Quotes & Sayings About Inner Pain

By and large over time, pain turns to grief, grief turns to silence, and silence turns to lonesomeness, as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans ... You think you cannot live anymore. You think that the light of your soul has been put out and that you will stay in the dark forever. But when you are engulfed by such solid darkness, when you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. And only then do you come to realize that eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere. — Elif Shafak

Pain in the body is a clear indication,
Something in the energy fields are blocking inner growth. — Nikki Rowe

At times I think the truest image of God today is a black inner-city grandmother in the United States or a mother of the disappeared in Argentina or the women who wake up early to make tortillas in refugee camps. They all weep for their children, and in their compassionate tears arises the political action that changes the world. The mothers show us that it is the experience of touching the pain of others that is the key to change. — Jim Wallis

Inner healing involves moving from darkness to the light. "Light" is a word that has different meanings yet is generally understood as love and understanding. Love nurtures the emotional body; understanding fills the voids created by pain. — Deepak Chopra

You'll reach a comfort zone in your life and start to wonder how you got there, how did you miss the sign posts that directed your real inner truth? Don't feel so guilty, you know when your meant to know and I guess that's the thing they don't teach you; when growing up, pain is inevitable but staying the same is a choice. Don't question why your feeling ready for something new, question why you stayed the same for so long. — Nikki Rowe

Ah." He paused. "I see where this is going. You want to know my secret pain."
"Secret pain?"
"Oh, yes. My inner demons. The dark current of torment washing away little grains of my soul. That's what you're after. You think that if you keep me here in your pretty castle and cosset me with sixteen pillows, I'll learn to love myself and cease submitting my body to such horrific abuse."
Clio bit her lip, grateful it was too dark for him to see her blush. If she'd been flamingo pink the other day, she must be fuchsia now. "I don't know where you get these ideas."
He chuckled. "From every woman I've ever met. You're not the first to try it, and you won't be the last. — Tessa Dare

Forgiveness is a choice you can make to free yourself from the shackles of your past, from pain, hurt and resentment. Forgiveness is your road to inner freedom. It does not mean that you need to forget, deny or condone what has transpired. You choose to forgive because forgiveness is the only way to transcend painful experiences and to attain inner peace and freedom. Transcending Abuse & Betrayal. — Sasha Samy

Fore Word
Poetry and prayer are synonymous in my life, and because both are a gift, which I accept with joy and sometimes pain, I seldom know whether I have served the gift well or ill. But perhaps that doesn't really matter; the important thing is to be willing - to want to serve the gift whenever it comes, either as verse or prayer ...
My heart's climate is not constant; I doubt if anyone's is. My inner weather shifts with the days. But much sunshine has shone on me through the sharing and giving and receiving.
And so I am taught to pray. And so I am taught to be. — Madeleine L'Engle

How many mental health problems, from drug addiction to self-injurious behavior, start as attempts to cope with the unbearable physical pain of our emotions? If Darwin was right, the solution requires finding ways to help people alter the inner sensory landscape of their bodies. Until recently, this bidirectional communication between body and mind was largely ignored by Western science, even as it had long been central to traditional healing practices in many other parts of the world, notably in India and China. Today it is transforming our understanding of trauma and recovery. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

And it was the pretending that might explain how she could smile so brightly while her mind felt nothing - as if, at these times, there existed a disconnection between outer and inner, a shutting off, and the key to her happiness lay in warding off pain, or dodging it, or pushing it into the shape of something else - like shame or anger or even hope. — Sue Saliba

A winner endures all pain. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Years ago I read that grief is the place where love and pain converge.
For a long time they stood there and simply clung to each other. They didn't feel the need to kiss, and she believed that was because what they shared transcended the physical. This understanding-that they'd both lost what they'd treasured most-brought them together in a more profound way than mere attraction.
But I don't know what my instinct's saying, she muttered. Yes, you do. Just relax, sit back and listen to your inner voice. — Debbie Macomber

Food and eating often mask our pain, our inner longing for God, for acceptance. It is key to know our motivation for eating as well as for other actions. Why do I eat? Am I tired, am I bored, am I stressed and tired? A good practice is to live in the present moment, aware of the reality in which I am immersed. — Mary DeTurris Poust

Whenever we have a problem, it is easy to think that it is caused by our particular circumstances, and that if we were to change our circumstances our problem would disappear. We blame other people, our friends, our food, our government, our times, the weather, society, history and so forth. However, external circumstances such as these are not the main causes of our problems. We need to recognize that all the physical suffering and mental pain we experience are the consequences of our taking a rebirth that is contaminated by the inner poison of delusions. — Kelsang Gyatso

