98 Quotes About Overcoming Pain

Pain is an inevitable part of the human experience, yet it is through overcoming pain that we often find our greatest strength. Whether it's the heartache from a broken relationship, the struggles with physical ailments, or the battles against life's myriad challenges, rising above pain can lead to profound personal growth and resilience. In this blog post, we present a curated collection of the top 98 quotes about overcoming pain, offering wisdom and inspiration from thinkers, writers, and leaders who have faced their own trials. Let these words be a guide and a comfort as you navigate and triumph over your own adversities.

1. “No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.” - George Eliot

2. “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.” - Orson F. Whitney

3. “Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centres are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.” - William S. Burroughs

4. “Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

5. “Pain was a fascinating horror” - Aldous Huxley

6. “Then she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think 'this must be heaven'. Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain - which started a fraction of a second later - was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain - unique, unmistakable.” - Paulo Coelho

7. “Forgetting about our mistakes and our wounds isn't enough to make them disappear.” - Ai Yazawa

8. “Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.The pain is an anchor, mooring me here.” - Haruki Murakami

9. “Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?” - Bernhard Schlink

10. “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.” - C.S. Lewis

11. “Among other things, Kathryn knew, grief was physically exhausting.” - Anita Shreve

12. “Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.” - John Milton

13. “The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.” - Djuna Barnes

14. “My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.” - Francesca Lia Block

15. “People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.” - Ayn Rand

16. “Pain is weakness leaving the body” - Tera Lynn Childs

17. “Sure it will hurt. But so what? Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of anything, even pain.” - Rodman Philbrick

18. “The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart” - Jacqueline Carey

19. “If like fcuks you hard, you fcuk her more harder. If she betrays, put little bit more effort and she will be dead flat.” - Santosh Kalwar

20. “I know that it's easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.” - Robert Goolrick

21. “The lonesome and desperate kids out there, that pain will translate to magic perhaps.” - Tenacious D

22. “...unrequited love does not die; it's only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded. For some unfortunates, it turns bitter and mean, and those who come after pay the price for the hurt done by the one who came before.” - Elle Newmark

23. “Then Night came down like the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, and smutted[9] first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all except that particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems to rip away from one's body the whole kind, protecting skin and expose all the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a gritty blanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally high night-tide; and sweat, like the smother of furs in summer; and thirst like the scrape of hot sand-paper; and chill like the clammy horror of raw fish.” - Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

24. “One day we took the children to see a goldsmith refine gold after the ancient manner of the East. He was sitting beside his little charcoal fire. ("He shall sit as a refiner"; the gold- or silversmith never leaves his crucible once it is on the fire.) In the red glow lay a common curved roof tile; another tile covered it like a lid. This was the crucible. In it was the medicine made of salt, tamarind fruit and burnt brick dust, and imbedded in it was the gold. The medicine does its appointed work on the gold, "then the fire eats it," and the goldsmith lifts the gold out with a pair of tongs, lets it cool, rubs it between his fingers, and if not satisfied puts it back again in fresh medicine. This time he blows the fire hotter than it was before, and each time he puts the gold into the crucible, the heat of the fire is increased; "it could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now; what would have destroyed it then helps it now." "How do you know when the gold is purified?" we asked him, and he answered, "When I can see my face in it [the liquid gold in the crucible] then it is pure.” - Amy Carmichael

25. “He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.” - Victor Hugo

26. “Sleep my little baby-ohSleep until you wakenWhen you wake you'll see the worldIf I'm not mistaken...Kiss a loverDance a measure,Find your nameAnd buried treasure...Face your lifeIts pain, Its pleasure,Leave no path untaken.” - Neil Gaiman

27. “I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.” - Haruki Murakami

28. “I have a new name for pain. What’s that?The Obliterator. Because when you’re in pain, nothing else can exist. Not thought. Not emotion. Only the drive to escape the pain. When it’s strong enough, the Obliterator strips us of everything that makes us who we are, until we’re reduced to creatures less than animals, creatures with a single desire and goal: escape. A good name, then.” - Christopher Paolini

29. “The mighty trojans fell, and so did i.A wooden horse you were not, yet in a pool of my own blood i lie.Dawn follows every dusk, and all that rises - fall it must.So, my blood shall find its way and trickle down your eyes.The day your deeds of today, eventually make you cry.” - Anurag Anand

