Pain Is Not Real Quotes & Sayings

Real fairy tales are not for the fainthearted. Children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B- on your midterm in French or you're the only girl in the school who doesn't have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if ever after could change? — Jodi Picoult

Her behaviors turn her psychic pain, which she fears is not legitimate, into physical pain, which is indisputably real. — Sheila M. Reindl

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

The real power is power over men. How does one man assert his power over another, Winston? By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in new shapes of your choosing." (Orwell) — Victoria Louise Sadler

The process of transforming the heart can be difficult because as we open it, we inevitably encounter our own pain and become more aware of the pain of others. In fact, much of our personality is designed to keep us from experiencing this suffering. We close down the sensitivity of our hearts so that we can block our pain and get on with things, but we are never entirely successful in avoiding it. Often, we are aware of our suffering just enough to make ourselves and everyone around us miserable. Carl Jung's famous dictum that "neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering" points to this truth. But if we are not willing to experience our own hurt and grief, it can never be healed. Shutting out our real pain also renders us unable to feel joy, compassion, love, or any of the other capacities of the heart. — Don Richard Riso

Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But even now, especially now, it seems to me that women have a strength about them that men never had. And I wonder how did men always get portrayed in the movies and such as the strong ones? How did it come to be that women are made to look like the weak ones who need protectin'? Truth is, it's men who need the protectin'. Really they do. Women have the strong thing inside of them and the can get through anything. They just can. They're used to pain of child birthing - pain no man knows - and some women being battered around and not treated right through all the centuries and having to learn at a real young age how to stay alive on the inside when the outside is being hurt real bad. Most all women know that. But men. Those poor men. They just don't have the inside strength the women do. It's harder for men to feel pain. — Sarah Felix Burns

There is nothing but love. There was nothing but love. Love is all it is, and nothing exists that does not exist of love. That which is real and true is love. Suffering pain and loss is not real. Reality is that which is from love and love is the essence of the divine. What is not love is not real. What is not real is a construct made up by the ego through the instrument of the mind. It is the world of illusion, the veil on our eyes of utter darkness preventing us from seeing that which is real and true, which is love — Maha Khalid

The worst thing about this modern world is that people think you get killed on television with zero pain and zero blood. It must enter into kids' heads that it's not very messy to kill somebody, and it doesn't hurt that much. That's a real sickness to me. That's a real sick thing. — David Lynch

The truth is that no one can keep you captive. No one can keep you unhappy. No one can keep you abused. Our lives rise to the level we accept. I do believe we can rise from the screaming blood of our losses, of extreme pain, physically debilitating emotion, psychological neglect, and apathy, and not merely survive, but thrive. We do not need to let our histories or our losses define us except in the way we choose. We can use them as fuel to create real depth, beauty, connectedness, and compassion in our lives. Our stories can make us exceptional people, not damaged ones. If we choose to be truthful with ourselves. And if we choose to digest and release the pain rather than try to avoid it. This is how pain accumulates and creates more pain, leading to neurosis, pathology, and brittleness of spirit. — Jewel

What the real world is: that is a very difficult problem,' the man called Leader said as he lay on his stomach. 'What it is, is a metaphysical proposition. But this is the real world. There is no doubt about that. The pain one feels in this world is real pain. Deaths caused in this world are real deaths. Blood shed in this world is real blood. This is no imitation world, no imaginary world, no metaphysical world. I guarantee you that. But this is not the 1984 that you know. — Haruki Murakami

The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness. And real love
it's less shiny than solid and simple. — Deb Caletti

I am interested in shows that are not out-and-out gag fests: you see the truth of a broken heart behind them. That is what life is like: it's really funny, you see funny things as soon as you step out of the room, but underneath that is a whole bag of broken hearts. It's that real pain and that real hilarity that makes life so intriguing. — Tamsin Greig

We may have to face God's truth about our pain
it is real, but we must be careful not to get God and life mixed up. God does not cause the pain and sorrow. He suffers with us and desires to comfort us as only he can. — Jill Briscoe

