The Most Painful Words Quotes & Sayings

It's amazing how much power a smile holds. It's contagious and brightens people's day. It's also the most powerful camouflage. For that person who seems to have it all together is merely masking the pain of drowning tears. Don't be so quick to assume. — Brittany Burgunder

Words so easily and yet unfortunately uttered by many, be it to express their appreciation of fried bits of potatoes to sports teams on the television. Words offered so frivolously about a variety of subjects and yet can be the most difficult, most painful, most meaningful, most cherished syllables we gift another person. — Heather Lyons

The country was lumbering towards election day. Strike turned in early on Sunday and watched the day's gaffes, counterclaims and promises being tabulated on his portable TV. There was an air of joylessness in every news report he watched. The national debt was so huge that it was diffcult to comprehend. Cuts were coming, whoever won; deep, painful cuts; and sometimes, with their weasel words, the party leaders reminded Strike of the surgeons who had told him cautiously that he might experience a degree of discomfort; they who would never personally feel the pain that was about to be inflicted. — Robert Galbraith

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted. — Charles Horton Cooley

To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath.

We worry because we feel unsafe, and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire bad names doesn't get rid of it. What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don't like it. In other words, if we can really understand what we are looking for - that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it - we shall see that we do not want it at all. No one has to tell you that you should not hold your breath for ten minutes. You know that you can't do it, and that the attempt is most uncomfortable. — Alan W. Watts

I don't have it in me to deny her this, no matter how mad I am or how hurt. I'll always want her, regardless of what she does or what painful words she throws my way. All she has to do is say the word, and I'm hers. That probably makes me weak and pathetic, but right now I don't care. Because right now I'm pulling her to me and bending down to kiss her. — Kelley R. Martin

So, if this were indeed my Final Hour, these would be my words to you. I would not claim to pass on any secret of life, for there is none, or any wisdom except the passionate plea of caring ... Try to feel, in your heart's core, the reality of others. This is the most painful thing in the world, probably, and the most necessary. In times of personal adversity, know that you are not alone. Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all of your fellow humans everywhere in the world. Know that your commitment is above all to life itself. — Margaret Laurence

I grew up in the Deep South, where sexism, racism, and homophobia were and still are alive and well. I have early, early memories of words and actions of this type being very painful. — Pauley Perrette

There were over six hundred thousand words in the Oxford Dictionary. That meant there were six hundred thousand definitions of different words with a million and one meanings. Some words were silly while others were heartbreaking. Some words were happy while others were angry. So many different letters came together in different ways to form those different words, those unique meanings. So many words, but at the end of the day there was only one word that stood out among the rest. One word that somehow meant both heaven and hell, the sunny days and the rainy days, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It was the one word that made sense when everything else around you was messy, painful, and unapologetic. Love. With a smile, I wrapped my pinkie around his and said, I love you. — Brittainy C. Cherry

Writing about the spiritual life is like making prints from negatives...Often it is the dark forest that makes us speak about the open field. Frequently prison makes us think about freedom, hunger helps us to appreciate food, and war gives us words for peace. Not seldom are our vision of the future born out of the sufferings of the present and our hope for others out of our own despair. Only few "happy endings" make us happy but often someone's careful ad honest articulation of the ambiguities, uncertainties, and painful conditions of life gives us new hope. The paradox is indeed that new life is born out of the pains of the old. — Robert Durback

My dear boy', Le Chiffre spoke like a father, 'the game of Red Indians is over, quite over. You have stumbled by mischance into a game for grown-ups and you have already found it a painful experience. You are not equipped, my dear boy, to play games with adults and it very foolish of your nanny in London to have sent you out here with your spade and bucket. Very foolish indeed and most unfortunate for you.'
'But we must stop joking, my dear fellow, although I am sure you would like to follow me in developing this amusing little cautionary tale. — Ian Fleming

I thought you loved me. Taking it back so soon? Or is this it then? Have you built up enough of a case to walk away yet? Because I haven't said three fucking words to you that you've taken the meaning out of?
That broke me, because I'd let him see who I was, and all he saw was the worst of me. And even more painful, he seemed ready and willing to let me walk away. — R.K. Lilley

They stare at me like I've lost my mind and I try to mentally summon my lips to form words, but they are bound together by the painful memories crushing my heart. — Jessica Sorensen

My father,' I replied, 'I am fond of action. I like to succour the afflicted, and make people happy. Command that there be built for me a tower, from whose top I can see the whole earth, and thus discover the places where my help would be of most avai1.'
'To do good, without ceasing, to mankind, a race at once flighty and ungrateful, is a more painful task than you imagine,' said Asfendarmod.
After saying these words, my father motioned to us to retire; and immediately I found myself in a tower, built on the summit of Mount Caf - a tower whose outer walls were lined with numberless mirrors that reflected, though hazily and as in a kind of dream, a thousand varied scenes then being enacted on the earth. Asfendarmod's power had indeed annihilated space, and brought me not only within sight of all the beings thus reflected in the mirrors, but also within sound of their voices and of the very words they uttered. ("The Story of The Peri Homaiouna") — William Beckford

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in someways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed- is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them ... — Alice Walker

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. — William Hazlitt

Bullying can be physical, verbal or emotional. Words and threats are just as painful as fists, especially with social media these days. For those of you who don't know, I was actually bullied as a young boy on one occasion, — Derek Hough

A relationship between two people is made up, for the most part, of invisible things: memories, shared experiences, hopes and fears. When one person disappears, the other is left alone, as if holding a string with no kite. Memories can do a lot to sustain you, but the invisible stuff of the relationship is lost, even as unresolved issues remain: arguments never settled, kind words never uttered, things left un-said. They become like a splinter beneath the skin-unseen, but painful nevertheless. Until they're exposed, coping with the loss is impossible. — David Dosa

Ghost shook his head as he sat on the very edge of the bed, poised to take flight if need be. The spiral under his hair felt warm, almost painful, but he resisted the urge to rub it. It never helped when he did, and he was not sure what Gerry would do if the man saw it. The Witch had a symbol she called a triskele, the ink a vivid scarlet still, but no male that had ever come for healing bore a mark like hers, or like his. He had never found the words to ask the Witch about it, about why he was marked like a witch. — Morwen Navarre

Words. I think sometimes when we find love we pretend it away, or ignore it, or tell ourselves we're imagining it. Because it's the most painful kind of hope there is. It can be ripped away so easily. By indifference. By death. — Rae Carson