30. “Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!” - Harriet Beecher Stowe

31. “Wonderful art can spring from misery,I'm the last person to deny that.I'd go even further:the best works of art of all time are probably stemmed from the deep human sorrow or hellish frustration,the death of a loved one or a divorce and yes:jealousy.Heartache and impotence as the man-spring for making the unverifiable verifiable and for giving it face.How romantic,beautiful and especially useful pain and misery can be.” - Esther Verhoef

32. “What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?” - C.S. Lewis

33. “But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope,That one day we shall thank thee perfectlyFor pain and hope and all that led or droveUs back into the bosom of thy love.” - George MacDonald

34. “The world," he said, "is not a wish-granting factory," and then he broke down, just for one moment, his sob roaring impotent like a clap of thunder unaccompanied by lightning, the terrible ferocity that amateurs in the field of suffering might mistake for weakness.” - John Green, The Fault In Our Stars

35. “Of course it hurt you neanderthal! See that? Thats blood. If theres blood, theres pain. Its like smoke and fire.” - Jennifer Crusie

36. “Scars are just a treasure map for pain you've buried too deep to remember.” - Jodi Picoult

37. “Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain.” - T.C. Boyle

38. “Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls.” - Allen R. Hunt

39. “Tender," she said again. "Tender is kind and gentle. It's also sore, like the skin around an injury.” - Brenna Yovanoff

40. “Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it, but also the father who wipes away the tears.” - Criss Jami

41. “Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.” - Criss Jami

42. “Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.” - Criss Jami

43. “There was no one to be seen so she gave in freely to her sobs as she made her way home, pressed her arms against her stomach; the pain lodged in there like an ill-tempered foetus. Let a person in and he hurts you. There was a reason why she kept her relationships brief. Don't let them in. Once they're inside they have more potential to hurt you. Comfort yourself. You can live with the anguish as long as it only involves yourself. As long as there is no hope.” - John Ajvide Lindqvist

44. “Laughter is the antidote to existential pain” - S. Spencer Baker

45. “Now I lay facedown on the bed, sobbing for the womanwho once slept here not knowing that someday one of herworst fears would come true” - Jennifer Castle

46. “Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.” - George R.R. Martin

47. “George stared at the dove. What would she say if she could speak to him? What would she wish for, for her father? For she, too, had been harmed by a man who had meant to show his utmost love for her.It made George wonder why love was suppose to be such a wonderful thing. As far as he could tell, love was just another excuse for causing pain.” - Mette Ivie Harrison

48. “Sometimes a little discomfort in the beginning can save a whole lot of pain down the road.” - Wendelin Van Draanen

49. “Leaving would imply suitcases and empty drawers, and late birthday cards with ten-dollar bills stuffed inside.” - Julie Kagawa

50. “I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don't know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.” - Ally Condie

51. “The physical shock took away the pain of being.” - Sebastian Faulks

52. “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” - Zora Neale Hurston

53. “I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.” - Albert Camus

54. “L'amore non esiste per renderci felici, ma per dimostrarci quando sia forte la nostra capacità di sopportare il dolore.” - Alessandro D'Avenia

55. “To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane.” - Charles Bukowski

56. “If not towards his case to give him glimpses of what could be a happy future, it stayed back at least to warrant her happiness, stayed back with the pain that strangely didn’t hurt anymore.” - Faraaz Kazi

57. “Remembering. Forgetting. I'm not sure which is worse.” - Kelley Armstrong

58. “And a rock feels no pain;And an island never cries.” - Paul Simon

59. “Just like there's always time for pain, there's always time for healing.” - Jennifer Brown

60. “What is next to ecstasy?Pain.What is next to pain?Nothingness.What is next to nothingness?Hell.” - Umera Ahmed

61. “I could never hurt him enough to make his betrayal stop hurting. And it hurts, in every part of my body.” - Veronica Roth

62. “It almost contradicts itself," she says after a moment. "It's as if there is love and loss at the same time, together in a kind of beautiful pain.” - Eric Morgenstern

63. “They say though that we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure. So it is when the pain becomes too much that we finally find the courage to make changes.” - Bronnie Ware

64. “The idea makes a lot of people uncomfortable. [...] It's hurt a great many people and been responsible for a great deal of misery. But, to my mind at least, that doesn't mean it can't now bring pleasure to someone.” - Manna Francis