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 good times and the bad times both will pass. It will pass. It will get easier. But the fact that it will get easier does not mean that it doesn't hurt now. And when people try to minimize your pain they are doing you a disservice. And when you try to minimize your own pain you're doing yourself a disservice. Don't do that. The truth is that it hurts because it's real. It hurts because it mattered. And that's an important thing to acknowledge to yourself. But that doesn't mean that it won't end, that it won't get better. Because it will. — John Green

The terrible threat against life, he said in his book God Is Not Yet Dead, is not death, nor pain, nor any variation on the disasters that we so obsessively try to protect ourselves against with our social systems and personal stratagems. The terrible threat is "that we might die earlier than we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years."[6] — Eugene H. Peterson

If beauty is pain - let me get lost in it. If you're my salvation - I want to earn it. If love is all I have to give - then let me give it. You. It's all for you."
Gabe's eyes opened and locked in on mine.
"How can I prove that what I feel is real? You ask for truth I give you lies. You ask for joy I make you cry. But I don't want to lose you. Not like this. Not when I've left your heart in such a mess. Give me one chance - I'm letting go of the past - but I need you here to know."
"If beauty is pain - let me get lost in it. If you're my salvation - I want to earn it. If love is all I have to give - then let me give it. You, it's all for you." He paused, hitting the last few notes, and the song ended.
Gabe's smile lit up the room.
But I was frozen in place.
Me. He'd sung that to me. — Rachel Van Dyken

Disappointment is considered bad. A thoughtless prejudice. How, if not through disappointment, should we discover what we have expected and hoped for? And where, if not in this discovery, should self-knowledge lie? So how could one gain clarity about oneself without disappointment?
...
One could have the hope that he would become more real by reducing expectations, shrink to a hard, reliable core and thus be immune to the pain of disappointment. But how would it be to lead a life that banished every long, bold expectation, a life where there were only banal expectations like "the bus is coming"? — Pascal Mercier

As much as we want to deny it, betrayal and pain - whether real or imagined - are part of life. We can choose to grow past it or allow it to hold us tethered to the moment of our injury forever. Because one person chose the latter, we have all been deceived. But the time is coming when their deception and control will be exposed. No one can hold fire to their chest and not eventually be burned. — Michelle Bolanger

He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear ... It's too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it's as of now real ... He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all ... But he could choose not to listen. — David Foster Wallace

Strangely enough we strengthen love in ourselves when we raise into consciousness the shadow side of our lives. Conversely, when we keep negative feelings out of sight, they smother the love that seems to lie deeper and closer to the real self. This is probably why there is so much pain in not loving. The life that is not able to express the love which is so integral to it grows deformed. — Elizabeth O'Connor

We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted. — Henepola Gunaratana

Leo glanced back, his face streaked with soot. "Apollo, you sense anything?"
"Why is it my job to sense things? Just because I used to be a god of prophecy-"
"You're the one who's been having visions," Calypso reminded me. "You said your friend Meg would be here."
Just hearing Meg's name gave me a twinge of pain. "That doesn't mean I can pinpoint her location with my mind!" Zeus has revoked my access to GPS!"
"GPS?" Calypso asked.
"Godly positioning system."
"That's not a real thing! — Rick Riordan

The only real, true, permanent way to destroy your mind control is to work through the memories. It's unfortunate because it's unpleasant. It hurts to work through your memories; they have pain. Memories are not just made up of ideas, and thoughts and storylines, they are also made up of physical pain and emotional pain and sadness and distress and despair and all of those things are part of memories. — Alison Miller

If you dear little girls would only learn what real beauty is, and not pinch and starve and bleach yourselves out so, you'd save an immense deal of time and money and pain. A happy soul in a healthy body makes the best sort of beauty for man or woman. — Louisa May Alcott

The only way to heal the pain which will not heal itself is to forgive the person who hurt you. Forgiveness heals the memory's vision ... You set a prisoner free, but you discover the real prisoner was yourself. — Lewis B. Smedes

Most people bestow tremendous power onto those human beings we consider evil, who cause of threaten harm to others, even though we know they are acting from their own pain or fear. Would ignoring evil disarm it? Don't dismiss the idea. As we have declared War on Terror, a War on Drugs, a War on Poverty, a War on Crime, the problems only seem to have gotten bigger. We cling tthe notion of evil as detrimental, unpredictable force in our world and refuse any suggestion that it is not real. We argue for our fear about terrorism or climate change or economic instability, heatedly trying to prove that things are only getting worse. And in doing so, we reinforce the principle that what we focus on grows. We create our experience by where we place our attention. What we resist, persists. — Ellen Debenport

