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Going through a painful time? These pain quotes are here to help you process your pain and find better feelings today.
We all have painful times in our lives, and look for ways to get through them.
Whether your pain is physical, emotional, or both, we hope the following pain quotes help you process and understand it so you can get past it and enjoy life again.
Page Contents
Top 10 Pain Quotes
People go through so much pain trying to avoid pain.
Neill Strauss
It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
Marquis de Sade
That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt.
John Green
The pain will leave once it has finished teaching you.
Bruce Lee
Life is pain, so live it up while you can.
Ernest Hemingway
Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
Kenji Miyazawa
My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain.
Charlie Chaplin
Quotes about Pain
Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.
Ovid
Pain is a fact. Suffering is a choice.
Naval Ravikant
Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me pain is pleasure.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behind every beautiful thing, there’s been some kind of pain.
Bob Dylan
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Marcus Aurelius
Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one.
John Sterling
From hurt comes pain, from pain comes change. If it hurts enough, change will happen.
Tripp Evans
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure but to avoid pain.
Aristotle
Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.
Mary Tyler Moore
If experience is the mother of wisdom, pain is the father.
Thibaut
Pain is constant. You either suffer the pain of discipline, or the pain of regret.
Yvan Byeajee
Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.
Tony Robbins
Make friends with pain and you’ll never be alone.
Ken Chlouber
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
Buddha
It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.
Julius Caesar
If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain—in time you will move through your pain.
Bryant McGill
Just like there’s always time for pain, there’s always time for healing.
Jennifer Brown
We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.
Paolo Coelho
If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.
Zora Neale Hurston
You must possess strength to inflict pain, Bob.
The Joker, Batman (1989)
The greatest evil is physical pain.
St. Augustine
Pain is a part of growing up. It’s how we learn.
Dan Brown
Pain pays the income of each precious thing.
William Shakespeare
Sometimes pain can drive a man harder than pleasure.
Don Ingall
Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.
Lance Armstrong
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.
Thomas Jefferson
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
James Baldwin
We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to.
C.S. Lewis
Adventures are all very well in their place, but there’s a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
Neil Gaiman
In moments of pain, we seek revenge.
Ami Ayalon
The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before.
C.S. Lewis
Often it’s the deepest pain which empowers you to grow into your highest self.
Anonymous
There’s beauty in pain, and everyone experiences it – and it’s a lesson.
Wynter Gordon
If I can see pain in your eyes then share with me your tears. If I can see joy in your eyes then share with me your smile.
Santosh Kalwar
Pain is like a love affair. When it’s over it’s over.
Elyse Sommer
Pain is immune to empathy… like love.
Barbara Lazear Ascher
The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.
Eckhart Tolle
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
Erma Bombeck
I think that humans have a huge capacity to carry pain and sadness.
Henry Rollins
Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
William Goldman
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.
Wayne Dyer
We don’t even ask for happiness, just a little less pain.
Charles Bukowski
But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.
Margaret Atwood
Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.
Carl Jung
Experiencing Pain
Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.
J.K. Rowling
Sit with the pain until it passes, and you will be calmer for the next one.
Naval Ravikant
The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.
Publilius Syrus
Failure gave me strength. Pain was my motivation.
Michael Jordan
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Khalil Gibran
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John Keats
Don’t be scared… Women can handle the worst kind of pain. You’ll find out one day.
Gayle Foreman
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.
Dalai Lama
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya Angelou
Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.
Cesare Pavese
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.
Bob Marley
We’ve all felt misunderstood during times of great pain.
Megan Devine
When it hurts – observe. Life is trying to teach you something.
Anita Krizzan
The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
Lois Lowry
We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.
Jim Rohn
I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.
Walter Anderson
All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.
Cicero
If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it, to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger.
Sara J. Maas
Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
Iain Thomas
It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness.
Chuck Palahniuk
We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
Alan Watts
Sometimes you weren’t supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.
Sarah Addison Allen
This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and… if I think of human beings I’ve known and of my own life, such as it is, I can’t recall any case of pain which didn’t, on the whole, enrich life.