65. “Adieu! but let me cherish, still, The hope with which I cannot part. Contempt may wound, and coldness chill, But still it lingers in my heart. And who can tell but Heaven, at last, May answer all my thousand prayers, And bid the future pay the past With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?” - Anne Brontë

66. “Seems to me people are mean or evil because they're scared, mostly, or in pain, or afraid they're going to lose something.” - Barbara Samuel

67. “It's easier to runReplacing this pain with something numbIt's so much easier to goThan face all this pain here all alone.” - Linkin Park

68. “This isolation, this deep pit in the bottom of my stomach, didn't have to hurt so much." - Aquamarine Rosabelle bonus included in Dreams, Smiles, and Bloody Tears” - Chamera M. Sampson

69. “Gritting my teeth as if it requires actual physical strength, I push the memory of him dying in my arms down, deep down. It almost seems to fight me, to want to surge into the forefront of my mind, and I sigh. Long ago I came to the realization that painful memories are persistent. The agony of them stays with you much longer, sharper, and clearer than sweet memories, that soften and assume a hazy, rosy glow in your mind, almost as if they have been airbrushed. Remembrance of pain is different; there is no muting of colors, no blurring of edges. No, its colors remain stark and bold, a palette of vibrant primary reds, blues, and yellows; its edges stay defined and razor sharp. Years later it can still cut you as deeply, make you bleed as profusely, as the day it was formed. FROM AN UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRRESS” - Lily Velden

70. “When we cry out to God as a result of our pain and spiritual brokenness He hears us and is compelled to move on our behalf because of His love for us. However, when we complain it is an indictment against His authority as a God who knows His plans for us, and it is an outright contradiction to the faith that we say we have in Him.” - Minister Donald Graham Jr.

71. “The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure--at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them.” - Jim Butcher

72. “This is your karma. You do not understand now, but you will understand later. The source of pain is within your own larger expression of being.” - H Raven Rose

73. “Mindfulness allows you to face the past with courage, whether it is scarred with pain or caressed with joy, and it gently holds you in the safe haven of the present without allowing you to become overwhelmed with what may or may not be waiting in the future.” - Deborah A. Beasley

74. “There was a lot of pain in that kiss. There was so much hurt and so much fear in it. I felt tears rolling down the both of our faces. But, in that kiss, there was even more want. We both wanted to smother out that pain, to not have so many horrible things in the all too recent past, to just be normal, to do the types of things we were supposed to be dealing with besides death and disability.” - Keary Taylor

75. “Never dreaming, was I, poor Jack Duluoz, that the soul is dead. That from Heaven grace descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail to tell me; no example inside my first and only skin. That love is the heritage, and cousin to death. That the only love can only be the first love, the only death the last, the only life within, and the only word . . . choked forever.” - Jack Kerouac

76. “It doesn't get better," I said. "The pain. The wounds scab over and you don't always feel like a knife is slashing through you. But when you least expect it, the pain flashes to remind you you'll never be the same.” - Katie McGarry

77. “I have a message for your daughter,” said Cale. “I am bound to her with cables that not even God can break. One day, if there is a soft breeze on her cheek, it may be my breath; one night, if the cool wind plays with her hair, it may be my shadow passing by.” And with this terrible threat he faced forward and the procession started once more. In less than a minute they were gone. In her shady room Arbell Swan-Neck stood white and cold as alabaster.” - Paul Hoffman

78. “There are people who are destined to taste only the poison in things, for whom any surprise is a painful surprise and any experience a new occasion for torture. if someone were to say to me that such suffering has subjective reasons, related to the individual's particular makeup, i would then ask; is there an objective criterion for evaluating suffering? who can say with precision that my neighbor suffers more than i do or that jesus suffered more than all of us? there is no objective standard because suffering cannot be measured according to the external stimulation or local irritation of the organism, but only as it is felt and reflected in consciousness. alas, from this point of view, any hierarchy is out of the question. each person remains with his own suffering, which he believes absolute and unlimited. how much would we diminish our own personal suffering if we were to compare it to all the world's sufferings until now, to the most horrifying agonies and the most complicated tortures, the mostcruel deaths and the most painful betrayals, all the lepers, all those burned alive or starved to death? nobody is comforted in his sufferings by the thought that we are all mortals, nor does anybody who suffers really find comfort in the past or present suffering of others. because in this organically insufficient and fragmentary world, the individual is set to live fully, wishing to make of his own existence an absolute.” - Emil Cioran