Reality is painful and imperfect ... That's just the way it is, that's how we distinguish it from dreams. When something seems absolutely lovely we think it can only be a dream, and we pinch ourselves just to be sure we're really not dreaming - if it hurts it's because we're not dreaming. Reality can hurt us, even those moments when it may seem to us to be a dream. You can find everything that exists in the world in books - sometimes truer in colors, and without the real pain of everything that really does exist. Given a choice between life and books, my son, you must choose books — Jose Eduardo Agualusa

There's a saying that goes something like: 'We are all one drink or pill away from addiction,' and I know this is meant to destigmatize what addicts go through, but I feel like I've been seeing variations on this 'common knowledge' more and more lately being used (on social media) as a cudgel to remind patients to not overdo it," Anna says, speaking to the dual-edged sword of awareness. A motto designed to humanize the experience of addiction has been turned into a weapon that targets people who rely on opioids for pain management, and that translates to real-world stigma. — S. E. Smith

It's not unfortunate that people aren't genuine; what's unfortunate is that insincere people try to act sincere and in doing so, mislead and deceive the other. I would rather meet a person who is not amiable and who does not feel any burden to act amiable towards me, than to have the misfortune of knowing people who feel like they need to be gracious and compassionate so they will appear to be good people, whilst possessing none of those qualities within themselves! It's the latter that causes the pain in life. And that's another reason why I don't believe in religion; I have observed that religion tells people that it is highly prized a quality to act kind and compassionate and so on and so forth, but some people just do not have these innate qualities within them! We get deceived, and I'd rather not be deceived! I'd rather be able to see a person for who he/she is and not judge a brute for being a brute, but avoid the brute who carries the burden of acting like a wonderful one! — C. JoyBell C.

There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. — Neil Gaiman

Hope is not wishful thinking. It's not a temperament we're born with. It is a stance toward life that we can choose ... not not. The real question for me, though, is whether m hope is effective, whether it produces or is just where I hide to ease my own pain. — Frances Moore Lappe

Now it is as if I remember my grief rather than experience it. I remember the pain I suffered as the memories washed over me where I sat on the deck that day. Now I have only the memories of my own feelings, not the feelings themselves. That day the feelings were still alive, the pain real. Now I look back and I can see every detail but I am not there, inside it. My own pain is now forever calcified. I carry it with me, but it is no longer alive. (10) — Linda Olsson

These times are hard, but I won't walk away jaded, darker, different. I feel. I cry to heal. If you saw me in those moments, maybe you'd think I was a mess. But I don't call it a mess. I call it strength.

Real strength isn't about building walls. Real strength is about staying open, no matter what. It's about taking life - with all the pleasures that fade and all the pain that sticks around for too long - and not shutting down, not closing down, not building up those walls.

Resilience isn't hard, impenetrable, iron. Resilience is flexible, soft, warm.

Stay strong. The real kind of strong. Don't let your automatic mind reflexes make you jump away from pain and towards pleasure. Make choices. See clearly. And never, ever, stop feeling.

Don't go numb. The world, even with all its horror, is too beautiful to miss. — Vironika Tugaleva

For all the pain I saw at Paterson, it is nothing compared to the pain that people inflict upon each other in the real world. All I can think of now is that it is not right for me to be unaware of that pain, including the pain that I inflict on others. Only how is it possible to live without being either numb to it or overwhelmed by it? — Francisco X Stork

Quiet fell upon the pickup and lasted for a little over nineteen minutes.
Is that why you hang around with him?", Loretta asked. "Cuz he saved your life?"
"Sort'a. I know Earl isn't always easy to get along with. Fact is, he can be a real pain the ass more often than not, but after you spend enough time with him, and you learn to ignore his personality, he's a pretty decent guy."
"If you say so. — A. Lee Martinez

You are a living, breathing, organic being. Of course you can feel pain, of course you can feel hurt, of course it feels overwhelming sometimes as the jagged, rough, and hard world outside bumps up against your soft skin. You are not a machine that rams through each experience, performing tasks with no emotions. You are alive. You are alive. You are alive. Be kind to this soft creature as it learns its way around a busy and loud world. Be easy with yourself because some days you'll be the only one who is. But that's okay because you're the only one that makes a real difference. — Emily Maroutian