Looking to the material world for the satisfaction of our inner needs is the source of much fear. All fear is, in essence, fear of the future. We are afraid of things that have not yet happened, but which if they did might bring us pain, suffering, or some other discomfort - or stand in the way of some future contentment. And we are afraid that circumstances that are already causing us displeasure may continue in the future. — Russell Peters

I'm sorry. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain. — Cassandra Clare

But when one does not complain, and when one wants to master oneself with a tyrant's grip - one's faculties rise in revolt - and one pays for outward calm with an almost unbearable inner struggle. — Charlotte Bronte

And if the child feels loved, the body is relaxed, the eyes are bright, there is a smile on the face; in some way the flesh becomes "transparent." A child that is loved is beautiful. But what happens when children feel they are not loved? There is tension, fear, loneliness and terrible anguish, which we can call "inner pain," the opposite of "inner peace." Children are too small and weak to be able to fend for themselves; they have no defense mechanisms. If a child feels unloved and unwanted, he or she will develop a broken self-image. I have never heard any of the men or women whom we have welcomed into our community criticize their parents, even though many of them have suffered a great deal from rejection or abandonment in their families. Rather than blaming their parents, they blame themselves. "If I am not loved, it is because I am not lovable, I am no good. I am evil. — Jean Vanier

I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms. — James Baldwin

Inside us all are pieces of that which makes the neagitve. Demons are neither good nor bad. Like you, they have many facets. It is that inner essence, or drive, if you will, that we all have that guides us through our lives. Sometimes those voices that drive us are whispered memories that live deep inside and cause us such pain that we have no choice except to let it out and to hurt those around us. But at other times, the voice is love and compassion, and it guides us to a gentler place. In the end, we, alone, must choose what path to walk. No one can help us with it. (Menyara) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Wise beings do not want to remain a slave to the fear of pain. They permit the world to be what it is instead of being afraid of it. They wholeheartedly participate in life, but not for the purpose of using life to avoid themselves. If life does something that causes a disturbance inside of you, instead of pulling away, let it pass through you like the wind. After all, things happen every day that cause inner disturbance. At any moment you can feel frustration, anger, fear, jealousy, insecurity, or embarrassment. If you watch, you will see that the heart is trying to push it all away. If you want to be free, you have to learn to stop fighting these human feelings. — Michael A. Singer

By accepting life before it happens, and letting go of your inner resistance to all things you cannot change, you unlock true emotional freedom from all of your self-imposed emotional pain. — Hal Elrod

When we have insight into our inner world and what brings us happiness, then wordlessly, intuitively, we understand others. As though there were no longer a barrier defining the boundaries of our caring, we can feel close to others' experience of life. We see that when we are angry, there is an element of pain in the anger that is not different from the pain that others feel when they are angry. When we feel love, there is a distinct and special joy in that feeling. We come to know that this is the nature of love itself, and that other beings filled with love experience this same joy. — Sharon Salzberg

To the mind there is such a thing as news, whereas to inner knowing, it's all in the middle of its happening. To doubters, this is a pain. To believers, it's gospel. To the lover and the visionary, it's life as it's being lived. — Rumi

What we link to pleasure and what we link to pain determines our destiny. — Tony Robbins

A child screams with joy and a child screams with pain, and the difference is in the timbre of that scream. Decibels of joy strike the inner ear differently from those of pain. — Fred D'Aguiar

It can be difficult to leave a long-term relationship, even when our inner-wisdom tells us it's time to let go. At this point, we can choose let go and endure the intense pain of leaving behind the familiar to make way for a new chapter in our life. Or we can stay and suffer a low-grade pain that slowly eats away at our heart and soul, like an emotional cancer. Until we wake up, one day and realize, we are buried so deep in the dysfunction of the relationship that we scarcely remember who we were and what we wanted and needed to be. — Jaeda DeWalt

If you avoid your truthful emotions and pain you will implode and contract into a diminished and feeble state. — Bryant McGill

Change happens when one individual has had enough pain and finds the inner resolve to ask for help and make a difference. — Mike Ferguson

Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines? Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone? A jailer is not free, for he is bound together with his prisoner. He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends his time in keeping watch on him. The bars that limit him become the world in which his jailer lives, along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them. Therefore, hold no one prisoner. Release instead of bind, for thus are you made free. The way is simple. Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head. And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free. Thus does each one who seems to tempt you to be angry represent your savior from the prison house of death. And so you owe him thanks instead of pain. — Foundation For Inner Peace

Since the effects of your life that lead to pain and annoyance are always consequences of inner elements, what you commonly regard as "problems" are more accurately seen as outer symptoms of inner, causal problems. The practical approach is to begin looking at those specific aspects of your life that are not as you desire to find their source, rooted in your mindset. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Almost all people suffer some form of intense inner pain at some times in their lives. The suffering might be depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or suicidal thoughts and it results from the battles we wage against our thoughts as we futilely try to get rid of our historie. — Steven C. Hayes

All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous.
Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain body — Eckhart Tolle

Parts of you are phobic of anger and generally terrified and ashamed of angry dissociative parts. There is often tremendous conflict between anger-avoidant and anger-fixated parts of an individual. Thus, an internal and perpetual cycle of rage-shame-fear creates inner chaos and pain. — Suzette Boon

Be yourself! Don't be somebody! Be humble to authority, but be assertive! Mind your solemn duty and responsibility to the Supreme God, for you shall give account to Him in the end! You were created uniquely, mind your mind! Mind the things that can change your mindset, and mind people! People are always alert to do all things possible to change your mind set. They wish you become the reason for their joy even if it causes you an inner pain! They wish you halt a purposeful journey. They wish you look and see, hear and listen, think and act, as they do! Their joy is to see you being like them, and their sorrow and envy is to see you living your true you! Be yourself! If only you living your true you please God, no problem exists! Just be yourself and mind your mind! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

This one, I guess," he says. I look over at the counter, he is looking back at me. He is holding a riding crop: "I'd like to try it out." There is a peculiar shift: from one second to the next I have become disoriented, I am on alien territory, in a foreign century. He walks a few steps to where I am half sitting on the desk, one foot on the floor, the other dangling. He pulls my skirt up my left leg, which is resting on the desk, steps back and strikes me across the inner thigh.
The searing pain is an inextricable part of a wave of excitement; every cell in my body is awash with lust.
It is silent in the small, dusty room. The clerks behind the counter have frozen.
He slowly smooths down my skirt and turns to the older man, who is wearing a suit and still looks like an accountant, though a deep flush is spreading upward from his shirt collar.
"This one will do. — Elizabeth McNeill

Inner peace is accomplished by understanding and accepting the inevitable contradictions of life - the pain and pleasure, success and failure, joy and sorrow, births and deaths. Problems can teach us to be gracious, humble, and patient. — Richard Carlson

Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation. — Albert Einstein

Inner peace is more a question of cultivating perspective, meaning, and wisdom even as life touches you with its pain. — Rachel Naomi Remen

When a person's primary objective is to maximize material pleasures while minimizing discomforts, then life becomes a constant process of "pushing" (trying to push away from discomforts) and "grabbing" (trying to acquire or hold on to that which gives pleasure). With the loss of inner balance that accompanies a habitual "pushing and grabbing" approach to life, a deeper pain ensues-that of becoming aware of the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of the pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding process itself. — Duane Elgin

What do you want? What do you want?" he repeated to himself. "What do I want? To live and not to suffer," he answered. And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him. "To live? How?" asked his inner voice. "Why, to live as I used to - well and pleasantly." "As you lived before, well and pleasantly?" the voice repeated. And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. — Leo Tolstoy

There is the pain that made me cry,
and then there is the strength that
made me stop crying.
So I am glad the pain came
because without it I would not have
discovered my strength. — Moffat Machingura

Peace is not the absence of pain, but the welcoming of pain as a teacher. — Vironika Tugaleva

Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. Let my joyfully streaming face
make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise
and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
our season in our inner year
, not only a season
in time
, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil
and home. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The pain was swift and immediate. It wasn't stabbing, or fiery, or unbearable. More like a fraying of my inner self, a few threads tearing away, vanishing into the ether. I winced and stifled a gasp, — Julie Kagawa

Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. — Danielle Bernock

Our minds are always active. We analyze, reflect, daydream, or dream. There is not a moment during the day or night when we are not thinking. You might say our thinking is 'unceasing.' Sometimes we wish that we could stop thinking for a while; that would save us from many worries, guilt feelings, and fears. Our ability to think is our greatest gift, but it is also the source of our greatest pain. Do we have to become victims of our unceasing thoughts? No, we can convert our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer by making our inner monologue into a continuing dialogue with our God, who is the source of all love.
Let's break out of our isolation and realize that Someone who dwells in the center of our beings wants to listen with love to all that occupies and preoccupies our minds. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Sometimes being real means allowing pain or accepting a painful truth. Yet something in us aligns with an inner ground of authenticity when we are real. We love it because of its inherent rightness in our soul, the sense of "Aha, here I am and there is nothing to do but be. — A.H. Almaas

Crisis is what suppressed pain looks like; it always comes to the surface. It shakes you into reflection and healing. — Bryant McGill

When you're five and you hurt, you make a big noise in the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain. — Stephen King

When I started studying acting in New York, I didn't plan to be an action hero. I just wanted to learn acting because I felt it was something I needed to try to do for myself, to express something, my inner pain, or something I couldn't get out. — Dolph Lundgren

One foot in front of the other, more aimless than direct, Bradford left the waiting room for the outside world. Called for a taxi and then dialed Munroe again, desperate for her voice, for one ray of light in the darkness, afraid of what he might say if she did answer, afraid of himself and the inner deadening that pointed to a danger far more lethal than any rage he'd felt. — Taylor Stevens

To succeed perseverance yells "pain to gain".
If you don't take heed, you'll end up slain! — Manuela George-Izunwa

Human beings are made to forget things, otherwise they couldn't tolerate the pain of life. They say that time heals, but it's not time, it's some inner power all people have. — Michael Molloy

Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we most want, yet it is what we fear the most. — Jean Vanier

Every human soul is different. We are all shaped by both experience and design, by callings and the way our gifts mold our inner lives. Every soul has a bent, a drift, a way it wants to go. And when hard times come and the inner person writhes in torment, the soul reaches for what it thinks is anesthesia, for something to medicate the pain. — Stephen Mansfield

The inner experience of fallure is totally different than failure. Going to fallure means 100% commitment - you leave nothing in reserve, no mental or physical resource untapped, you never give yourself a psychological out. Failure means making a decision to let go, to be less than 100% committed, when confronted by fear, pain and uncertainty. — James C. Collins

what once cause catastrophe in my life has now become the catalyst for my direction. — Nikki Rowe

I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am - of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain - or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things ... I have no idea whatever of my soul. — Nicolas Malebranche

To be in communion means to be with someone and to discover that we actually belong together. Communion means accepting people just as they are, with all their limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their beauty and their capacity to grow: to see the beauty inside of all the pain. To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust — Jean Vanier

With thorns in the inner world there will always be roses in the outer world, in law-able compensation. — G.I. Gurdjieff

You will meet many opponents in your time that will come face to face with your flaws, trust the chaos ~ pain & confusion is the pathway to break open and become free. — Nikki Rowe

At some point, a wave of repressed emotion broke through my armor, demanding expression and release. As I plumbed the depths of my despair, I shed one layer of pain after another. My inner world was like a series of reservoirs, each holding a different wave of emotional memory behind them. When one reservoir burst, another soon appeared. This phase went on for many months - the first of many essential release phases. — Jeff Brown

When I see brokenness, poverty and crime in inner cities, I also see the enormous potential and readiness for transformation and rebirth. We are creating an art form that comes from the heart and reflects the pain and sorrow of people's lives. It also expresses joy, beauty, and love. This process lays the foundation of building a genuine community in which people are reconnected with their families, sustained by meaningful work, nurtured by the care of each other and will together raise and educate their children. Then we witness social change in action. — Lily Yeh

Suffering is to the heart and soul as tears are to the eyes, cleansing and expelling toxicity from the inner system. When we do not allow ourselves to feel appropriate pain, we move into a sort of non-experience. We watch life rather than live it; we look but never get too close. — Tian Dayton

Hurt people hurt people. We are not being judgmental by separating ourselves from such people. But we should do so with compassion. Compassion is defined as a "keen awareness of the suffering of another coupled with a desire to see it relieved." People hurt others as a result of their own inner strife and pain. Avoid the reactive response of believeing they are bad; they already think so and are acting that way. They aren't bad; they are damaged and they deserve compassion. Note that compassion is an internal process, an understanding of the painful and troubled road trod by another. It is not trying to change or fix that person. — Will Bowen

I imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die. — Phillip Lopate

The best way to hide your inner grief is to look good, act good, and pretend pain doesn't exist. — K.F. Breene

