Pain and Despair

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.

To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life.

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.

 

Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

Pain is short, and joy is eternal.

 

Great souls suffer in silence.

 

I that in heill wes and gladnes Am trublit now with gret seiknes And feblit with infermite: Timor Mortis conturbat me. 1

 

Almost everybody in the neighborhood had “troubles,” frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had “complications.” To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years with “troubles,” but they almost always succumbed to “complications.”

J’aime la majesté des souffrances humaines .