I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies spread out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing- not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing- could have made up for the curious pain of the effort. — Harold Brodkey

I look back at James one last time, and he gives me his signature smile, wide and cocky. but it's not real. Sometimes I think it's never real. James is the best at hiding his pain, disgusing the feelings. He knows what it takes to stay out of the Program. He'll keep us safe.
He promised. — Suzanne Young

But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition.
They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide hipped mother, auwesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, mothers who would fight for us, who would kill for us, and die for us. — Janet Fitch

Chamberlain closed his eyes and saw it again. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. No book or music would have that beauty. He did not understand it: a mile of men flowing slowly, steadily, inevitably up the long green ground, dying all the while, coming to kill you, and the shell bursts appearing above them like instant white flowers, and the flags all tipping and fluttering, and dimly you could hear the music and the drums, and then you could hear the officers screaming, and yet even above your own fear came the sensation of unspeakable beauty. He shook his head, opened his eyes. Professor's mind. But he thought of Aristotle: pity and terror. So this is tragedy. Yes. He nodded. In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question. — Michael Shaara

One reason Christians respond positively to a needs psychology is that it takes people's pain seriously. However, this perspective can actually make pain worse. It compounds pain by suggesting that not did the sins of others hurt deeply, but they also deprived you of something
a right, something you were owed
that is necessary for life. Being deeply hurt by others is hard enough, but when we believe that their sin was a near-lethal blow that damaged the core of our being, the hurt is intensified ... Therefore, one task in counseling is to begin to separate the real hurt from the pain that is amplified by our own lusts and longings. — Edward T. Welch

The real danger is found in Humanity's refusal to move beyond the trap of instinct and into the intellectual mind. The refusal to accept our health and the health of every other living thing on this planet must always come before profit. Whether it's the oil companies, pharmaceutical companies; or anyone else; we are not Gods no matter how much the New Agers like to proclaim it. In that path lies the rubble of the enemy of life, his Fallen God Bombers and his murderous dark medics. Out of that emanates the force of fear; fear of judgement, fear of difference and fear the other will bring you pain. — Cole J. Davis

Remember: God's grief at the unspeakable things we do to one another is beyond measuring, but so is His mercy. It might seem a terrible thing to say to people who've lost and suffered so much at the hands of hatred and violence. But true courage is not to hate our enemy, any more than to fight and kill him. To love him, to love in the teeth of his hate - that is real bravery. That ought to earn people m-m-medals. — Tony Hendra

He wants to run, but where? However far he goes, he will not escape, cannot escape his own loathsome self. He will always be trapped within his own body, his own mind. The emotional pain that comes with this realization is so strong, it feels physical. He senses it knotting and twisting inside his body, ready to destroy him from within. He is losing his grip, he is losing his mind. Does anyone else know what it is to be dead yet still alive? This is it. This is it . A half-world of torment, where memories frozen into oblivion slowly begin to thaw. A place where everything hurts, where your conscious mind has neither the strength to let you function in the real world, nor the power to return you to hibernation. — Tabitha Suzuma

Courage is not limited to the battlefield or the Indianapolis 500 or bravely catching a thief in your house. The real tests of courage are much quieter. They are the inner tests, like remaining faithful when nobody's looking, like enduring pain when the room is empty, like standing alone when you're misunderstood. — Charles R. Swindoll

It's very simple: I want his love. I need Christian Grey to love me. This is why I am so reticent about our relationship
because on some basic, fundamental level, I recognize within me a deep-seated compulsion to be loved and cherished. And because of his fifty shades, I am holding myself back. The BDSM is a distraction from the real issue. The sex is amazing, he's wealthy, he's beautiful, but this is all meaningless without his love, and the real heart-fail is that I don't know if he's capable of love. He doesn't even love himself. I recall his self-loathing, her love being the only form he found acceptable. Punished
whipped, beaten, whatever their relationship entailed
he feels undeserving of love. Why does he feel like that? How can he feel like that? His words haunt me: It's very hard to grow up in a perfect family when you're not perfect. I close my eyes, imagining his pain, and I can't begin to comprehend it. — E.L. James

