Life Is Pain Quotes & Sayings

The Marquis De Sade said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. When a boss humiliates an employee, or a man humiliates his wife, he is merely being cowardly or taking his revenge on life, they are people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul, never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast, or to understand that sex, pain and love are all extreme experiences. Only those who know those frontiers know life; everything else is just passing the time, repeating the same tasks, growing old and dying without ever having discovered what we are doing here. — Paulo Coelho

Last night I had a nightmare. That me and someone I cared a lot about were playing a game in a pool. We'd take turns submerging ourselves under the water while the other person kept time.
At one point it felt like the other person might be drowning, so I jumped in to pull her up. She smiled and laughed and pushed me away. Then she turned blue and died. I could not resuciate her.
I woke up at 3, sweating, in shock and pain. Frightened. But then I realized it was only a dream. But then I realized it was just like real life ...
Sometimes people we care about play risky games and then don't want our help. There is nothing we can do for them, no matter how much we care ... — Jose N. Harris

Sometimes It feels like time is an evil clown that we always imagine. It gives you everything you ask for, and when you are about to happily embrace every gift that you have received it snatches away everything laughing and clapping at you, watching you fall on your knees and break into pieces. — Akshay Vasu

All of the pleasures of this present physical life can be continued into the next life as well, since we will have a body which is similar to our present physical body, but so much more glorious and wonderful and supernatural. We will be able to eat, drink, be merry and have fun without ever suffering pain or sickness or weariness or death. — David Berg

The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away. — Mary Balogh

George!' [Horace] said, the relief evident in his voice. 'Are you all right?'
'No! I am not!' George replied with considerable spirit. 'I have a whacking great arrow stuck through my arm and it hurts like the very dickens! How could anybody be all right in those circumstances?' ...
'You saved my life, George,' Horace said gently ...
George grimaced. 'Well, if I'd known it was going to hurt like this, I wouldn't have! I would have just let them shoot you! Why do you live this way?' he demanded in a high-pitched voice. 'How can you bear it? This sort of thing is very, very painful. I always suspected that warriors are crazy. Now I know. — John Flanagan

Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. — Whittaker Chambers

Humanity is an organism, inherently rejecting all that is deleterious, that is, wrong, and absorbing after trial what is beneficial, that is, right. If so disposed, the Architect of the Universe, we must assume, might have made the world and man perfect, free from evil and from pain, as angels in heaven are thought to be; but although this was not done, man has been given the power of advancement rather than of retrogression. The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom," says Confucius, great sage and teacher. The next world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it. — Andrew Carnegie

Pain is a spiritual wake-up call showing you that there are oceans you have not yet explored. Step beyond the world you know. Reach for heights that you never thought possible. Go to places you have deemed off limits. This is the time to take off the shell of your past and step into the rich possibilities of your future. God does not give us dreams that we cannot fulfill. If you want to do something great with your life-whether it's to fall madly in love, become a teacher, be a great parent-if you aspire to do something beyond what you are doing now, this is the time to begin. Trust yourself. — Debbie Ford

There are dreams inside of me and those are mine and my guess is that they're there for a reason. But for all the days like now where the dreams are asked to be only dreams, I'm gonna keep getting out of bed. I'm gonna keep living my story. I'm gonna believe that there is reason and purpose, and power in my life. I'm gonna believe that I'm alive inside a story bigger than my pain, bigger than everything missing. — Jamie Tworkowski

Once you're lost, you panic. You're in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, 'cause when you get in the mood all you can think about is what's right under your nose - that's sex, all right. — Haruki Murakami

The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man's respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, who produces these agonies begins the formation of the Son God in the life. — Oswald Chambers

The earth will never be the same again
Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif
As distant stars participate in the pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished. — Madeleine L'Engle

We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage - almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance. — Thomas Cahill

Such is life. Sometimes we do not even want to know how much pain we cause others, for fear of spoiling our own petty pleasures. And when the time comes to face the consequences, it is too late to be sorry. — Menelaos Stephanides

Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play these contradictory roles to varying degrees throughout your life. At this point the rivalry is most prominent, owing to the difference in age and the resentment your brother feels toward you monopolizing your mother's attention. Try to remember, in the face of the poor treatment you receive at his hands, that more than a pure desire to cause you harm or pain, this is an effort on his part to win back some of that attention, even if it's only through being scolded and punished. — Ron Currie Jr.

