Painful Moments Quotes

Life is a dream even in its most painful moments, it's a dream that we can dance to. ~ Carly Simon

This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy. ~ T. S. Eliot

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy. ~ Arthur Golden

It was painful, but sometimes you must have these painful moments where you tear yourself away from something that isn't working. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

When we can't let go of the past, painful moments accumulate in us; metastasizing in our consciousness like an emotional cancer. ~ Bryant McGill

I had to really kill off all the religious myths. In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of your life - it's excruciating, you are forced to realise that your pain, the kind that makes you wake up afraid with your heart pounding, is really yours and not the result of somebody up in the sky. It's the result of your parents and your environment. ~ John Lennon

It's interesting to have the awkward moments play out, and the real human interactions. The more you cut that down, you lose the joke, which is that this is painful and hard. ~ Nicholas Stoller

You have to make the decision to let go of the past if you want to move forward. ~ Bryant McGill

It was like that. Sometimes I'd go for a period - days or weeks - without feeling the full sweep of my loss, and then as unexpected as a thunderclap, the realization would rip the protective coating from my senses. Maybe that's the way it is with trick knees and aging griefs. Totally pain free one moment and absorbingly painful the next. ~ Bette Greene

At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I wanted to capture time through how food and I were getting along at any given moment. That necessitated writing some dark stuff, some sad stuff, and a lot of painful memories, because my life has often been dark, sad, and painful. I didn't want to sugarcoat anything. ~ Kate Christensen

One of the most painful moments in a person's life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And ~ Fredrik Backman

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD
Painful moments, TRUST GOD
Every moment, THANK GOD ~ Rick Warren

In 'Growing Stronger,' I expose my most painful moments and open my heart, thoughts and person, so that my experiences can inspire alleviation, consolation and decisiveness. ~ Thalia

Writing isn't easy because you have to relieve the most painful moments of your life, over and over again, and then you have to write them down, hoping that they'll matter to someone else other than yourself. ~ Cristian Mihai

I stroke the back of her head. "You make me forget the worst parts of life." She actually smiles, focused back on the street. "And what's the term for that?" I think for a moment. A person who shrouds the painful moments, who conspires to make joyful ones. Who eliminates all the mundane shades in favor of ardent colors and keeps you burning alive. Is there a word for this rare person in someone's life? I think there is. "Soul mate, ~ Krista Ritchie

The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here.
So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be. ~ Steve Hagen

Be thankful to those painful moments of your life, because that has what shaped you to become who you are now. ~ Pradeepa Pandiyan

Bear patiently your exile and the dryness of your mind. The time will come when I will make you forget these painful moments and you will enjoy inward quietness. I will open the Bible for you and you will be thrilled by your new understanding of my truth. ~ Thomas A Kempis

One of life's most painful moments comes when we must admit that we didn't do our homework, that we are not prepared. ~ Merlin Olsen

With inquiry, every painful story unravels. Freedom is possible in every moment. ~ Byron Katie

Going from memoir to fiction was fantastic. I had been afraid to move away from memoir; I'd written some novel drafts, but they weren't well received by my agent at the time, and it had been drilled into me that "memoir outsells fiction two to one" (not sure if that's true anymore, or if it ever was), so I felt like the only smart thing to do, professionally, was to keep mining my life for painful moments to recapitulate. ~ Janice Erlbaum

A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process. ~ A.E. Housman

A small, quiet, grassroots movement that starts with each of us saying, "My story matters because I matter." A movement where we can take to the streets with our messy, imperfect, wild, stretch-marked, wonderful, heartbreaking, grace-filled, and joyful lives. A movement fueled by the freedom that comes when we stop pretending that everything is okay when it isn't. A call that rises up from our bellies when we find the courage to celebrate those intensely joyful moments even though we've convinced ourselves that savoring happiness is inviting disaster. Revolution ~ Brene Brown

This is Zen", she said. "No flaw, no moment's hesitation. A window onto grace. ~ Janet Fitch

If you don't go after Luke," Clary said, enunciating very clearly, "I, personally, will kill you."
For a moment Jocelyn looked astonished. Then she smiled. "Well," she said, "if you put it like that. ~ Cassandra Clare

The bittersweet side of appreciating life's most precious moments is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing. ~ Marc Parent

Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. ~ Thomas Merton

He had loved is mother and his child, everything that it was not up to him to choose. And after all he, who had challenged everything, questioned everything, he had never loved anything except what was inevitable. The people fate had imposed on him, the world as it appeared to him, everything in his life he had not been able to avoid, his illness, his vocation, fame or poverty--in a word, his star. For the rest, for everything he had to choose, he made himself love, which is not the same thing. No doubt he had known the feeling of wonderment, passion, and even moments of tenderness. But each moment had sent him on to other moments, each person to others, and he had loved nothing he had chosen, except what was little by little imposed on him by circumstance, had lasted as much by accident as by intention, and finally became necessary: Jessica. The heart, the heart above all is not free. It is inevitability and the recognition of the inevitable. And he, in truth, had never wholeheartedly loved other than the inevitable. All that was left for him was to love his own death. ~ Albert Camus

