Painful Quotes - Page 7

• I have always believed that this idea of having a nation go through this very painful five or six years of continuous recession with high unemployment would be detrimental for the economy and the society.

  Antonis Samaras

  Years, Ideas, Six

  Source: www.slate.com

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• Poetry is like pooping. If there is a poem inside of you, it has to come out. Sometimes it can be really difficult and take longer than you'd like (it may even be painful), but other times it can be really easy and happen much faster than you expected. But either way - it is important, and it feels so much better when it's done.

  Sarah Kay

  Important, Done, May

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• There are few sensations more painful, than, in the midst of deep grief, to know that the season which we have always associated with mirth and rejoicing is at hand.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Christmas, Grief, Hands

  Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1835). “Traits of American Life”, p.219

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• Affliction is a mother,
  Whose painful throes yield many sons,
  Each fairer than the other.

  Henry Vaughan

  Mother, Son, Yield

  Henry Vaughan, Henry Francis LYTE (1847). “Silex scintillans, 1650. A ... facsimile”, p.31

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• Marriage accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but it magnified the bad things, so they came to feel as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage.

  Marilyn French

  Eye, Milk, Tvs

  Marilyn French (2011). “The Women's Room”, p.253, Hachette UK

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• It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotions,--nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Feelings, Suffering, Contentment

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• the sudden violent dispossession accompanying a refugee flight is much more than the loss of a permanent home and a traditional occupation, or than the parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also the death of the person one has become in a particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at the painful process of rebirth.

  Dervla Murphy

  Home, Loss, Occupation

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• Remember that you will never reach a higher standard than you yourself set. Then set your mark high, and step by step, even though it be by painful effort, by self-denial and sacrifice, ascend the whole length of the ladder of progress.

  Ellen G. White

  Ambition, Sacrifice, Self

  Ellen G. White (2013). “Christ's Object Lessons - Illustrated”, p.264, Lulu Press, Inc

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• All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.

  Audre Lorde

  Writing, Breathing, Periods

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.16, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Infatuation is one of those slightly comic illnesses which are at once so undignified and so painful that a nice-minded world does its best to ignore their existence altogether, referring to them only under provocation and then with apology, but, like its more material brother, this boil on the neck of the spirit can hardly be forgotten either by the sufferer or anyone else in his vicinity. The malady is ludicrous, sad, excruciating and, above all, instantly diagnosable.

  Margery Allingham

  Brother, Nice, Apology

  Margery Allingham (1961). “Three Cases for Mr. Campion”

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• Labels not only free us from the obligation to think creatively; they numb our sensibilities, our power to feel. During the Vietnam War, the phrase body count entered our vocabulary. It is an ambiguous phrase, inorganic, even faintly sporty. It distanced us from the painful reality of corpses, of dead, mutilated people.

  Paula Fox

  War, Reality, Thinking

  Paula Fox (2011). “News from the World: Stories and Essays”, p.150, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Sometimes life seems so painful it hurts even to move my arms.

  Sara Paretsky

  Hurt, Moving, Arms

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• And sometimes we cling because the memory is so painful that we can't stop visiting it and hoping to make it come out differently. The risk of letting go is that we have to confront our own selves and our own possibilities.

  Amy Bloom

  Letting Go, Memories, Grief

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• every death diminishes us, but those that leave differences unresolved and things unsaid are the most painful of all.

  Marcia Muller

  Death, Differences, Unsaid

  Marcia Muller (2011). “The Shape of Dread”, p.171, AudioGO

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• To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut.

  Lynn Emanuel

  Book, Desire, Identity

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• Cancer was the most terrifying, arduous, painful thing, but it was also a profound gift in the sense that I was holding so much in my body for so many years that was dark and terrifying which was preventing my coming back into myself.

  Eve Ensler

  Cancer, Dark, Years

  "Interview with Eve Ensler: In The Body of the World". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 29, 2013.

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• There is no irritant as painful as an ace up your sleeve that you can never use; it's the kind of thing that causes oysters to produce pearls.

  Sheila Ballantyne

  Oysters, Use, Pearls

  Sheila Ballantyne (1983). “Imaginary crimes”, Penguin Group USA

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• Jealousy of other people's success is a sure sign that you feel unfulfilled in your own life. Seeing them enjoy the fruits of their labors is a painful reminder that you do not have what you want nor have you been actively seeking it.

  David J. Lieberman

  People, Want, Fruit

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• Asking for forgiveness is just one of the most painful kind of experiences.

  Nick Nolte

  Asking, Kind, Just One

  "'Warrior' Star Nick Nolte Scores a Knockout in a Role Close to Home". Interview with Jenelle Riley, www.backstage.com. December 8, 2011.

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• Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.

  James Earl Jones

  Laughter, Children, Fall

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• Providence has so ordained it, that only two women have a true interest in the happiness of a man--his own mother, and the mother of his children. Besides these two legitimate kinds of love, there is nothing between the two creatures except vain excitement, painful and vain delusion.

  Octave Feuillet

  Love, Mother, Children

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• Life seems somehow less shocking, painful, and lonely - and more hopeful, agreeable, and beautiful - when our experiences are confirmed by those of others. Although each of us is unique, there are familiar responses and doubts and joys that let us know we have kin. We are not, after all, too strange to live.

  Rosalie Maggio

  Family, Friends, Beautiful

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• The record-breaking extreme weather events causing chaos across the globe should be a wake-up call. The transition to a low-carbon economy will be much more painful if we wait until there is a climate crisis before recognising that more than half of the world's fossil fuel reserves will have to remain in the ground.

  Christiana Figueres

  Business, Weather, Records Breaking

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• Not getting our needs fulfilled is painful - but it's a sweet pain, not suffering, which is what comes from life-alienated thinking and interpretation.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Sweet, Pain, Communication

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• There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Men, Opposites

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