Counteracting Pain Quotes

Life has two choices: create or destruct. These choices are the backbone for all, within oneself and outside oneself. Too many ways of thinking are described by too many people that have no idea. If you're attached to your ways then detach, so you can change. Use this detachment in your writing, relationships, and understanding of life. Our future as individuals, as nations, and as mankind can only go one way. It's our choice whether we want the painful path or the peaceful path. ~ Mark Donnelly

When we choose to love, or to allow our minds to be one with God, then life is peaceful. When we turn away from love, the pain sets in. And whether we love, or close our hearts to love, is a mental choice we make, every moment of every day. ~ Marianne Williamson

God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding. You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. ~ Alan W. Watts

That aversives stop behavior, they don't start it; and that fear and pain produce completely unpredictable and usually highly undesirable side effects, including being both exciting and reinforcing to the punisher. I have ~ Karen Pryor

Most people', I say 'couldn't tell you if they're happy. They're simply baffled by the question. They might, if pressed, describe happiness as the absence of pain or any particular anxiety. They might cite small moments of exhilaration ... but they'd admit that even these moments are shadowed by a cloud of apprehension'. ~ William Donaldson

[If there was] certainty that an acute episode [of depression] will last only a week, a month, even a year, it would change everything. It would still be a ghastly ordeal, but the worst thing about it - the incessant yearning for death, the compulsion toward suicide - would drop away. But no, a limited depression, a depression with hope, is a contradiction. The experience of convulsive pain, along with the conviction that it will never end except in death - that is the definition of a severe depression. ~ George Scialabba

And yet, in a touching, shrunken way, she was rather pretty - a prettiness marred by her seeing to be precariously balanced on the edge of pain. ~ Truman Capote

When I think about the folks who are out there at home tonight watching ... They know that this country is not respected around the world anymore. They know that this country is pushing the middle class, the hardworking taxpayers, backwards, and they saw a president who doesn't understand their pain, and doesn't have any plan for getting away from it. ~ Chris Christie

Batwoman: "What was it like growing up with him?"

Nightwing: "When I was a kid, I idolized him. Hell... I wanted to be him. But the older I got, the more I realized that I didn't know him at all.
How could I? Bruce Wayne is as much a mask as Batman. And I think the only thing behind those masks is pain. A pain he refuses to share with anyone."

Batwoman: "So what was it like?"

Nightwing: "Lonely. ~ J.M. DeMatteis

He is not far off; He is there, very close. He is looking at us, and He is begging this sorrow, this agony from us. He needs it for souls and for our soul ... Alas, it does pain Him to give us sorrows to drink, but He knows this is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself and to become God's ourselves. ~ Therese Of Lisieux

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling. ~ John Steinbeck

Pennebaker began his studies in the 1980s when he asked students to write about traumatic, stressful or emotional events for twenty minutes over three consecutive days. His results found improvements in both physical and psychological health. People were happier and healthier when they wrote, including reduced visits to doctors, positive effects on blood pressure, improved liver and immune system functioning and less use of pain medication. Writing also had beneficial effects on emotional health and enhanced social relationships. ~ Patricia McAdoo

Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine. ~ Timothy Keller

There are many different kinds of evil. Some people are evil because they like to cause pain. Some people are evil because they are selfish and care only about themselves. He is the worst kind of evil. He believes he knows how to bring about a better future, and, if he has to, he will pave the road to it with corpses of innocent people. He has no boundaries. There is nothing he won't do to get his way." "What ~ Ilona Andrews

Lessons learned are like bridges burned you only need to cross them but once. Is the knowledge gained worth the price of the pain, are the spoils worth the cost of the hunt? ~ Dan Fogelberg

I guess because I had such a horrible life growing up, going from place to place not knowing what I was gonna do and ending up being homeless, there was a lot of pain and a lot of anger that was coming out through my guitar playing. ~ Dave Mustaine