The teacher's life is painfull and therefore would be pityed: it wrastles with unthankfulnesse above all measure ... Our calling creepes low and hath pain for companion. — Richard Mulcaster

One of life's greatest paradoxes is that it's in the crucible of pain and suffering that we become tender. Not all pain and suffering, certainly. If that were the case, the whole world would be tender, since no one escapes pain and suffering. To these elements must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Together they lead to wisdom and tenderness. — Brennan Manning

In Advance of All Parting is a tough, unsentimental examination of marital grief. Musically elegant and inventive, understated and passionate, the poems give us a profound glimpse into how the events of a life can form a center of gravity that fixes the self in its force field. Theres a cold, truth-telling clarity about them that makes them as unsettling as they are beautiful. Ansie Baird has created a richly-drawn world in which this elemental drama plays out, and the result is vivid, startling poems in which pain has left its indelible tracks. — Chase Twichell

I know that there are people who believe that if they get to the stage where life is absolutely intolerable because of pain and indignity ... they would like to end their life before nature intended, and we think they should have the choice to do so. — Margo MacDonald

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We want gain without pain; we want the resurrection without going through the grave; we want life without experiencing death; we want a crown without going by way of the Cross. But in God's economy, the way up is down. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

To Your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.
You sweep men away like a dream, like grass which springs up in the morning.
In the morning it springs up and flowers, by evening it withers and fades.
So we are destroyed in Your anger, struck with terror in Your fury.
Our guilt lies open before You; our secrets in the light of Your face.
All our days pass away in Your anger. Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are strong. And most of these are emptiness and pain, they pass swiftly and we are gone. — Psalm 89

The objective idea is all I ever cared about. Most of my ideas occur in verse ... To be too subjective with what an artist has managed to make objective is to come on him presumptuously and render ungraceful what he in pain of his life had faith he had made graceful. — Robert Frost

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it to one degree or another.
(Harry Dresden's internal monologue in White Knight) — Jim Butcher

Real peace comes only when you stop chasing it. When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, that is when real freedfom and security are yours. — Henepola Gunaratana

For many, the search for Jesus is initiated from experiencing an event in life so powerful, it awakens the dragons of faith; from pain so deep, it calls on the hidden fears of the soul in an effort to survive. For others it means a serious personal life survey that ultimately forces the confrontation with the futility, anesthetics, and despair in their lives. — W. Scott Lineberry

It's funny the things people say when someone dies.
He's in a better place.
How do you know that?
Life goes on.
That's supposed to comfort me? I'm excruciatingly aware that life goes on. It hurts every damned second. How lovely to know it's going to continue like this. Thank you for reminding me.
Time heals.
No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue isn't a good thing. It's merely the wound's other face. — Karen Marie Moning

Pain is holy ground in a person's life. — Jason Gray

It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. — Pope Benedict XVI

The plan was,we drink untill the pain is over but whats worse,the pain or the hangover? — Kanye West

The things we are attached to are no more than shadows of the past. However, we do not recognize that, and, as long as we hold on to them, they become part of the present and follow us around. Let's say there's a wound you suffered long ago. The wound closed and left a large or small scar. It's only a scar, and it doesn't interfere at all with you living a healthy life. But for a person who believes the wound is still open, even pain that has since left will return and the closed wound will become infected. — Ilchi Lee

And even though people try to pretend that pain doesn't do anything to them, none of us can really handle it. Everything bad we do in our life is because of pain of some kind. — James Frey

Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one's desires are gratified, in spite of life's difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death? — Sam Harris

Man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. — Viktor E. Frankl

What victims need are not self-produced positive statements but God's statements about his response to their pain. How can you be rid of these dysfunctional emotions and their effects? How can you be rid of your disgrace? God's grace to you dismantles the beliefs that give disgrace life. Grace re-creates what violence destroyed. Martin Luther writes that "the love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it." One-way love is the change agent you need. Grace transforms and heals; and healing comes by hearing God's statements to you, not speaking your own statements to yourself. — Justin S. Holcomb

The woman speaks, stops, then after what must have been a long speech by the person on the other end of the line, says, " ... just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives." Mirabelle cannot fathom the meaning of this sentence, as she has been in pain her whole life, and yet it remains unchanged. — Steve Martin

Fairytales teach us that love is beauty, happiness, and faith. Life teaches us that sometimes we can feel hurt, useless, and lost. Sometimes we lose the ones we love. Sometimes we just can't handle the pain. And sometimes we just have to say goodbye. — Dannielle Wicks

But pain is hard to put into words and in life there is always pain. It's as natural as birth or death. Pain makes us who we are, it teaches us and tames us, it can destroy and it can save. — Anna McPartlin