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted. ~ Paul Tillich

I knew that it wouldn't last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place. ~ Sarah Dessen

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. ~ James Joyce

I consider everything that happened to be precious moments of my life.
The pain.
The suffering.
The fun ...
And I am here right now, because everyone was there for me.
I couldn't have accomplished anything by standing still, without anybody's help.
I treasure every moment I have spent here.
Unlucky?
I feel pretty lucky.
This is my resolve.
-Sawada Tsunayoshi- ~ Sawada Tsunayoshi

I knew Deng Xiaoping when he came out of prison. He had, after all, been imprisoned for nearly ten years by Mao. I know what China looked like before he took over, and so in my own mind, I don't think of Deng Xiaoping as an oppressor. I think of somebody who, faced with that crisis, made a very painful and decision with which I cannot agree. But I also think of him as a great reformer. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

What could she tell him? I notice everything about him, from his flawed nose to his battle scars to his eyes as blue as an upland lake at midsummer. Sometimes I see the boy he would have been had it not been for his life at Ragmarket. He wears his pain on his face in unguarded moments; at other times, I can see just how dangerous he is. No, she couldn't say any of that. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

And through all the misery, she said that some of us in this lifetime experience a moment of beauty beyond reckoning. I asked her what that was, and she said, If you're one of the lucky ones, you'll know it when you see it. You'll understand why the gods have made you suffer. Because that moment's reward will make your knees weak and everything you've suffered in life will pale in comparison. ~ Melina Marchetta

And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth. ~ C.S. Lewis

Whether we are able to be a complete success or failure is in such critical balance that every smallest human test of integrity every smallest moment-to-moment decision tips the scales affirmatively or negatively. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Your true assets are the collections of your quality moments on the earth. ~ Amit Ray

Afflictions quicken us to prayer. It is a pity it should be so; but experience testifies, that a long course of ease and prosperity, without painful changes - has an unhappy tendency to make us cold and formal in our secret worship. But troubles rouse our spirits, and constrain us to call upon the Lord in good earnest - when we feel a need of that help which we only can have from his almighty arm. Afflictions are useful, and in a degree necessary, to keep alive in us - a conviction of the vanity and unsatisfying nature of the present world, and all its enjoyments; to remind us that this world is not our rest, and to call our thoughts upwards, where our true treasure is, and where our heart ought to be. When things go on much to our wish, our hearts are too prone to say, It is good to be here! ~ John Newton

I don't personally believe in an arrived state of enlightenment. I feel that being human is a constant practice of return. We have moments of clarity, and then we're confused. We have incredibly sensitive periods of being awake, and then we're numb. Being human is a very universal and a very personal practice of learning how to return when we can't get access to what we know. ~ Mark Nepo

I know now that everything I write, I'm going to put out, and I'll have to live with it for the rest of my life. ~ Al Yankovic

To Hope

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!
How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!
For me wilt thou renew the wither'd rose,
And clear my painful path of pointed thorn?
Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest,
Like the young hours that lead the tender year,
Enchantress! come, and charm my cares to rest: -
Alas! the flatterer flies, and will not hear!
A prey to fear, anxiety, and pain,
Must I a sad existence still deplore?
Lo! - the flowers fade, but all the thorns remain,
'For me the vernal garland blooms no more.'
Come then, 'pale Misery's love!' be thou my cure,
And I will bless thee, who, tho' slow, art sure. ~ Charlotte Turner Smith

As in any person's life, there have been difficult moments: I have a son with Down's syndrome; through my photography, I have witnessed all manner of human degradation. But there have also been very happy moments. ~ Sebastiao Salgado

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event. ~ Denise Duhamel

The so-called right to privacy, as it were, is no longer a right inasmuch as it is now a privilege, to be enjoyed until it is torn away at a moment's notice. ~ Marshawn Lynch

You have more strength than anyone should. All those years that you were alone? That you isolated yourself? You didn't have friends, you didn't have anyone to be close with, to talk with, or ... or play with. You were alone. That must have been painful, and yet you rallied anyway and kept going. It takes strength to stay apart from the crowd. You are brave, Celeste. ~ Jessica Park

Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation. ~ Jane Austen

He had always wanted Daisy, with an intensity that seemed to radiate from the pores of his skin. She was sweet, kind, inventive, excessively reasonable yet absurdly romantic, her dark sparkling eyes filled with dreams. She had occasional moments of clumsiness when her mind was too occupied with her thoughts to focus on what she was doing. She was often late to supper because she had gotten too involved in her reading. She frequently lost thimbles and slippers and pencil stubs. And she loved to stargaze. The never-forgotten sight of Daisy leaning wistfully on a balcony railing one night, her pert profile lifted to the night sky, had charged Matthew with the most blistering desire to stride over to her and kiss her senseless. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality. ~ Octavio Paz