If only I had cried, just once. I watched myself not crying. Jaw firm. Swallow. Break something. Quick. The mirror there, broken. And again. Smash your fist into it. A reassuring pain, masking the real one. The one that is not there. Which you force yourself not to feel. Sweep up the fragments. And away with them. To know, to know better, that not crying is crying. And yet you do not cry. Firm up the jaw. Swallow. — Milena Michiko Flasar

And once it's reached that point, I'm left as alone as I've always known is the safest I could ever be. Except that I have the worst pain I've ever felt, and I feel it all. It's all of mine to feel. The only thing I'm sure is absolutely real. It keeps me company. The same way it would be trapped somewhere with someone that you hate. Wishing they weren't there, but needing them to be there. This is where the old survival skills start coming back, not quite as at my command as they used to be. They tell me to keep my right amount of distance, the only real way to be strong. But then I realize those parts of me that have been pieced together and have come back, to different degrees. Their revival works against survival. I know how to make myself untouchable. But when I tell myself how to, something answers me by telling me it's too late for that. — Ashly Lorenzana

I believe that it is only through empathy, that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan child or an Iraqi prisoner, becomes real to me and not just passing news. And it is at times like this when I ask myself, am I prepared - like Huck Finn - to give up Sunday school heaven for the kind of hell that Huck chose? — Azar Nafisi

The only way to bear the overwhelming pain of oppression is by telling, in all its detail, in the presence of witnesses and in a context of resistance, how unbearable it is. If we attempt to craft resistance without understanding this task, we are collectively vulnerable to all the errors of judgement that unresolved trauma generates in individuals. It is part of our task as revolutionary people, people who want deep-rooted, radical change, to be as whole as it is possible for us to be. This can only be done if we face the reality of what oppression really means in our lives, not as abstract systems subject to analysis, but as an avalanche of traumas leaving a wake of devastation in the lives of real people who nevertheless remain human, unquenchable, complex and full of possibility. — Aurora Levins Morales

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles. — Epictetus

I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together. — Virginia Woolf

CHARACTER of the HAPPY WARRIOR. Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he Whom every Man in arms should wish to be? - It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought: Whose high endeavours are an inward light That make the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 10 But makes his moral being his prime care; Who, doom'd to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! — William Wordsworth

The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information ... [but] it cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. So, in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us ... the scientific worldview contains of itself ... not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination. — Erwin Schrodinger

The value of experience, real or imagined, is that is shows us how to - or how NOT to - live. In reading about different characters and the consequences of their choices, I was finding myself changed. I was discovering new and distinct ways of undergoing life's sorrows and joys ...
and all the great books I was reading - were about the complexity and entirety of the human experience. About the things we wish to forget and those we want more and more of. About how we react and how we wish we could react. Books ARE experience, the words of authors proving the solace of love, the fulfillment of family, the torment of war, and the wisdom of memory. Joy and tears, pleasure and pain: everything came to me while I read in my purple chair. i had never sat so still, and yet experienced so much. — Nina Sankovitch

Honest autoethnographic exploration generates a lot of fears and self-doubt and emotional pain. Just when you think you can't stand the pain anymore that's when the real work begins. Then there is the vulnerability of revealing yourself, not being able to take back what you 've written or having any control over how readers interpret your story. — Carolyn Ellis

The pain is not about having cheap people around ... . real pain is the fact that there are some people with a price to start with. — Sameh Elsayed

Symptoms of illness and distress, plus your feelings about them, can be viewed as messengers coming to tell you something important about your body or about your mind. In the old days, if a king didn't like the message he was given, he would sometimes have the messenger killed. This is tantamount to suppressing your symptoms or your feelings because they are unwanted. Killing the messenger and denying the message or raging against it are not intelligent ways of approaching healing. The one thing we don't want to do is to ignore or rupture the essential connections that can complete relevant feedback loops and restore self-regulation and balance. Our real challenge when we have symptoms is to see if we can listen to their message and really hear them and take them to heart, that is, make the connection fully. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

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

God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Some words we use all the time are difficult to define when we actually have to think about them. We use the word "evil" all the time but when asked to define what we are talking about, it can be quite difficult.

