Sweet But Painful Quotes & Sayings

Suffering is part of life,' she said. 'All the parts of life are jumbled up together; you can't separate out just the one thing.' She parred his hand again, kindly. 'I could let you kill me now, lovely man, and have peace and good dreams forever. But who knows what I get instead, if I stay? Maybe time to see a new grandchild. Maybe a good joke that sets me laughing for days. Maybe another handsome young fellow flirting with me.' She grinned toothlessly, then let loose another horrible, racking cough. Ehiru steadies her with shaking hands. 'I want every moment of my life, pretty man, the painful and the sweet alike. Until the very end. If these are all the memories I get for eternity, I want to take as many of them with me as I can. — N.K. Jemisin

The girl in the red coat would remain the the sweet but sore point in my biography: the promise never kept; the mystery that would always remain a mystery. And yet, I regretted nothing. Someday it would be less painful. Someday my heart would be light again. I had to only let it happen. — Nicolas Barreau

There is nothing between us but raw emotion, and it's painful yet has the sweet sting of addiction. — Penelope Fletcher

Eugene Peterson's language makes the Bible exciting and strong, sweet, sharp, persuasive, painful, personal, contemporary, kind, and dramatic - and available to every reader of this age. — Walter Wangerin

Oh, the sweet, painful pleasure of anticipation! — Genevieve Dewey

No matter how sweet is smells, if you know it will give you a discomfort later, don't even attempt to taste it. Discipline yourself to stay out of sin! — Israelmore Ayivor

Everything was coming together by coming apart ... It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful - just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them ... if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution. — Anne Lamott

Dangerous events were transformed over the years into humorous anecdotes; painful moments were modified into sweet tales of innocence. — Nicholas Sparks

To some an extremely sharp picture may be positively painful, for it will perhaps disturb and break the train of thought, whereas a less-defined one would allow the mind to wander at its own sweet will. — Francis Meadow Sutcliffe

Gratitude magnifies the sweet parts of life and diminishes the painful ones. — Yuval Levin

The depth of my love for him, of my need for him poured over me, both painful and sweet, both comforting and frightening. If anything happened to him, I didn't know how I would keep going. — Lisa Wingate

I used to believe that love and happiness were synonymous. I was a fool. Love intensifies all emotions. Nothing is so painful o so sweet, so thrilling or so desperate ... Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love thats essential. You are never so alive as when you love, never so alert, intuitive, attentive, never so smart or so compassionate. — John Dufresne

If I've learned anything in my life, it's that there is no darkness so absolute that it cannot be dispelled by the faintest of light," she explained.
His face softened as his eyes touched her, and his boot slid forward. "My sweet Fairy." He exhaled on a painful breath. "You can't imagine darkness. You are the only light I've ever known."
His tender words didn't match his pitiless features, but Farah still found hope. "You must believe that my light is more powerful than your darkness. And so let me touch you, instead. And everywhere that my fingers touch your flesh, they will clear away the blood and filth that you see, and will leave behind the light I've always wanted to give to you. — Kerrigan Byrne

Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is as bitter-sweet as it is self-induced. But as soon as love is reciprocated, one must be prepared to give up the passivity of simply being hurt to take on the responsibility of perpetrating hurt oneself. — Alain De Botton

We thought humble and proud at the same time, all at once in love again with this painful bittersweet lovely thing called flight. — Richard Bach

Sometimes at night
when the moon is almost
full and my hands go
numb from writing, I cleanse
myself of her poisoned love.
I welcome the water, the
inevitability of
death and embrace
the long painful road out
of love. — A.P. Sweet

Artists try to say things that can't be said. in a fragile net of words, gestures, or colors, we hope to capture a feeling; a taste; a painful longing. but the net is always too porous, and we are left with the sweet frustration of almost knowing, which is teasingly pleasurable. — Alan Alda

For that moment at least they seemed to give up external plans, theories, and codes, even the inescapable romantic curiosity about one another, to indulge in being simply and purely young, to share that sense of the world's affliction, that outgoing sorrow at the spectacle of Our Human Condition which anyone this age regards as reward or gratuity for having survived adolescence.
For them the music was sweet and painful, the strolling chains of tourists like a Dance of Death. They stood on the curb, gazing at one another, jostled against by hawkers and sightseers, lost as much perhaps in that bond of youth as in the depths of the eyes each contemplated. — Thomas Pynchon

You used to own the night and put it to good use, during that sweet spot after your father could no longer tell you when to go to sleep and before you shared an apartment with someone else. Is togetherness killing your productivity? When's the last time you stayed up until 4:00 a.m. testing the boundaries of your consciousness and Googling serial killers? But then you remember how hard it was, that moment between wakefulness and sleep. How the moment of settling down was almost physically painful, your mind pulling away from your body like a balloon being sucked into the atmosphere. He settles that. He tells you that your day was rich enough and now it is time to wind down. He helps you sleep. People need sleep. — Lena Dunham