Heavenly Father, we thank You for preserving Jayden's life," Telford prayed. "Heal him physically and heal him spiritually as well. Jayden's a good child, but his heart is prone to wander. Even though he hasn't yet believed in You, we know that He's Yours. Help us as his friends and family to help him through his confusion and pain. However, we can't save him - only You can do that, and so we pray that You'll open his eyes and heart to Your love. Have him to — Juliette Duncan

Is it intelligent to make ourselves miserable while living in the past, haunted by memories while being inexorably swallowed by them? Whenever we reminisce about our past life, we are advised in our tradition to be in a state of gratefulness. Be mindful of nurturing unnecessary grief and staying stuck in old pain. — Hiram Crespo

The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination. — Joseph Campbell

If life is a journey then let my soul travel and share your pain. — Santosh Kalwar

The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality - the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings. It is part of the kaleidoscope of life that these feelings are not only happy, beautiful, or good but can reflect the entire range of human experience, including envy, jealousy, rage, disgust, greed, despair, and grief. But this freedom cannot be achieved if its childhood roots are cut off. Our access to the true self is possible only when we no longer have to be afraid of the intense emotional world of early childhood. Once we have experienced and become familiar with this world, it is no longer strange and threatening. — Alice Miller

What is love ?
a man was dying in pain.he turned and saw his beloved put knife in his back.He just smile and whisper "My love ,are you sure ? your hand did not hurt — Mohammed Zaki Ansari

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre. — Andy Behrman

Maybe being numb to the mediocrity of one's life is the price people pay for true happiness. Maybe bliss blinds a person to the fact that they could be something more than normal. Maybe if everyone grew up in happy houses with happy lives void of pain, we'd still be living in caves and beating animals to death with a club to eat. — Selina Rosen

Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough. That seems entirely true. The inciting incident for life change is almost always heartbreak - something becomes broken beyond repair, too heavy to carry; in the words of the recovery movement, unmanageable. In — Shauna Niequist

Snow-melt in the stream: Mama Nature turning winter's storms into nourishment for the soil, fecundity, and beauty. This is what I must now learn to do with the stormy weather I've been passing through: turn it into beauty, turn it into art, so new life can germinate and bloom.
One example of a creative artist who does this is my friend Jane Yolen, who wrote her exquisite book of poems The Radiation Sonnets while her husband was undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim his life. This is what all artists must do: take whatever life gives us and "alchemize" it into our art (either directly and autobiographically, as in Jane's book, or indirectly; whatever approach works best), turning darkness into light, spinning straw into gold, transforming pain and hardship into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'a miraculous grace. — Terri Windling

As we begin to transform, illness and pain can also be seen as a "messenger" for spiritual growth. What does this illness mean? What can I learn from this? Why is the occurring in my life — Teresa DeCicco

Accept, forgive and forget. Forgive not only the people who hurt us, but also forgive ourselves, accepting whatever is the outcome, then forget the wrongs, learn from them and move on. Holding on to the guilt and pain would just make life miserable for us. — Kcat Yarza

There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it. — Thomas Hobbes

It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community. — Jean Vanier

I know what it is to become something you hate, I know how it hurts. But life is full of hurt. And your capacity for baring it is much greater than you believe."

pg 287 — Veronica Roth

I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer. Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesn't taste good, but I couldn't disagree more. The first beer should be so cold you can't even taste it. The second one should be a little less chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with pain. This is my own personal preference of course. — Haruki Murakami

TV and popular film and most kinds of 'low' art
which just means art whose primary aim is to make money
is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas 'serious' art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. — David Foster Wallace

There is strength in every struggle. Struggles create opportunities for you to become stronger, wiser and better. The moment you shift your thinking from "I cannot" to "I must," you will begin to see 'Beyond the Pain' and draw strength from within. Learn to see each obstacle as a stepping stone and watch your life change significantly. — Kemi Sogunle

And this time as the lashes come, try to think about the pain, instead of against it, because there is not one single aspect of life, past, present, or future, that does not tear your reason from you, to think on it. So think about the pain. This pain after all has its limits. You can chart its passage through your body. It has a beginning, middle, end. Imagine if it had a color. The first cut of the lash is what, red? Red, spreading into a brilliant yellow. And this one again, red, red, no yellow, and then white, white, white, white ... Why have you incarcerated yourself in this palazzo of torture chambers, why do you not leave this place? Because you are a monster and this is a school for monsters, and if you leave here, then you will be completely, completely alone! Alone with this!
Don't weep in front of these strangers. Swallow it down. Don't weep in front of these strangers! Cry to heaven, cry to heaven, cry to heaven. — Anne Rice

