This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Discipline is the tool required to solve life's problems. What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems directly? Delaying gratification, accepting responsibility, dedication to truth, and balance." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"A righteous person once asked, “On which day of your life did you experience the greatest amount of joy?” The righteous man replied, “It was the day when I traveled on a ship and someone greatly humiliated me. He treated me with ultimate disgrace. Nevertheless I did not feel even a drop of resentment. I experienced great joy that I reached such a level that no insult could cause me any pain.”" - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"Is not this steadfastness to mark, to make, the character of our lives? Is it not God’s will that we should press steadily on to our goal in obedience to Him, in channels of His choosing, whether in sunshine or shadow, in the cheer of spring or in the chill of winter, neither detained by pleasure nor deterred by pain?" - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"Courage is nothing less than indifference to hardship and pain." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"There is no mortal whom pain and disease do not reach." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Problems linked to illness, such as psychic crises, but also pains of a physiological nature (fever, migraines, rheumatic pains) can be assumed to be just so many initiatory trials. Uncovering the religious significance of illness and physical pain constitutes in effect shamanism’s essential contribution to the history of spirit." - Mircea Eliade
"Death is not the greatest loss in life... 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 death of the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself." - Norman Cousins
"The tragedy of life is not death but in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the death of awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in oneself." - Norman Cousins
"When pain strikes, we often ask the wrong questions, such as, Why me? The right questions are, What can I learn from this? What can I do about it? What can I accomplish in spite of it?" - Norman Vincent Peale
"No one welcomes pain. But, rightly faced, it can bring about great good. And we can triumph over it." - Norman Vincent Peale
"The youth who follows his appetites too soon seizes the cup, before it has received its best ingredients, and by anticipating his pleasures, robs the remaining parts of life of their share, so that his eagerness only produces a manhood of imbecility and an age of pain." - Oliver Goldsmith
"If the world has indeed been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
"Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
"The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us, or the pain against which it can protect us." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
"We have not an hour of life in which our pleasures relish not some pain, our sours, some sweetness." - Philip Massinger
"An envious man is never free of pain, just as the hypocrite is never free from fear." - Plato NULL
"Pleasure deprives a man of the use of his faculties quite as much as pain." - Plato NULL
"This harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue; but the particular training in respect of pleasure and pain, which leads you always to hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love from the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off; and, in my view, will be rightly called education." - Plato NULL
"In all the tragedy and comedy of life, pain is mixed with pleasure." - Plato NULL
"Pain, it is true, transmuted, so to say, by its own fiery heat into anger, loses every appearance of depression and feebleness; the angry man makes a show of energy, as the man in a high fever does of natural heat, while, in fact, all this action of soul is but mere diseased palpitation, distention, and inflammation." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by humans; for, in ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death... And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air... Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Every moment instructs, and every object; for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after long time." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! They are the strong ones of earth who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and grief unto them, and who gives time to their own souls to wax strong against temptation." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore. And he who battles on her side, God, Though he were ten times slain, Crowns him victim, glorified: Victor over death and pain." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If the mind is happy, not only the body but the whole world will be happy. So one must find out how to become happy oneself. Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes." -
"For all the psychological and physiological conditions which test integrity - fear, desire, hunger, fatigue, disaffection, anger, pain - have little reality in memory or anticipation but rather exist for the most part in the narrow immediacy of the present." - Robert Grudin
"You don't know what things are real in art until you come to them in pain. Sorrow is the touchstone." - Romain Rolland
"Labor, as well as fasting, serves to mortify and subdue the flesh. Provided the labor you undertake contributes to the glory of God and your own welfare, I would prefer that you should suffer the pain of labor rather than that of fasting." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL
"Count no moral happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain." - Sophocles NULL
"One word frees us all of the weight and pain of life. That word is Love." - Sophocles NULL
"In joy and sorrow, in pleasure and pain, one should act towards others as one would have them act toward oneself." - Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL
"Do nothing to others which, if done to you, would cause you pain." - Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL
"One who causes himself pain by abstinence from something he desires is called a sinner." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality, a barrier which Buddhism calls the attachment to the false view of self... means belief in the presence of unchanging entities which exist on their own. To break through this false view is to be liberated from every sort of fear, pain, and anxiety." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"Religion in the deepest sense takes shape as we learn through pain and loss that the creativity we exercise over our lives is finite, a mere participation in a greater creative act." - Thomas Moore
"A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being." - William Hazlitt
"The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings." - William Hazlitt
"Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity." - William Hazlitt
"The least pain in our little finger gives more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings." - William Hazlitt
"One fire burns out another's burning, one pain is lessen'd by another's anguish." - William Shakespeare
"Every moment can be viewed as new... You cause yourself a great loss by not living in the present... Don’t let the past weigh you down... Realize what is over is over... The future is always an unknown entity so learn to focus on the present... Learn to concentrate on what you are presently doing... Always try to utilize your present moments for growth... If you master feeling joy in your present moments, you need never be concerned you are missing anything, since whatever you are engaged in can be transformed into an elevating experience... You can alleviate pain by living in the present." - Zelig Pliskin