Pain and Despair

whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Apt words have pow’r to swage The tumors of a troubled mind, And are as balm to fester’d wounds.

If man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth!

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

The austere principles of tact tell the tongue to keep away from the aching thought.

The scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.

There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine which intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

but every day and every night of your life, they are eating at you.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

There is room in the halls of pleasure For a large and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow isles of pain.

It is not shameful for man to succumb under pain, and it is shameful for him to succumb under pleasure.

Pain wastes the body; pleasures, the understanding.

Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain Clings cruelly to us.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know.