She gazed at the man across from her. Her lover. His powerful shoulders worked beneath his shirt as he pulled on the oars. The display of strength and agility, set to a steady rhythm…memories of their lovemaking assailed her with quiet force.
In some other place, under some other circumstance, they might have been a courting couple. Rowing across a placid lake, caressed by a glowing sunset. From a distance, this could have been the picture of romance.
But the reality was confusion, and resentment, and pain. Did she feel sorry for misleading him? Sophia considered. She was not sure she could. By his own admission, he would not have made love to her had she not. And she could not regret that exquisite pleasure; nor could she regret sharing it with him. She looked at the handsome, strong, charismatic, passionate, exhausted man across from her. Selfish and wicked though she might be, she could not feel sorry that he was now bound to her-that for good or ill, he had not left her behind.
Sophia was, however, unequivocally sorry for one thing.
"Gray," she said, "I'm so sorry I've hurt you."
His eyes flashed, and there was a slight hitch in his stroke. ~ Tessa Dare

All they teach you in drama school is how to do stage fights and be a pain in rehearsals. ~ Craig Ferguson

Poetry and beauty
are born out of pain.
This is their glory,
this is our gain. ~ S. Tarr

I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning.
There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?
I know you are unable to imagine this.
Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved. ~ Meg Rosoff

You gave me health that I might serve you; and so often I failed to use my good health in your service. Now you send me sickness in order to correct me Grant that, having ignored the things of spirit when my body was vigorous, I may now enjoy spiritual sweetness while my body groans with pain. ~ Blaise Pascal

903AL RAGHIF is now available in French (LE PAIN) beautifully translated by Fifi Abou Dib. Check it out!
Publisher: Acte Sud/ L'Orient des livres ~ Toufic Youssef Aouad

Sometimes the greatest pain, is the one we think we can't control. ~ Dugald Black

I watched from somewhere up above and saw the troopers lift the car off someone. Then I saw that it was me lying there. I wasn't afraid, and I didn't feel any pain - not until I woke up in the hospital three days later. Since then, I've known that the soul doesn't die, only the body, and I've never been afraid. ~ Ann Rule

Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you. Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional. Physical pain is a fact that comes with living, just as illness or financial woes or broken relationships are facts. But misery is a state of mind, a reaction to the facts, that can be controlled or altered by an act of will ... ~ Barbara

The truth hurts. But if we want to heal the world, we had better start paying attention to the pain. ~ Laurence Overmire

Adversity tests the limit of your strength. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Wittgenstein came to believe that a great many philosophical puzzles arise out of people misusing language in this way. Take, for example, the statement 'I have a pain', which is grammatically akin to 'I have a hat'. This similarity might mislead us into thinking that pains, or 'experiences' in general, are things we have in the same way that we have hats. But it would be strange to say 'Here, take my pain'. And though it would make sense to say 'Is this your hat or mine?', it would sound odd to ask 'Is this your pain or mine?' Perhaps there are several people in a room and a pain floating around in it; and as each person in turn doubles up in agony, we exclaim: 'Ah, now he's having it!'

This sounds merely silly; but in fact it has some fairly momentous implications. Wittgenstein is able to disentangle the grammar of 'I have a hat' from 'I have a pain' not only in a way that throws light on the use of personal pronouns like 'I' and 'he', but in ways which undermine the long-standing assumption that my experiences are a kind of private property. In fact, they seem even more like private property than my hat, since I can give away my hat, but not my pain. Wittgenstein shows us how grammar deceives us into thinking this way, and his case has radical, even politically radical, consequences.

The task of the philosopher, Wittgenstein thought, was not so much to resolve these inquiries as to dissolve them – to show that they spring from confusing one kind of 'l ~ Terry Eagleton

My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him. ~ Erik Larson

Pain will force even the truthful to speak falsely ~ Publilius Syrus

God heals the human heart from any brokenness. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The first thing you need to know if you are a survivor is that parts of you have probably been trained to create a variety of symptoms and behaviours. Abusers actually train child parts to cut the body, to make other parts cut, to attempt suicide, to create flashbacks by releasing pieces of visual or auditory memories, to create body memories of pain or electroshock, and to create depression, terror, anxiety, and despair by releasing the emotional components of memories to the rest of the personality system. The front person and most of the rest of the system do not know that this is the source of these feelings and behaviours. p126 ~ Alison Miller

Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. Common humanity: Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience - something we all go through rather than something that happens to "me" alone. Mindfulness: Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not "over-identify" with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity. ~ Brene Brown

But he'd also gotten a personal prickly chill all over from his own thinking. He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear of the A.D.A., whoever was out there in a hat eating Third World fast food; the fear of getting convicted of Nuckslaughter, of V.I.P.-suffocation; of a lifetime on the edge of his bunk in M.C.I. Walpole, remembering. It's too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it's as of now real. What's real is the tube and Noxzema and pain. And this could be done just like the Old Cold Bird. He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like G. Day or R. Lenz: clueless noise. He hadn't quite gotten this before now, how it wasn't just the matter of riding out the cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with unendurable news you then somehow believed. ~ David Foster Wallace

Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear. ~ Ellen Hopkins

To say shortly why one values love is not easy; nevertheless, I will make the attempt. Love is to be valued in the first instance - and this, though not its greatest value, is essential to all the rest - as in itself a source of delight.

Oh Love! they wrong thee much
That say thy sweet is bitter,
When thy rich fruit is such
As nothing can be sweeter.

The anonymous author of these lines was not seeking a solution for atheism, or a key to the universe; he was merely enjoying himself. And not only is love a source of delight, but its absence is a source of pain. In the second place, love is to be valued because it enhances all the best pleasures, such as music, and sunrise in mountains, and the sea under the full moon. A man who has never enjoyed beautiful things in the company of a woman whom he loved has not experienced to the full the magic of power of which such things are capable. Again, love is able to break down the hard shell of the ego, since it is a form of biological cooperation in which the emotions of each are necessary to the fulfilment of the other's instinctive purposes. ~ Bertrand Russell

Anaesthesia, that's one technique: if it hurts, invent a different pain. ~ Margaret Atwood

Hands that wrap us in warmth, that hold us close. Hands that guide us to shelter, to comfort, to food. Hands that hold and touch and reassure us through our very first crisis, and guide us into our very first shelter from pain. The first thing we ever learn is that the touch of someone else's hand can ease pain and make things better. ~ Jim Butcher

Thus the Lord, by pain, sickness, and disappointments, by breaking our cisterns and withering our gourds - weakens our attachment to this world, and makes the thought of leaving it, more easy and more desirable. ~ John Newton

Crying and pain, there all inside us
Happiness and smiles, we can all show it.
Love, everyone is capable of doing. ~ Never Dahlia

Forgiveness is one of the most beautiful words in the human vocabulary. How much pain and unhappy consequences could be avoided if we all learned the meaning of this word! ~ Billy Graham

There is a great loneliness of spirit today. We're trying to live, we're trying to cope in the face of what seems to be overwhelming evidence that who we are doesn't matter, that there is no real hope for enough change, that the environment and human experience is deteriorating so rapidly and increasingly and massively. This is the context, psychically and spiritually, in which we are working today. This is how our lives are reflected to us. Meanwhile, we're yearning for connection with each other, with ourselves, with the powers of nature, the possibilities of being alive.

When that tension arises, we feel pain, we feel anguish at the very root of ourselves, and then we cover that over, that grief, that horror, with all kinds of distraction – with consumerism, with addictions, with anything that we can use to disconnect and to go away.

We've been opening ourselves to the grief, to the knowing of what's taking place, the loss of species, the destruction of the natural world, the unimaginable levels of social injustice and economic injustice that deprive so many human beings of basic opportunities. And as we open to the pain of that, there's a possibility of embracing that pain and that grief in a way that it becomes a strength, a power to respond. There is the possibility that the energy that has been bound in the repression of it can now flow through us and energize us, make us clearer, more alive, more passionate, committed, courageous, determined peo ~ John Robbins

I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species we've fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don't believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and life-long poverty shows us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we've made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred. ~ Caitlin Moran

You wanted to feel alive, right? It doesn't matter if you're monster or human. Living hurts. ~ Victoria Schwab