Think about evil as you would think of counterfeit currency. A counterfeit is the corruption of something real. You can have real currency without the existence of any counterfeits. You cannot, however, have counterfeits without the real thing existing first. Evil is dependent on the existence of goodness but goodness is not dependent on evil. Goodness was there first. It is an absolute. Evil must always be thought of in relationship with absolute goodness. — Jon Morrison

Like if youre beautiful you dont feel pain or have dreams or know the despair of loneliness. Why should you be unhappy, youre so beautiful? My God they drive me nuts, like all I am is a beautiful body and nothing else. Not once, never, have they ever tried to love the real me, to love me for what I am, to love me for my mind. — Hubert Selby Jr.

The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end. — C. G. Jung

Are you in pain, Frodo?' said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo's side.
'Well, yes I am,' said Frodo. 'It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.'
'Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,' said Gandalf.
'I fear it may be so with mine,' said Frodo. 'There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?'
Gandalf did not answer. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm not a real gadgety person. But bottle opener is probably the gadget I can't live without. Actually, I can open a bottle of beer pretty easily without it, but wine is always too much of a pain in the (rear) to open that up. So a corkscrew is probably the gadget that I can't live without. — Dave Matthews

Flesh does strange things to memory. Pain and joy both alter it. When you are happy, you remember things one way. When you are sad, you remember them another. And sometimes the flesh does not admit that memory is real at all or plucks false memories out of thin air. — Tanya Karen Gough

Spiritual pain is when you can't stand another moment not knowing the real truth, and when you finally do know you can't let go. — Shannon L. Alder

All living beings have experience of pleasure and pain, and we are among them. What makes human beings different is that we have a powerful intelligence and a much greater ability to achieve happiness and avoid suffering. Real happiness and friendship come not from money or even knowledge, but from warm-heartednes s. Once we recognize this we will be more inclined to cultivate it. — Dalai Lama

Grief brings us great pain, but the Other Side teaches us that this pain is not about the absence of love - it's about the continuation of that love. The brilliant cords of love that connect us to someone in this life endure into the afterlife. And when we feel unbearable pain at the loss of a loved one, it is like we are tugging on that cord of love. The pain is real because the cord is real. Our love doesn't end - it goes on. — Laura Lynne Jackson

Contrary to what I had thought, I did not need easing circumstances, relief from difficulty, and distance from pain in order to be free. I was learning that the freedom Jesus secured for me is not freedom from pain and suffering here and now. Rather, it's freedom from bitterness, anger, fear, resentment, self-pity, offense, and hopelessness in the crucible of present pain and suffering; it is freedom from my burdensome sense of "I deserve better," the encumbrance of entitlement. I was realizing that only the gospel can free us from the enslaving pressure to defend ourselves. That's real freedom - God-sized freedom! — Tullian Tchividjian

Do not try to drive pain away by pretending it is not real. If you seek serenity in oneness, pain will vanish of its own accord. — Sengcan

The causes of this distribution I do not know; but from our present point of view it ought to be clear that the real problem is not why some humble pious believing people suffer, but why some do not. Our Lord Himself, it will be remembered, explained the salvation of those who are fortunate in this world only by referring to the unsearchable omnipotence of God. — C.S. Lewis

I will say without reservations that from my point of view there can be no abstractions. Any shape or area that has not the pulsating concreteness of real flesh and bones, its vulnerability to pleasure or pain is nothing at all. Any picture that does not provide the environment in which the breath of life can be drawn does not interest me. — Mark Rothko

It's total bullshit. I hate it when people make sadness all deep and beautiful and, like- profound. That's the word it's not profound. It's not beautiful. It sucks. It sucks balls. I think it makes non-sad people feel better. Like, they think if must be a good thing to be sad, because you're getting all this insight into real life and pain or whatever. Like how people say tears are like rain. Fuck off. Tears are just tears and they make your eyes hurt and they won stop when you want them to and ugh you get all those arty photos of girls crying - it's always girls, have you noticed?- and it's so beautiful and tasteful and moving. When the reality is your face goes all blotchy and your nose runs and you can taste it every time you breathe'
'Taste what?'
'It. Pain. Sadness. I'm just saying that sadness isn't beautiful and if it looks that way, it's a lie. — Sara Barnard

