are able to access the power of Now. Without it, you have no choice.
  • Apart from her personal pain-body, every woman has her share in what could be described as the collective female pain-body - unless she is fully conscious. This consists of accumulated pain suffered by women partly through male subjugation of the female, through slavery, exploitation, rape, childbirth, child loss, and so on, over thousands of years. The emotional or physical pain that for many women precedes and coincides with the menstrual flow is the pain-body in its collective aspect that awakens from its dormancy at that time, although it can be triggered at other times too. It restricts the free flow of life energy through the body, of which menstruation is a physical expression... Often a woman is "taken over" by the pain-body at that time. It has an extremely powerful energetic charge that can easily pull you into unconscious identification with it. You are then actively possessed by an energy field that occupies your inner space and pretends to be you - but, of course, is not you at all. It speaks through you, acts through you, thinks through you. It will create negative situations in your life so that it can feed on the energy. It wants more pain, in whatever form... It is pure pain, past pain - and it is not you... The number of women who are now approaching the fully conscious state already exceeds that of men and will be growing even faster in the years to come. p. 106
  • The beginning of freedom from the painbody lies first of all in the realization that you have a painbody. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the painbody in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you.
  • It is your conscious Presence that breaks the identification with the painbody. When you don't identify with it, the painbody can no longer control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore by feeding on your thoughts. The painbody in most cases does not dissolve immediately, but once you have severed the link between it and your thinking, the painbody begins to lose energy. Your thinking ceases to be clouded by emotion; your present perceptions are no longer distorted by the past. The energy that was trapped in the painbody then changes into vibrational frequency and is transmuted into Presence. In this way, the painbody becomes fuel for consciousness. This is why many of the wisest, most enlightened men and women on our planet once had a heavy painbody.
  • Children are not fooled by parents who try to hide their painbody from them, who say to each other, “We mustn't fight in front of the children.” This usually means while the parents make polite conversation, the home is pervaded with negative energy. Suppressed painbodies are extremely toxic, even more so than openly active ones, and that psychic toxicity is absorbed by the children and contributes to the development of their own painbody.
  • The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind.
    • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997)
  • Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.
    • Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, p. 17, (2005)
  • That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.
  • It may seem to be a long way from Blake's innocent talk of love and copulation to De Sade's need to inflict pain. And yet both are the outcome of a sexual mysticism that strives to transcend the everyday world. Simone de Beauvoir said penetratingly of De Sade's work that 'he is trying to communicate an experience whose distinguishing characteristic is, nevertheless its will to remain incommunicable'. De Sade's perversion may have sprung from his dislike of his mother or of other women, but its basis is a kind of distorted religious emotion.
    • Colin Wilson in The Origins of the Sexual Impulse, p. 90 (1963)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations[edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 575-76.
  • World's use is cold, world's love is vain,
    World's cruelty is bitter bane;
    But pain is not the fruit of pain.
  • Nature knows best, and she says, roar!
  • Pain is good, I'd say, when it's incidental to Love. In 'I give up my life for my friend' it is my friend, not my death, that matters. And sometimes I needn't give up my life for him, I can live for him, and with him, and the power of the spirit is then equally manifested, I should think.
    • E. M. Forster, Selected Letters: Letter 285, to George Thomson, 1 August 1931.
  • There is purpose in pain,
    Otherwise it were devilish.
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto V, Stanza 8.
  • You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
    And die of nothing but a rage to live.
  • To have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt.
    • Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain (1985)
  • The scourge of life, and death's extreme disgrace,
    The smoke of hell,—that monster callèd Paine.
  • Your pain comes upon the individual, one by one, to each man alone and no other, but my soul groans for the city, for me and you together.
  • There's a pang in all rejoicing,
    And a joy in the heart of pain;
    And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens,
    Are singing the selfsame strain.
  • Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
    That is not paid with moan;
    For we are born in others' pain,
    And perish in our own.
  • The mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain,
    And the anguish of the singer marks the sweetness of the strain.
  • A man of pleasure is a man of pains.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 793.
  • When pain can't bless, heaven quits us in despair.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IX, line 500.

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Painful Quotes about life

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