For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. One can no longer cheat - hide behind the hours spent at the office or at the plant (those hours we protest so loudly, which protect us so well from the pain of being alone). — Albert Camus

Dedication to goodness-dedication in response to an inner moral mandate rather than external restraint-was both the antidote to the pain and the source of great happiness. — Sylvia Boorstein

I hate wise men because they are lazy, cowardly, and prudent. To the philosophers' equanimity, which makes them indifferent to both pleasure and pain, I prefer devouring passions. The sage knows neither the tragedy of passion, nor the fear of death, nor risk and enthusiasm, nor barbaric, grotesque, or sublime heroism. He talks in proverbs and gives advice. He does not live, feel, desire, wait for anything. He levels down all the incongruities of life and then suffers the consequences. So much more complex is the man who suffers from limitless anxiety. The wise man's life is empty and sterile, for it is free from contradiction and despair. An existence full of irreconcilable contradictions is so much richer and creative. The wise man's resignation springs from inner void, not inner fire. I would rather die of fire than of void. — Emil Cioran

Can you go a whole day with joy in your heart? Joy and vitality are an inseparable combination. Joy is not concerned with having fun; it is an inner spiritual quality that overcomes despair, pain and defeat. You cannot turn on joy like an electric light, but you can prepare yourself to receive it. — Norman Vincent Peale

It can take years of tears to melt the hardness that develops in this world, covering our tender, gentler inner selves. Tears for every devastating loss, tears for every humiliating failure, tears for every repeated mistake. Those who honor those tears, and even honor them, are not failures at love but rather its true initiates. First the pain and then the power. First the heart breaks and then it soars. — Marianne Williamson

Much of Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming, the uncertainty about how the inner translates into the outer, the sense that one is expected to perform grief palatably. (If you don't seem sad, people worry; but if you are grief-stricken, people flinch away from your pain.) — Meghan O'Rourke

I tried to photograph the mysterious, true and magical soul of popular Spain in all its passion, love, humor, tenderness, rage, pain, in all its truth; and the fullest and most intense moments in the lives of these characters as simple as they are irresistible, with all their inner strength, as a personal challenge that gave me strength and understanding and in which I invested all my heart. — Cristina Garcia Rodero

Inner joy enables you to choose to look beyond your pain and make your praise a sacrifice to God. — Jim George

Without that forgiveness, that peace, no heart is ever happy. There is always an inner struggle. Pain. Only when God has been invited in-to manage one's life, to direct one's thinking, to be in control-can one ever get away from all the conflicts inside. We have to stop struggling against His will before we can find real joy. — Janette Oke

Knowledge of the Enlightenment Cycle, of the ways that inner dimensions and nirvana work, lifts you far above the transient sorrows, pains, pleasures and joys that the unenlightened masses experience. — Frederick Lenz

When an archer desires to shoot his arrows successfully, he first takes great pains over his posture and aligns himself accurately with his mark. It should be the same for you who are about to shoot the head of the wicked devil. Let us be concerned first for the good order of sensations and then for the good posture of inner thoughts.' — Saint John Chrysostom

Are you threatening me, Ms. Sutherlin?"
Sutherlin only smiled.
"No. Of course not. All I'm saying is that I'll do anything
to protect him. Anything at all. But there's no need to worry.
I've hurt people. I've hurt them badly. I've left permanent
scars on some clients. Some outer scars. Some inner. But all
that pain I've inflicted ... it was all consensual. I've never hurt anyone without their permission. All I'm saying, Ms. Kanter, is ... " Sutherlin leaned forward and pressed the lightest, softest, most terrifying kiss onto Suzanne's lips before pulling back an inch and whispering, "There's a first time for everything. — Tiffany Reisz

The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers; pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers the whole spectrum of sedative drugs. — William S. Burroughs

The fearsome blessing of that hard time continues to work itself out in my life in the same way we're told the universe is still hurtling through outer space under the impact of the great cosmic explosion ... I think grace sometimes explodes into our lives like that-sending our pain, terror, astonishment hurtling through inner space until by grace they become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris to give us our bearings, to bring us into something like full being at last. — Frederick Buechner

Don't let your outer pain, misery, and suffering touch your inner calmness and happiness. — Debasish Mridha

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves. We can open to everything with the healing force of love. When we feel love, our mind is expansive and open enough to include the entirety of life in full awareness, both its pleasures and its pains, we feel neither betrayed by pain or overcome by it, and thus we can contact that which is undamaged within us regardless of the situation. Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. — Sharon Salzberg