Crying is like a thundershower for the soul. The air feels so wonderful after the rain. Don't think too much. Breathe. Don't be harsh or demanding on yourself. Just experience your feelings and know that your tears are announcing change in your life. Change is coming; like a summer rain - to wash away your pain. Have faith that things are getting better. — Bryant McGill

In the central cases of physical pain, then, it appears that at least part of what is bad about our condition is the way it makes us feel. Here there seem to be no problems with a purely mental state account, no counterpart to the experience machine that could bring us to think that we are being deceived by mere appearances. [ ... ] If I am suffering physical pain then I can be quite wrong about the organic cause of my affliction, or even about whether it has one, without that error diminishing in the slightest either the reality of my pain or its impact on the quality of my life. — L. W. Sumner

Give into hope, I say, for fear will only paralyze. It is better to life a life of love amidst the pain than a life of apathy. — Stacy A. Padula

Teaching involves a search for meaning in the world. Teaching is a life project, a calling, a vocation that is an organizing center of all other activities. Teaching is past and future as well as present, it is background as well as foreground, it is depth as well as surface. Teaching is pain and humor, joy and anger, dreariness and epiphany. Teaching is world building, it is architecture and design, it is purpose and moral enterprise. Teaching is a way of being in the world that breaks through the boundaries of the traditional job and in the process redefines all life and teaching itself. (p. 130) — Nancy Fichtman Dana

I can say it, but it doesn't seem convincing to most people. I can call it an 'injustice,' but that doesn't always sink in either. You have to understand the nature of the culture in New York. Words that are equal to the pain of the poor are pretty easily discredited. A quarter of the truth, stated with lots of indirection, is regarded as more seemly.

Even when people do accept the idea of 'injustice,' there are ways to live with it without it causing you to change a great deal in your life. A mildly embarrassed toleration of injustice is an elemental part of cultural sophistication here. the stile is, 'Oh yes. We know all that. So tell us something new.' There's a kind of cultivated weariness in this. Talking about injustice, I am told, is 'tiresome' unless you do it in a way that sounds amusing. — Jonathan Kozol

But if these unavoidable separations cause you a measure of pain, they also increase your longing for her, and perhaps that isn't a bad thing, you decide, for you spend your days in the thrall of breathless anticipation, agitated and alert, counting the hours until you can see her and hold her again. Intense. That is the word you use to describe yourself now. You are intense. Your feelings are intense. Your life has become increasingly intense. — Paul Auster

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows in perception if not in reality. The best response to terror is righteous anger, confidence in ultimate justice, a refusal to be intimidated. — Dean Koontz

I always try to push through fear. I won't be crippled by it. People say, "Oh you take such risks", or "You're brave." And I'm like, 'Well, if you knew - inside I'm really frightened!' But the way people navigate fear and pain is fascinating ... The more you feel, the stronger the pain. And the more you engage in life, the more you have to lose. — Nicole Kidman

I was eight years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder ... But even as a child, one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, Please, God. Please don't take his life, too. I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another. — Kerry Kennedy

To pretend is to do nothing more than imagine life as something wonderful so that we don't have to incur the pain that it takes to actually make life wonderful. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

A thing is never untold, It is always misperceived. — Nishikant

At the heart of memory, is the stillness of time. — Manu Joseph

Life is a gift, and should be cherished, lived and experienced. Though experience often reveals itself as pain in this world, it is still purposeful, it still has its place in the evolution of our spirit. — Michael Poeltl

In every change, in every falling leaf there is some pain, some beauty. And that's the way new leaves grow. — Amit Ray

They said when you are in love you will be happy but when the day comes i fell in love with someone.i regret the day that i met him.. it gives to much pain inside i feel everything is wrong.
knowing that loves is happiness.but in me it has a reversed meaning.it makes my life unhappy. — O.v Grace

Life is pain, so live it up while you can. — Ernest Hemingway,

Found out that his life didn't have to follow the rules,
and they both found out that love is a pain in the ass. — Jane Seville

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

Courage is not the absence of fear and pain, but the affirmation of life despite fear and pain. — Earl A Grollman

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself. — Norman Cousins

Have faith that when bad things happen to you, I belief in an after life, it is better to suffer here on Earth than what awaits you. That is why I pray for pain, and I get it. I do. — Peter Steele

In all our losses, all our gains,
In all our pleasures, all our pains,
The life of life is: Love remains.
In every change from good to ill,-
If love continues still,
Let happen then what will. — Theodore Tilton