The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the "I" out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate "I" or mind can be found. — Alan W. Watts

The costumes help. They make it less real, disguise what it really is both for the actors and for the people who'll see it on the screen. It's like the people who read Anna Karenina, and because it's in Russia they can say, 'Oh, that's not my pain they're talking about.' And Chris is tough. She goes from one thing to the next and doesn't worry about the past. When a cat sits mere purring on your lap, you know for a fact she isn't thinking about her former owner; she's thinking about her dinner. That's Chris. — Barbara Hambly

Without repentance, there is no real progress or improvement in life. Pretending there is no sin does not lessen its burden and pain. Suffering for sin does not by itself change anything for the better. Only repentance leads to the sunlit uplands ofa better life. — D. Todd Christofferson

1. Live now. Be concerned with the present rather than with past or future.
2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent.
3. Stop imagining. Experience the real.
4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see.
5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge.
6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness.
7. Accept no should or ought other than your own. Adore no graven image.
8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts.
9. Surrender to being as you are. — Claudio Naranjo

Ian gave a sigh of exaggerated patience and glanced at Bones.
"Being related to her through you is a real trial."
This time, Bones didn't attempt to conceal his grin. "That's why you can pick your friends but not your family, cousin."
An emotion flashed across Ian's face before he covered it with his usual I'm-a-pain-in-the-ass-and-proud-of-it smirk. If it were anyone else, I'd swear it was childlike joy at hearing Bones call him "cousin". Recent events had revealed their long-lost human connection, making Ian both Bones's vampire sire and his only living blood relative.
That meant I was never getting rid of him. Then again, considering what my blood relatives had done, Ian was almost a saint by comparison. — Jeaniene Frost

Pain exists only in the mind. Whether an event is real or not doesn't matter, only that the mind believes it is. Suffering can be suspended by achieving new beliefs and perspectives. We see what we want to see, and feel what we want to feel. Never doubt that the life you lead is the life you want. — Shaman Elizabeth Herrera

Feelings are intangible," he said. "You can't see them, can't touch them. You can hurt and no one would know. But physical pain is real. You can see blood and broken bones. It's simple in a way feelings are not, and cutting makes the abstract pain of feelings substantial. — Shaun David Hutchinson

People believe a man is in distress because his loved one dies in one day. But his real pain is less futile: it is that he finds out that sadness too does not last. Even pain has no meaning. — Albert Camus

Often, your lessons will not come easily. Suffering has always been a vehicle for deep spiritual growth. Those who have endured great suffering are generally the ones who evolve into great beings. Those who have been deeply hurt by life are generally the ones who can feel the pain of others in a heartbeat. Those who have endured adversity become humbled by life, and as a result, are more open, compassionate and real. We may not like suffering when it visits us, but it serves us so very well: it cracks the shell that covers our hearts and empties us of the lies we have clung to about who we are, why we are here and how this remarkable world of ours really functions. Once emptied, we can be refilled with all that is good, noble and true. Troubles can transform, if we choose to allow them to do so. As Joseph Campbell — Robin S. Sharma

Wanna know what a bullet feels like, Warren? A real one? It's not like in the comics ... I think you need to. Feel it ... It's not going to make a neat little hole. First - it'll obliterate your internal organs. Your lung will collapse, feels like drowning ... When it finally hits your spine, it'll blow your central nervous system- ... I'm talking. The pain will be unbearable, but you won't be able to move ... A bullet usually travels faster than this, of course. But the dying? It seems like it takes forever. Something, isn't it? One tiny piece of metal destroys everything. It ripped her insides out ... It took her light away. From me. From the world ... And now the one person who should be here is gone - and a waste like you gets to live. A tiny piece of metal. Can you feel it now? — Joss Whedon

Although I was deliberately dismissive of this idea at the beginning of the chapter, the real answer is, "Well, yes, sort of." Nathan DeWall, together with Naomi Eisenberger and other social rejection researchers, conducted a series of studies to test out the idea that over-the-counter painkillers would reduce social pain, not just physical pain. In the first study, they looked at two groups of people. Half of them took 1,000 milligrams a day of acetaminophen (that is, Tylenol), and half of them took equivalently sized placebo pills with no active substances in them. Both groups took their pills every day for three weeks. Each night, the participants answered questions by e-mail regarding the amount of social pain they had felt that day. By the ninth day of the study, the Tylenol group was reporting feeling less social pain than the placebo group. — Matthew D. Lieberman

