Stress and Pain Quotes
Top 50 Stress and Pain
Quotes
No 1 (Best quote!)
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but
through greatness of mind.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC),
Greek philosopher, pictured right.
As the 1960's slogan says:
Take up your cross and relax.
No 2
To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.
- Marcus Aurelius (121-180),
Roman emperor and philosopher, pictured right.
No 3
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
(from the 1667 poem Paradise Lost)
- John Milton (1608-74), pictured right, English writer.
No 4
It is difficulties that show what men are.
- Epictetus (c.55-c.135 AD), Greek philosopher, pictured right.
No 5
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own,
(Matthew 6:34 in the Bible)
- Jesus (c4 BC-c30 AD), founder
of Christianity
Horace (65–8 BC), the Roman poet, pictured right. agrees:
Drop the question what tomorrow may bring, and count as profit every day that fate allows you
No 6
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
(Malcolm in Macbeth)
- William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right
Shakespeare gives two tips on dealing with sorrow:
What's gone and what's past help should be past grief.
(Paulina in The Winter's Tale)
What’s done cannot be undone.
(Lady Macbeth in Macbeth)
No 7
If you want to be free, live simply.
- Lao Tzu (c604-c531 BC) ,
pictured right, Chinese philosopher.
No 8
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
(from the 1927 poem Desiderata)
- Max Ehrmann (1872-1945), pictured right, American writer
No 9
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
(Elizabeth to Darcy)
- Jane Austen, pictured right,
Pride and Prejudice (1813),
Don’t yearn for the past, as D.H. Lawrence, pictured right, describes in his 1918 poem
Piano:
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
No 10
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
(Duke Senior in As You Like It).
- William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right.
Shakespeare’s thought that problems are necessary for a happy life is supported by
William Blake’s , pictured right, 1803 poem, Auguries of Innocence:
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
No 11
There are no gains without pains.
- Adlai Stevenson (1900–65), American Democratic politician, pictured right.
No 12
There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.
- Dante, (1265–1321), Italian poet, pictured right.
No 13
Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.
- Hans Selye (1907-82) , pictured
right, Austrian-born Canadian medical professor and stress expert.
Selye also says that positive stress (or pressure) is vital to a happy life:
Stress is the spice of life.
No 14
The foundation of all mental health is the avoidance of true suffering.
- Carl Jung (1875-1961), Swiss
psychiatrist, pictured right.
So Jung also says:
The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
No 15
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish.
(Benvolio in Romeo and
Juliet)
- William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right
No 16
Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
- Francis
Bacon (1561–1626), English politician and philosopher, pictured right.
No 17
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
- Joseph P. Kennedy (1888–1969), American diplomat and father of John F. Kennedy, pictured right.
(also said by the American football player and coach Knute Rockne (1888-1931)
No 18
One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and
that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster.
- Bertrand
Russell (1872–1970), English philosopher, pictured right.
No 19
Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone; for the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, but
has trouble enough of its own.
(from the 1883 poem Solitude)
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919), pictured right, American poet.
No 20
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on.
(the Duke of Venice in Othello)
- William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right
No 21
But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
(Will Ladislaw in the 1874 novel Middlemarch)
- George Eliot (1819-80), pictured right, English writer.
No 22
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
- Coco Chanel (1883-1971),
French fashion designer and businesswoman, pictured right.
No 23
Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops. That’s where you’ll find me,
(from the song Over the Rainbow),
- Dorothy (Judy Garland, pictured right, in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz) .
No 24
When one door of happiness closes another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see
the one which has been opened for us.
- Helen Keller (1880-1968), American
campaigner for the disabled, pictured right.
No 25
Our sorrows are our schoolmasters.
- Francis
Bacon (1561–1626), English politician and philosopher, pictured right.
No 26
It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
- Eleanor
Roosevelt (1884-1962), American human rights campaigner, pictured right.
No 27
Suffering is only intolerable when nobody cares.
- Cicely Saunders (1918-2005),
English founder of the modern hospice movement, pictured right.
No 28
Turn your wounds into wisdom,
- Oprah Winfrey (1954- ) African
American chat show host, pictured right.
So philosophy helps, as Friar Laurence in Shakespeare’s (pictured right) play, Romeo and Juliet, says:
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy.
No 29
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.,
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French
writer, pictured right.
No 30
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
- William James (1842-1910),
American psychologist and philosopher, pictured right.
No 31
Every struggle is a victory.
- Helen Keller (1880-1968), pictured
right, American campaigner for the disabled
So Marcel Proust (1871-1922),
pictured right, the French writer, says:
It is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
No 32
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
(from the 1875 poem Invictus)
- William Henley (1849-1903), pictured right above, English poet.
No 33
What does not destroy me makes me stronger,
- Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900), pictured right, German philosopher.
No 34
Suffering ceases to be suffering when we find a reason for it.
- Viktor Frankl (1905-97), pictured right, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust
survivor.
No 35
Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them.
- Epictetus (c.55-c.135 AD), Greek philosopher, pictured right.
No 36
Do not abandon yourselves to despair.
- John Paul II (1920-2005), pictured right,
Polish pope.
John Paul also comments:
The worst prison would be a closed heart.
No 37
Pray not for a lighter load but stronger shoulders.
- St.
Augustine (354-430), pictured right, Algerian philosopher.
No 38
Another cause of your sickness, and the most important, you have forgotten what you are.
- Boethius (c.470-524), pictured
right, Roman philosopher and politician
No 39
Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1803-1882), pictured right, American philosopher.
No 40
Pleasure is... freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the mind.
- Epicurus (341-270 BC), Greek
philosopher (pictured right)
No 41
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
- Mahatma ( Mohandas)
Gandhi (1869-1948), pictured right, Indian leader and philosopher.
No 42
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55),
pictured right, Danish philosopher
No 43
We cannot go to heaven in featherbeds.
(talking about suffering),
- Thomas More (1477-1535), pictured
right, English philosopher and politician
No 44
It is better to suffer, than to do wrong.
- Pythagoras (c.570-495 BC), pictured right, Greek philosopher and mathematician.
No 45
Human life begins on the other side of despair.
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80),
pictured right, French philosopher
No 46
Life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome.
- Arnold
Schopenhauer (1788-1860), pictured right, German philosopher.
No 47
Life is a series of problems.
- M. Scott
Peck (1936-2005), pictured right, American psychiatrist.
No 48
Life is just one damned thing after another.
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), American writer, pictured
right.
No 49
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.
- Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900), pictured right, German philosopher.
No 50
It [materialism] speaks to us in the language of terrorism, genocide, breakdown, pollution, exhaustion,
- Ernst Friedrich (Fritz) Schumacher, pictured right, in
Small is
Beautiful (1973)
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