79. “Suffering is one of life's great teachers.” - Bryant McGill

80. “I'd just killed some of the best riders in the world - and I was clean. I'd taken nothing - no EPO, no cortisone, no testosterone, no painkillers, no caffeine. I had justified to myself that I was a great rider without drugs - yet perversely given myself the green light to dope again. I'd proved what I could do clean - how much more could I do if I was doped?” - David Millar

81. “Sometimes it's better to show our vulnerability / pain / regrets so others don't think us impervious / unapproachable - be real / open” - jay woodman

82. “Almost every day I can feel myself suffering mainly in the head, I can explain the pain to myself but knowing it comes from an inflammation of my imagination doesn't prevent it being reality itself. What's more I'd be crazy not to go crazy. We don't know what an illness is. On awful hurts we plaster little old words, as if we could think hell with a paper bandage.” - Hélène Cixous

83. “We may seem fine, even when the pain remains right there beneath our surface.” - Ashly Lorenzana

84. “Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

85. “But I had to think to myself that this was normal, because that was the attitude. I was 19 when I went to see my doctor and I was told it was all in the mind.[Author Hilary Mantel on being told her endometriosis was imagined pain, From Oct 2009 Daily Mail interview]” - Hilary Mantel

86. “Pain can kill, all on its own: the body goes into shock and shuts down.” - Teri Terry

87. “I'd much rather be eating a bar of chocolate or even something healthy like a lettuce leaf alone at my desk than sitting through this silent, painful meal.” - Sarah Darer Littman

88. “In a sense I want the same thing that my grandfather wanted, that people should not suffer. Yet I am not like him. He remade himself so that he could live for eternity. Yet he never defeated the eternal enemy - no, not the cyborgs or the robots. The enemy is fear, simple fear. Grandfather was always afraid of suffering.I am not afraid. I want something more for people. I want them to be happy, and I believe our suffering as a race can eventually bring us to a place of great wonder. For all I have suffered since I came back in time, I have been happy to be alive.” - Christopher Pike

89. “It is through the tender austerity of our troubles that the Son of Man comes knocking. In every event He seeks an entrance to my heart, yes, even in my most helpless, futile, fruitless moments. The very cracks and empty crannies of my life, my perplexities and hurts and botched-up jobs, He wants to fill with Himself, His joy, His life...He urges me to learn of Him: 'I am gentle and humble in heart.” - Elisabeth Elliot Keep a Quiet Heart

90. “Not only did the angry villagers hound their monsters to the edge of town, they reproached her for being vulnerable to the torches.” - Susan Stryker

91. “Two seconds later, the sound of an alarm filled my ears. ''What did you do?'' I said over the noise as he backed up towards the bathroom door. ''The girl who gave you the note?''''Yes...''''I caught her staring at my lighter.''I blinked. ''You gave a child, in a psych ward , a lighter?''His eyes crinkled at the corners. ''She seemed trustworthy.''''You're sick,'' I said, but smiled.''Hey, nobody's perfect. '' Noah smiled back.” - Michelle Hodkin

92. “You're just setting yourself up for pain and anguish if you do something like that."But pain and anguish were everywhere anyway. Might as well put them to good use.” - Naomi Shihab Nye

93. “The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast...The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God...Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” - C.S. Lewis

94. “A veces, el dolor es el único recuerdo de que lo que tuvimos fue real.” - Stephenie Meyer

95. “Sometimes you have to know what you're willing to sacrifice to be the person you are meant to be.” - Erik Tomblin

96. “Somehow, the pain only makes it better, more intense, more worth it.” - Lauren Oliver

97. “You go to bed different... tossing and turning is the norm... you wake to a sunny day but clouds follow you wherever you go. You wonder if you are strong enough to climb out of the depression you are living in and your prayers to God seem empty because you are sooo very tired of telling him the same thing over and over again..... if we are really being real... there may even be moments after impact you forget how to pray... maybe you don't even want to.” - Erica Stone

98. “It takes a lot more energy to bury pain than it does to confront it.” - M.J. Abraham