We are each responsible for our own emotional well being. — Alaric Hutchinson

To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain. — Jean Vanier

Patsy, suffering strengthens our constitutions and builds inner fortifications so that we never fall prey to the same agony twice. We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive." I — Stephanie Dray

You're a pretty cool customer, huh?" says Agent Hunt.
"I hide my inner pain under my stoic visage."
Agent Hunt looks like he would like to put his fist through my stoic visage. — Holly Black

Without the fear of occasional gaffes, the willingness to be perfectly imperfect, and the heart of a child who creates chaos first thing in the morning for a parent; you are not allowing our inner child to grow. You grow in pain, not in years, and you must cross the bridge without knowing of the pain, the tears, or the trials and tribulations that you will come to have to face, but sweet child of mine, stay the happy child of mine. — Forrest Curran

When my mind tells me there's no possible way ahead, Beloved, may Love whisper to me, "Yes, there is a way! I've gone that way a thousand times before." When my mind says, "Danger lies ahead. It will hurt too much, if you surrender all," let me hear Love's laughter, as I hear Love say, "The pain is only in your mind." Teach me to find the roses hidden in my pain, so that I may discover within my inner self, rose garden after rose garden. — Devon Holcombe

Lost in thought, it took her several moments to realize that Jace had been saying something to her. When she blinked at him, she saw a wry grin spread across his face. "What?" she asked, ungraciously.
"I wish you'd stop desperately trying to get my attention like this," he said. "It's become embarrassing."
"Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt," she told him.
"I can't help it. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain."
"Your pain will be outer soon if you don't get out of traffic. Are you trying to get run over by a cab?"
"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "We could never get a cab that easily in this neighborhood. — Cassandra Clare

What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom - but from what, from whom? Little by little, in the course of time, I mounted freedom's rough unaccommodating ascent. To gain freedom first of all from the Turk, that was the initial step; after that, later, this new struggle began: to gain freedom from the inner Turk - from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved. — Nikos Kazantzakis

If you want to have peace of soul, learn to forgive. Jesus' secret was His ability to see into people's hearts. Seeing their anguish and pain helped Him to understand their nastiness. So He could pity them rather than become angry with them. That is what we have to do: try to understand the pain in people's lives ... and not take personally what they do to us. — Joseph F. Girzone

Avoiding fear and pain can cause them to grow stronger. The trick with fear is to go with it, to let it do it's work. Once fear has put us in touch with our inner issue it can diminish. In fact, simply acknowledging fear seems to lessen it. — John Earle

I hit adolescence only to discover my autobiography had already been written; plagiarized, in fact, by a man named J.D. Salinger who, in appropriating to himself my inner mass of pain and confusion, had given me the unlikely name of Holden Caulfield. — Stephen Metcalf

I am asked what strength is. Strength is the ability to not do to others only the things that were done to you. It is said, that you should "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", but strength takes that even further and says, "I can give more than what I received in life, I can be more than those who gave me little, I can do more for others than what was done for me." Strength, though well aware of the pain that is aroused by drawing from a well that is not naturally replenished by others, continues to replenish that well so that it may draw from those beautiful innate waters, so that it may give to others even those things that were not given unto it. — C. JoyBell C.

When we practise self-compassion, we look after ourselves just as though we are nurturing a small child. In fact, a major part of grieving our original pain work (so that we can heal and be emotionally liberated) is to re-parent ourselves and reconnect with our inner child.

This is what the author, John Bradshaw, meant by 'reclaiming our inner child'. In recovery, we can begin to nurture our inner child and connect deeply with our heart and spirit. — Christopher Dines

We are all capable of living lives characterized by great joy. Within each of us is an amazing human spirit that is strong enough to overcome pain and disappointment. And no matter what our current situation happens to be, or what beliefs we may currently harbor about ourselves, we can tap into that inner strength and wisdom and move forward to create more joy. — Salle Merrill Redfield

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs. — Sue Monk Kidd

I do not believe we can truly enter into our own inner pain and wounds and open our hearts to others unless we have had an experience of God, unless we have been touched by God. We must be touched by the Father in order to experience, as the prodigal son did, that no matter how wounded we may be, we are loved. And not only are we loved, but we too are called to heal and to liberate. This healing power in us will not come from our capacities and our riches, but in and through our poverty. We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion and love through our wounds. — Jean Vanier