Malcolm Muggeridge
God gave us pain to remind us we are alive, so we will learn to value the joys and beauty of the world.
Tom Corr
No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
William Penn
If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible.
Paolo Coelho
Sacrifice today for tomorrows betterment, you are willing to pay those payments with pain, because pain is just a message when you are fixing something that’s insufficient in your life.
Greg Plitt
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
C.S. Lewis
We can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering, or we can evolve in a state of joy and inspiration.
Joe Dispenza
Moving Past Pain
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.
Sophocles
When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
Jane Austen
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Oprah Winfrey
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The best way of handling pain was to study it objectively.
Arthur C. Clarke
The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
Thomas Paine
Remember anything you want that’s valuable requires you to break through short-term pain in order to gain long-term pleasure.
Tony Robbins
With time the pain eases, the body recovers and the brain figures out new ways to go on.
Frederico Chini
Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
Joseph Campbell
You may have had unfair things happen to you, but the depth of your pain is an indication of the height of your future.
Joel Osteen
Laugher is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.
Charlie Chaplin
It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
Teddy Roosevelt
Our most beautiful dreams are born from our most unpleasant nightmares.
Matshona Dhliwayo
When pain brings you down, don’t be silly, don’t close your eyes and cry, you just might be in the best position to see the sun shine.
Alanis Morisette
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
Charles Dickens
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.
Neil Gaiman
Frustration, although quite painful at times, is a very positive and essential part of success.
Bo Bennett
After the rain, the sun will reappear. There is life. After the pain, the joy will still be here.
Walt Disney
Pain can be controlled, you just disconnect it.
James Cameron
If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.
Jim Carrey
Pain doesn’t hurt as much when you stop avoiding it.
Mel Robbins
My faith didn’t remove the pain, but it got me through the pain. Trusting God didn’t diminish or vanquish the anguish, but it enabled me to endure it.
Robert Rogers
Forget about winning and losing, forget about pride and pain.
Bruce Lee
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
Eckhart Tolle
Pain is the only evil I know about. It’s the only one I can fight.
Walter M. Miller
If you’re never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you’ll never get better.
Angela Duckworth
Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.
Rumi
Pain is a sudden hurt that can’t be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing.
C. Joybell C.
Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.
Khalil Gibran
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
Dr. Seuss
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.
Rabindranath Tagore
Pain is temporary. It may last for a minute, or an hour or a day, or even a year. But eventually, it will subside. And something else take its place.
Eric Thomas
When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.
Khalil Gibran
Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim–letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor.
C.R. Strahan
Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth.
Lev Grossman
Painful Quotes
The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.
Ernest Hemingway
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
Rumi
One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside.
John Lennon
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
James Baldwin
Growth in painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.
Anonymous
Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.
David Richo
People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.
Jim Morrison
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do.
Alysha Speer
There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Carl Jung
Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go.
Roy T. Bennett
The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained was the memory of how painful it had been.
Jodi Picoult
There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.
Laurell K. Hamilton
It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.
Rose Kennedy
Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.
Angelina Jolie
Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.
George R.R. Martin
I don’t believe there is pleasure in life. I believe there is only relief of pain… We have to suffer to be on top.
Georges St-Pierre
Of pain, you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.
George Orwell
Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’
C.S. Lewis
To be good by nature is indeed fortunate but to become good is like walking on a double-edged sword; it takes a longer time and is more painful.
Umera Ahmed
There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
Fernando Pessoa
My painting carries with it the message of pain.
Frida Kahlo
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
Moral wounds have this peculiarity – they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.
Alexandre Dumas
It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
Teddy Roosevelt
Pain, pleasure, and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence.
Frida Kahlo
The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.
Lord Byron
Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly … and if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.
WM Paul Yong
He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Aeschylus
We hope these pain quotes help you get through the pain that is effecting you right now.
We all deal with painful times differently, but the important thing is to do so in a healthy way that helps process pain, learn from it, and come out better after it.
Pain doesn’t last forever, even if it feels like it. So dust yourself off and get ready for better times ahead.
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