Memory is sweet.
Even when it's painful, memory is sweet. — Li-Young Lee

Ah, sweet torture. This was the part I dreaded the most. When our eyes clashed, and everything, every horrible, wonderful, painful, ugly, beautiful, torturous, ruinous, gory bit of us came back to me. It was bad enough when I didn't have to look at him. But when I did - exquisite torment, with a touch of pleasure so concentrated, so brutally pure it had ruined my life. Broken my heart. Eviscerated my soul. I'd scraped what was left of that pathetic soul out myself, sawed it into little pieces and left it somewhere far behind. — R.K. Lilley

The lover I am; it befits me to burn;
but what is the reason for your weeping and burning?
The candle replied: 'Oh my ill-fated lover,
a honey-sweet [shirin] friend went away from me.
Someone like Shirin has deserted me;
there is fire on my head, as it was on Farhad's.'
The candle continued, while a painful flood
each moment gushed down on his yellow cheeks:
'Pretender, this love is not your game,
as you have no patience, no strength to stand.
Untouched you shrink from a single flame,
whereas I stand still until I am consumed.
If the fire of love has scorched your wings,
look at me: it burned me from head to foot. — Saadi

To Hope

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!
How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!
For me wilt thou renew the wither'd rose,
And clear my painful path of pointed thorn?
Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest,
Like the young hours that lead the tender year,
Enchantress! come, and charm my cares to rest: -
Alas! the flatterer flies, and will not hear!
A prey to fear, anxiety, and pain,
Must I a sad existence still deplore?
Lo! - the flowers fade, but all the thorns remain,
'For me the vernal garland blooms no more.'
Come then, 'pale Misery's love!' be thou my cure,
And I will bless thee, who, tho' slow, art sure. — Charlotte Turner Smith

The orange juice was sweet and sour, a sad and painful taste. — Ichigo Takano

Later - about halfway through the same meeting - do you know what she does?

She fucking kicks me! In the shin, under the table.

"Hmph," I groan, and my hands fist reflexively.

"You all right, Drew?" my father asks.

I can only nod and squeak, "Something in my throat." I cough dramatically.

See, I'm not about to go crying to Daddy either. But sweet Christ it hurt. You ever been kicked in the shin by a four-inch pointy shoe? For a man, there is only one area that's more painful to be kicked.

And that is a place that dare not speak its name. — Emma Chase

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

Sometimes, for revenge to be as sweet and painful as it is intended, some time has to pass. Time enough that people have forgotten about past hurts and humiliations. Time enough to make the poison of bitterness consume a soul. It was to be that time ...
Two worlds collide and find a common link. A plan was made, a price was paid and revenge was set in motion. — Elizabeth Bourgeret

People think first love is sweet, and never sweeter than when that first bond snaps. You've heard a thousand pop and country songs that prove the point; some fool got his heart broke. Yet that first broken heart is always the most painful, the slowest to mend, and leaves the most visible scar. What's so sweet about that? — Stephen King

Giles kissed her again, hard and furious. As if he hated her. He'd been in love for years, yet he'd never realized love could be like this. Like someone struck him with a club over and over again. Like fire devouring him. Sweet and terrible. Painful and fierce. — Anna Campbell

But maybe that's what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don't need us. They echo all by themselves. — Sangu Mandanna

Gritting my teeth as if it requires actual physical strength, I push the memory of him dying in my arms down, deep down. It almost seems to fight me, to want to surge into the forefront of my mind, and I sigh. Long ago I came to the realization that painful memories are persistent. The agony of them stays with you much longer, sharper, and clearer than sweet memories, that soften and assume a hazy, rosy glow in your mind, almost as if they have been airbrushed. Remembrance of pain is different; there is no muting of colors, no blurring of edges. No, its colors remain stark and bold, a palette of vibrant primary reds, blues, and yellows; its edges stay defined and razor sharp. Years later it can still cut you as deeply, make you bleed as profusely, as the day it was formed.
FROM AN UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRRESS — Lily Velden

Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are still there. Beauty, food and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding. Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger. — Rosamunde Pilcher

Yamane leaned over until he was right in Rory's face. "Being with me isn't sweet and romantic. I like it messy, desperate, and sometimes even a little painful."
Rory digested this. He felt something unwind deep inside him. As if he were detached from it, he allowed it to uncoil slowly, building up a pressure of anger and frustration ...
"My kidneys are bleeding, my ribs are broken, and I'm loaded with painkillers. If you Google messy and desperate, you'll find a picture of me. — Z.A. Maxfield

Life is a procession of painful lessons, and how precious those lessons are; so precious that we rejoice in the bitter-sweet gift of life. — Bryant McGill

That glass sliver in the heart. Amid a fluttery-delicious Benzedrine rush, virtually every remark made to you is freighted with destiny, a sweet-painful stab in the heart. And Benzedrine and champagne, what a combination! The Blond Actress was only just discovering what everybody else in Hollywood knew. — Joyce Carol Oates

In the fatal course of the most painful ailments, sometimes [ ... ], sometimes there occur sweet mornings of perfect repose- and that not owning to some blessed pill or potion [ ... ] or at least without our knowing that the loving hand of despair slipped us the drug. — Vladimir Nabokov