Pain and Despair

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.

 

There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over... Faint to my ears came the gathered rumor of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone. J. R. R.

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair; and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. J.R.R.

 

The crime of suicide lies in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind. E. M.

 

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe.

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

I never saw a wild thing Sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough Without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

 

No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

 

He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.

 

I am Goya of the bare field, by the enemy’s beak gouged till the craters of my eyes gape I am grief I am the tongue of war, the embers of cities on the snows of the year 1941 I am hunger

 

We were the first that found that famous country: We marched by a king’s name: we crossed the sierras: Unknown hardships we suffered: hunger.

 

Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, How could I seek the empty world again?

 

Sleep not, dream not; this bright day Will not, cannot last for aye; Bliss like thine is bought by years Dark with torment and with tears.

 

O Sorrow, wilt Thou live with me No casual mistress, but a wife.

 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

 

A still small voice spake unto me, “Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?”

 

She said, “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!”

 

Pain is short, and joy is eternal.

 

Great souls suffer in silence.