pain

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

Alas! by some degree of woe We every bliss must gain; The heart can ne'er a transport know That never feels a pain.

When Jesus came to Golgotha they hanged him on a tree, They drove great nails through hands and feet and made a Calvary; They crowned Him with a crown of thorns; red were his wounds, and deep, For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap. When Jesus came to Birmingham they simply passed him by, They never hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die; For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain, They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain. Still Jesus cried, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," And still it rained a wintry rain that drenched Him through and through; The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see, And Jesus crouched against a wall and cried for Calvary.

We have taught our people to use prayer too much as a means of comfort - not in the original and heroic sense of uplifting, inspiring, strengthening, but in the more modern and baser sense of soothing sorrow, dulling pain, and drying tears - the comfort of the cushion, not the comfort of the Cross.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.

What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneness, and say, "This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned-and you with it, dust of the dust!" Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, "Never have I heard anything more divine?"

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain And perish in our own.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

I thought that jealousy was an idea. It isn't. It's a pain. But I didn't feel as they do in a Broadway melodrama. I didn't want to kill anybody. I just wanted to die.