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto
or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it, nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers
show me yours
show me that it is possible
show me your achievement
and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. — Ayn Rand

She acknowledged each person's nearness to the dead and helped the group in its struggle for order-who grieved most, whose pain was most real-because in life there is always hierarchy, and it is frankly not profitable to remain modest and anonymous, not even at a funeral. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Katniss?" He drops my hand and I take a step, as if to catch my balance.
"It was all for the Games," Peeta says. "How you acted."
"Not all of it," I say, tightly holding onto my flowers.
"Then how much? No, forget that. I guess the real question is what's going to be left when we get home?" he says.
"I don't know. The closer we get to District Twelve, the more confused I get," I say. He waits, for further explanation, but none's forthcoming.
"Well, let me know when you work it out," he says, and the pain in his voice is palpable. — Suzanne Collins

In terms of the real quality of a human being, only when suffering comes, when pain comes, does a man stand up as a human being. You can see great human beings surface only when the society is really suffering. When India was under the oppression of British rulers, how many wonderful people stood up? Where are they now? They have just fallen back into their comforts, that's all. All those Ghandis, Patels, Tilaks are still there, but they're dormant. When pain came, they all became alive. They left everything behind and stood up as giants. Where are they now? This is the human misfortune that still there's not enough intelligence in the world that human beings will rise to their peaks when everything is well. They wait for calamities. — Jaggi Vasudev

The pain he feels in his own gut is either something to do with the caffeine, or the stress of realizing that if it's not snipers or blindness stealing your children, it's cancer coming to snipe your wife, and there's not a fucking thing a guy can do about any of it except to drop to his knees and pray, to pretend like someone or something that gives a shit is on teh other end of the line, to pretend anything, like you did when you were a kid until the pretending seems real, because without that all you've got for comfort is what's in front of your face ... — Scott Wrobel

The flinch is your real opponent, and information won't help you fight it. It's behind every unhappy marriage, every hidden vice, and every unfulfilled life. Behind the flinch is pain avoidance, and dealing with pain demands strength you may not think you have. — Julien Smith

A beam of pink light blinded him; he felt dreadful pain in his head, and clapped his hands to his eyes. I am blind! he realized. With the pain and the pink light came understanding, an acute knowledge; he knew that Zina was not a human woman, and he knew, further, that the boy Manny was not a human boy. This was not a real world he was in; he understood that because the beam of pink light had told him that. This world is a simulation, and something living and intelligent and sympathetic wanted him to know. Something cares about me and it has penetrated this world to warn me, he realized, and it is camouflaged as this world so that the master of this world, the lord of this unreal realm, will not know; not know it is here and not know it has told me. This is a terrible secret to know, he thought. I could be killed for knowing this. — Philip K. Dick

Often pain is not real but just a perception. — Debasish Mridha

He quickened his stride: 'The truth is in the paradox, Miss Drake. Anything not done in submission to God, anything not done to the glory of God, is doomed to failure, frailty, and futility. This is the unholy trinity we humans fear most. And we should, for we entertain it all the time at the pain and expense of not knowing the real one. — Carolyn Weber

You are going to do some really stupid and mean things in the name of love. Don't be so hard on yourself when things don't turn out. You are a good person that loved deeply. Anybody worth having will know that hurting someone is not showing someone who you really are. You're a sensitive person that showed the depth of your love, by the depth of your pain. Fairytale love will show you only one face. Real love will show you as many faces as it takes to get you to see how much that person really wanted you in their life. — Shannon L. Alder

I have two children of my own. Crying is not evidence of pain or any real suffering. It's really just the way children communicate. — Jill Greenberg

The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.
Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God. — Jerome K. Jerome

Real men are told, "I'm sorry, I'm not interested" or "I have a friend who is single that I would like to introduce you to" when they are rejected. That is pretty much it. No dramatic scenes, no broken hearts, no agonizing pain or suffering to keep them awake at night. It just happens, life goes on, they meet another woman, and she keeps them awake at night. — W. Anton