Quotes about Pain

The sadness will last forever.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.

I'm very brave generally,' he went on in a low voice: 'only today I happen to have a headache.' (Tweedledum)

Courage would be impossible in a world without pain.

Sweet is true love that is given in vain, and sweet is death that takes away pain.

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

We feel pain as an outrage; Jesus did too, which is why he performed miracles of healing. In Gethsemane, he did not pray, "Thank you for this opportunity to suffer," but rather pled desperately for an escape. And yet he was willing to undergo suffering in service of a higher goal. In the end he left the hard questions ("if there be any other way . . .") to the will of the Father, and trusted that God could use even the outrage of his death for good.

The first step in helping a suffering person is to acknowledge that the pain is valid, and worthy of a sympathetic response.

The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus, God gives us an up-close and personal look at his response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should, in fact, be filtered through what we know about Jesus.