I cannot really play. Either at piano or at life; never, never have I been able to. I have always been too hasty, too impatient; something always intervenes and breaks it up. But who really knows how to play, and if he does know, what good is it to him? Is the great dark less dark for that, are the unanswerable questions less inscrutable, does the pain of despair at eternal inadequacy burn less fiercely, and can life ever be explained and seized and ridden like a tamed horse or is it always a mighty sail that carries us in the storm and, when we try to seize it, sweep us into the deep? Sometimes there is a hole in me that seems to extend to the center of the earth. What could fill it? Yearning? Dispair? Happiness? What happiness? Fatigue? Resignation? Death? What am I alive for? Yes, for what am I alive? — Erich Maria Remarque

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. — Margaret Atwood

Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation. — Whittaker Chambers

Not getting our needs fulfilled is painful - but it's a sweet pain, not suffering, which is what comes from life-alienated thinking and interpretation. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Death is like giving birth. Birth can be painful. Sometimes women die from giving birth. However, when the baby is born, all that pain (that was endured) vanishes in an instant. Love for that tiny baby makes one forget the pain, the fear. And as I've said before, love between mother and child is the highest experience, the closest to divine love.
You might wonder about the parallel I'm making between birth and death. But I say to you, the fear and pain accompanying an awful death is over quickly. Beyond that portal one is suddenly in the light, in oneness and bliss ... Just as a woman heals rapidly after childbirth and then is able to fall in love with her baby, those who pass over also are able to fall in love with a new life."-Kuan Yin (From "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin — Hope Bradford

I'm Allen Walker!"
My life....is over...I'm going to die.... — Katsura Hoshino

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

Not that pain is the worst thing in the universe. Interesting things happen when you adapt pain for your own. This thing you were prepared to spend your life flinching from is suddenly just another piece of information. — Shelley Jackson

You must not die. You must not die by any hand, but least of all your own. Until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die. For if he is still with the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he is. No, you must live! You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable. You must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy. By the day, or the night, in safety or in peril! On your living soul I charge you that you do not die. Nay, nor think of death, till this great evil be past. — Bram Stoker

Love is messy. If you really love someone, you can't avoid the pain. People die, people leave, things change, but sometimes it all works — Danielle Steel

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. — Epicurus

HAPPY EVER AFTER is a concept I'll never believe in. I would be content to sample some little taste of happiness today, tonight, right now. Though I know without a doubt that tomorrow will come saturated with pain. Life is like that. At least my life. And honestly, I cant think of anyone whose life is any different. The price tag for joy is misery. [ ... ] — Ellen Hopkins

Finally my heart is starting to self heal it is like the skin eventually the cut that was once so painful and deep is on the mend as the time passes ... Time heals everything! But at least I have experienced that pain so next time I know how to avoid such an event and take it as a life lesson — Abe

Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse. — Taylor Swift

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. — Dominic West

It is evident that a man with a scientific outlook on life cannot let himself be intimidated by texts of Scripture or by the teaching of the Church. He will not be content to say "such-and-such an act is sinful, and that ends the matter." He will inquire whether it does any harm or whether, on the contrary, the belief that it is sinful does harm. And he will find that, especially in what concerns sex, our current morality contains a very great deal of which the origin is purely superstitious. He will find also that this superstition, like that of the Aztecs, involves needless cruelty, and would be swept away if people were actuated by kindly feelings towards their neighbors. But the defenders of traditional morality are seldom people with warm hearts ... One is tempted to think that they value morals as affording a legitimate outlet for their desire to inflict pain; the sinner is fair game, and therefore away with tolerance! — Bertrand Russell

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. Which is sad, and yet, happy, if you really think about it. If we never lost our car keys, or stepped in gum, or had a bad hair day, what kind of people would we be? In a word? Boring. We wouldn't be passionate; we wouldn't know it was exciting to get pregnant, or score an A on a final. So that's why, today at least, I am grateful for pain. Because it's part of what makes me the whacky, goofy, jaded, person that I am. Peace. — Alysha Speer

It's okay,' he says, eyes closed. He's not even awake. 'It's okay.'
He says these words even in his sleep, like he has said them so often that it's his mouth's default sentiment. All this pain in his life, all this care he doles out to everyone else. And yet he still cracks his broken heart open even wider - wide enough to fit me, too. I wonder how much this must hurt him, the toll it just take to give more of himself to me when he already has so little left to give.
In slumber, his arm stays wrapped around me, encasing me for safekeeping. He would protect me even in his unconscious state, as we lie beneath my ceiling's half-painted sky.
This thought is enough to swell my heart - to swell, and to break. — Emery Lord