What the bloody hell are you doing in my bed with my sister?
I'm extremely hot, Teag said the first thing he thought of. He was incredibly hot, and his answer had thrown Julian off, giving him at least a moment's reprieve. He had wondered if something like this might happen.
You're hot? Julian sounded confused. Are you hot yourself or is it like being near something hot? ~ Wendy Clements

When people are struggling, that's a painful place to be in, to not know who you are and where you belong and what you desire. ~ Gaby Hoffmann

Abandoning the tiny story of me and embracing the forever Story of Jesus will allow our little lives to be filled with the wonder of God as we live for the unending applause of His name. And joining our small stories to His will give us what we all want most in life, anyway: the assurance that our brief moments on earth will count for something in a Story that never ends. ~ Louie Giglio

He sees that only the gospel can really help us avoid the painful excesses in the tug-of-war between the need for liberty and the need for order. He knows, for instance, that true law enforcement depends on the policing of one's self. If the sentry of self fails, there are simply not enough other policemen to restrain those who will not restrain themselves, and beating the system will become the system. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion ... Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity ... Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics. ~ Richard Dawkins

What gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we all have. ~ Elizabeth Benedict

A woman is more than the sum of her parts. So I had an opportunity to present some work at the White House. I chose not just to talk about the sky, the planet, love or heartache. I wanted to actually be there, to place a mark on that moment. ~ Jill Scott

A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars ~ Terryl L. Givens

I must stop remembering. I must keep them in a faraway place. The more I remember, the greater my agony. These thoughts stuttered in my mind. So I stopped talking about them, I wouldn't mouth my boys' names, I shoved away stories of them. Let them, let our life, become as unreal as that wave. ~ Sonali Deraniyagala

Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening - it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative. ~ Rajneesh

Good Lord, only a moment of bliss? Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man's life? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There has to be a moment when you choose happiness, when you stand up, raise your face towards the sun, and just grab joy and put it in a place where no one can ever take it away from you. ~ Kris Radish

She taught him that sometimes, when someone was in emotional denial, they needed proof of how wrong they really were. Sometimes they needed actions instead of words. Sometimes they needed someone to make the hard decision or to say the painful thing, or they would be lost and locked in their own hearts forever. ~ Amy Lane

On the day that you were born, you began to die. Do not waste a single moment more! ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Frodo could not be a hero unless he was born into a story with many chapters already played out before his own. His moment derives its weight and urgency from the moments that have come before. ~ John Eldredge

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are. ~ Joss Whedon

There was some sort of commotion going on outside, and I decided I'd had enough. I went to the door and stuck my head out. Marco was gasping for breath on the sofa, and two of the guards were bent over a cell phone.
"What are you doing?" I demanded.
"Trying to record this," the smart-ass from the shopping trip told me. "Nobody is going to believe us otherwise."
"Well, cut it out. It isn't funny!"
"On what planet?"
I glared at him, which did no good,because he simply went back to to tinkering with the phone. So I looked at Marco. "Can't you do anything with them?"
Marco flopped a hand at me, tears streaming down his reddened cheeks, and tried to say something. But all that came out for several moments were asthmatic wheezes. I bent over his prone form, starting to worry about him, and he put a hand on my neck and pulled me down.
" It ... is ... funny," he gasped. ~ Karen Chance

One of the odder services the Villa Candessa provided for its long-term guests was its "likeness cakes" - little frosted simulacra fashioned after the guests by the inn's Camorr-trained pastry sculptor. On a silver tray beside the looking glass, a little sweetbread Locke (with raisin eyes and almond-butter blond hair) sat beside a rounder Jean with dark chocolate hair and beard. The baked Jean's legs were already missing. A few moments later, Jean was brushing the last buttery crumbs from the front of his coat. "Alas, poor Locke and Jean." "They died of consumption," said Locke. ~ Scott Lynch

There are moments in life when we need to trust blindly in intuition ~ Paulo Coelho

First, we become aware of that which is Divine around us. Then we become aware of that which is Divine within us. Finally, we become aware that all is Divine, and that there is nothing else. This is the moment of our awakening. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?' ~ John Malkovich

Legacies are not just for legends. Whether a million people know your name, or only one person does, you still have the right to leave your mark on the world, even if it's only in your tiny corner of it, in the tiniest of ways.

Not all of us will achieve great heights and feats. Most of us will never leave our hometown or country, let alone conquer Everest. And you know what? That's okay.

Because real life is what happens in between moments of greatness. It's the little things that at the end of it all, you realize were greater than the sum of their parts. It's the amount of times you laughed, or cried, danced, sang, created, inspired, and made someone smile.

The best kind of legacies are the ones that are unseen. You'll never fully be able to measure the effect of a smile or a kind word, but I promise you, the most whispered phrase can send a shockwave around the world that lasts for centuries, or even an eternity. ~ A.J. Compton