Great Throughts Treasury

"The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body." - Publius Syrus

"A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the full value of time and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain." -

"Be wary of extremes: the green and the over-ripe fruit causes the worst pain." - J. H. Rhodes, fully John Harold Rhodes

"One generation of fearless women could transform the world, by bringing into it a generation of fearless children, not contorted into unnatural shapes, but straight and candid, generous, affectionate, and free. Their ardor would sweep away the cruelty and pain which we endure because we are lazy, cowardly, hard-hearted and stupid. It is education that gives us these bad qualities, and education that must give us the opposite virtues. Education is the key to the new world." -

"Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure." -

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be." -

"Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain." - John Selden

"To attain excellence in society, an assemblage of qualification is requisite: disciplined intellect, to think clearly, and to clothe thought with propriety and elegance; knowledge of human nature, to suit subject to character; true politeness, to prevent giving pain; a deep sense of morality, to preserve the dignity of speech; and a spirit of benevolence, to neutralize its asperities, and sanctify its powers." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

"Psychotherapy is a process in which you will learn to contain your pain until the weight of it collapses into insight." - Michael Solomon

"Shame, although it is not a virtue, is nevertheless good, in so far as it shows that a desire of living uprightly is present in the man who is possessed with shame, just as pain is called good in so far as it shows that the injured part has not yet putrefied. A man, therefore, who is ashamed of what he has done, although he is sorrowful, is nevertheless more perfect than the shameless man who has no desire of living uprightly." -

"The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!" - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

"Solitary we must be in life's great hours of moral decisions; solitary in pain and sorrow; solitary in old age and in our going forth at death. Fortunate the man who has learned what to do in solitude and brought himself to see what companionship he may discover in it, what fortitude, what content." - William L. Sullivan

"Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart." - Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

"Love’s overbrimming mystery joins death and life. It has filled my cup of pain with joy." -

"Man’s freedom is never in being saved troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make the trouble an element in his joy... that in pain is symbolised the infinite possibility of perfection, the eternal unfolding of joy." -

"The most important lesson that man can learn from his life is not that there is pain in this world, but that it depends upon him to turn it into good account, that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy." -

"The life of a person who demands and pursues approval is full of pain and suffering. Even if he does receive a large amount of approval, he will still demand more. We can say with certainty that not everyone will honor him as much as he would like and he will cause himself much self-imposed misery." - Menachem Taryash

"If you feel envious of others, you will never enjoy life. You will always find someone else to envy regardless of what you yourself have. There will invariably be another person who is greater than you in either wisdom, wealth, or power. Unless you stop comparing yourself with others, your entire life will be full of needless pain and suffering." - Menachem Taryash

"Unless you learn to control your desires for things you lack, your entire life will be full of pain and suffering. Even an extremely wealthy person will always find some new thing to desire." - Menachem Taryash

"Tactlessness is a pain-giving failure to hit upon the right moment." - Theophrastus NULL

"The generous heart should scorn a pleasure which gives others pain." - Harold W Thompson

"Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea." -

"The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

"Virtue and vice are both prophets; the first, of certain good; the second, of pain or else of penitence." - Ralph Venning

"When looking back at your past suffering, feel joy. They have already benefited you by atoning for your misdeeds and at present you no longer feel pain from those past misfortunes." - Avraham Yellin

"One’s shoes may look pretty to outsiders, but the person wearing them feels only the pain of those shoes hurting his feet." -

"Only those who have suffered and endured greatly have achieved greatly... Man has ever risen nearer to God by the alter-stairs of pain and sorrow." - Samuel Adler

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Of pain. When unbearable it destroys us; when lasting, it is bearable." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, expels diseases, softens every pain, subdues the rage and poison and of plague." - John Armstrong

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea." - Walter Bagehot

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain" -

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea." -

"We are to live with life and die with death, not separated from them. The problem of suffering is insoluble, because we think of ourselves as apart from pain and death, in opposition to them. We can be free from change only by changing with it." - R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth

"There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence." - J. E. Boodin

"We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real." - Christian Nestell Bovee

"Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties. It is the cause of patience; gives endurance; overcome pain; strengthens weakness; braves dangers; sustains hope; make light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them." - John Christian Bovee

"There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornados, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control." -

"Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organized beings are." - Samuel Butler

"The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain." -

"The glance embroiders in joy, knits in pain, and sews in boredom." -

"Every day is a fresh beginning, Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, and spite of old sorrow, and older sinning, and troubles forecasted, and possible pain, take heart with the day, and begin again." - Susan Coleridge

"The artist (in literature) appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

"The personal issue is whether the things we are doing day by day are done in a conscious and balanced way or are part of a pain ridden struggle. If yours be the latter method, stop!" - Raymond Dart, fully Raymond Arthur Dart

"Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"O Youth: Do you know that yours is not the first generation to yearn for a life of beauty and freedom? Do you know that all your ancestors felt as you do - and fell victim to trouble and hatred? Do you know, also, that your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of men, and animals, and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain? Open your eyes, your heart, your hands, and avoid the poison your forebears so greedily sucked in from History. Then will all the earth be your fatherland, and all your work and effort spread forth blessings." - Albert Einstein

"It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with true greatness, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"Pain and death are a part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself." - Henry Havelock Ellis

"Custom joined with time shall deaden pain." - Euripedes NULL