Quotes about Pain

One so often hears people say, "I just can't handle it," when they reject a biblical image of God as Father, as Mother, as Lord or Judge; God as lover, as angry or jealous, God on a cross. I find this choice of words revealing, however real the pain they reflect: if we seek a God we can "handle," that will be exactly what we get. A God we can manipulate, suspiciously like ourselves, the wideness of whose mercy we've cut down to size.

I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

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.

No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

I'd realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.

My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present, no hope for the future.

She learned to bear her troubles alone and with dignity, convinced no one was interested in other people's problems, and that pain borne in silence eventually evaporated.

I felt like I'd been emptied out from the inside, I was a bloody cavity, I couldn't breathe, my bones were made of wax, my soul had taken flight. And the world still turned as if nothing had happened: I stand up, take one step then another, find my voice and respond, I haven't lost my mind, I drink water, my mouth full of sand, my eyes burning, and my little girl stiff, frozen, sculpted in alabaster