“
If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
”
”
Socrates
“
Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet.
My mother went through it.
I went through it.
I'll be damned if I allow my daughter to go through it.
I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. "It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
“
No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
“
There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.
”
”
Tom Perrotta (The Leftovers)
“
Madness is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression…depression is pure dullness, tedium straight up. Depression is, especially these days, an overused term to be sure, but never one associated with anything wild, anything about dancing all night with a lampshade on your head and then going home and killing yourself…The word madness allows its users to celebrate the pain of its sufferers, to forget that underneath all the acting-out and quests for fabulousness and fine poetry, there is a person in huge amounts of dull, ugly agony...Remember that when you’re at the point at which you’re doing something as desperate and violent as sticking your head in an oven, it is only because the life that preceded this act felt even worse. Think about living in depression from moment to moment, and know it is not worth any of the great art that comes as its by-product.
”
”
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America)
“
Pain. Everyone is always in pain. Whether it’s a loose hangnail, a sore joint, a cramped back muscle—something. No human is never not in at least a minute amount of pain.
”
”
Rebecca Schaeffer (Not Even Bones (Market of Monsters, #1))
“
I’m currently imagining a few creative ways of causing you extraordinary amounts of pain.”
Kingsley raised his chin. Mere inches separated their faces.
“Stop flirting. You know we don’t have time for that.
”
”
Tiffany Reisz (The Prince (The Original Sinners, #3))
“
It is not only the ratio of pleasure to pain that determines the quality of a life, but also the sheer quantity of pain. Once a certain threshold of pain is passed, no amount of pleasure can compensate for it.
”
”
David Benatar (Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence)
“
She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.
”
”
Edna O'Brien (Saints and Sinners: Stories)
“
Have you ever stopped to ponder the amount of blood spilt, the volume of tears shed, the degree of pain and anguish endured, the number of noble men and women lost in battle so that we as individuals might have a say in governing our country? Honor the lives sacrificed for your freedoms. Vote.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year)
“
It's better to feel pain, have memories and remember someone, rather than carry on, hide everything away, try to forget, then convince everyone I'm feeling better about it over a given amount of time. Sadly, this is what humanity demands of us sometimes
”
”
The Conductor (The Jamange Line)
“
What a foolish thing, the human heart, being both fragile and reckless. No wonder we spend such an inordinate amount of time in pain.
”
”
Eliza Crewe (Crushed (Soul Eaters, #2))
“
To this day, she’s still sad. Because there’s not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I’m just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn’t hurt me at all.
”
”
Tom Perrotta (The Leftovers)
“
People are willing to accept the pain and suffering of others, limitless amounts of it, as long as it helps them to keep on believing in whatever it is that they want to believe. Love, meaning, doesn’t matter.
”
”
Mieko Kawakami (Breasts and Eggs)
“
The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things.... Stop being a glass. Become a lake.
”
”
Mark Nepo (The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have)
“
perhaps i care too much and that has caused me a tremendous amount of pain during my life
”
”
Edgar Holmes (Her Favorite Color Was Yellow)
“
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
”
”
Criss Jami (Healology)
“
God has brought a very wise Japanese lady into my life who lives in Calif. We've never met, but she has shared a tremendous amount of wisdom with me concerning unconditional love within relationships. Here is one of the things she said to me this evening when we were discussing "Soul Mates."
"Soul mates aren't perfect people. They can come into your life and provide polar emotional experiences from intense love to intense pain. Growth comes from both. And a soul mate helps you grow. It isn't just "...and they lived happily ever after" but "...and they lived!" ~ From my mentor ~ Lori Chidori Phillips
”
”
Dianne Rosena Jones
“
The amount of pain we can endure is spectacular. We are conditioned to withstand torture, to haul gray boulders of hurt on our shoulders, to confront the pressure endlessly, the heavy rough stone wearing away at us until our skin breaks open, revealing the bloody red flesh below.
”
”
Sarah Rose Etter (Ripe)
“
Much of magic as I understand it in the Western occult tradition is the search for the Self, with a capital S. This is understood as being the Great Work, as being the gold the alchemists sought, as being the Will, the Soul, the thing we have inside us that is behind the intellect, the body, the dreams. The inner dynamo of us, if you like. Now this is the single most important thing that we can ever attain, the knowledge of our own Self. And yet there are a frightening amount of people who seem to have the urge not just to ignore the Self, but actually seem to have the urge to obliterate themselves. This is horrific, but you can almost understand the desire to simply wipe out that awareness, because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually posses such a thing as a soul, such a precious thing. What if you break it? What if you lose it? Mightn’t it be best to anesthetize it, to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure? I think that the way that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self and then having to maintain it.
”
”
Alan Moore
“
I'm trying to focus, telling myself these are just empty words, but I'm lying. Because somehow, just reading these words is too much; and the thought of her in pain is causing me an unbearable amount of agony.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Destroy Me (Shatter Me, #1.5))
“
The distance between your knowledge of truth and your obedience is called lack of integrity. And the amount of negative behavior--or lack of integrity--a person exhibits is directly proportional to their amount of pain." - Tara Leigh's therapist (p.118)
”
”
Tara Leigh Cobble (Orange Jumpsuit: Letters to the God of Freedom)
“
But brokenhearted was brokenhearted. Never embraced. Never treasured. Never easy. Heath figured every human being had a certain amount of God-ordained grace to endure their own unique brand of loss and pain.
”
”
Rachel Hauck (Love Starts with Elle)
“
We are always in a certain amount of pain. There is chafing somewhere, and if it isn’t in our body, then it’s in our mind. There’s an itch, all the time.
”
”
John Ajvide Lindqvist (Little Star)
“
And I always feel so stupid sitting in therapy talking about my problems because, Jesus Christ, so what? I can't equate the amount of pain and misery and despair I have suffered and endured as a depressive with the events of my life, which just seem so common.
”
”
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
“
He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.
I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt.
”
”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“
The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things…. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.
”
”
Mark Nepo (The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have)
“
Forget about the scant hours in her brief life when Sylvia Plath was able to produce the works in Ariel. Forget about that tiny bit of time and just remember the days that spanned into years when she could not move, couldn’t think straight, could only lie in wait in a hospital bed, hoping for the relief that electroconvulsive therapy would bring. Don’t think of the striking on-screen picture, the mental movie you create of the pretty young woman being wheeled on the gurney to get her shock treatments, and don’t think of the psychedelic, photonegative image of this sane woman at the moment she receives that bolt of electricity. Think, instead, of the girl herself, of the way she must have felt right then, of the way no amount of great poetry and fascination and fame could make the pain she felt at that moment worth suffering. Remember that when you’re at the point at which you’re doing something as desperate and violent as sticking your head in an oven, it is only because the life that preceded this act felt worse. Think about living in depression from moment to moment, and know it is not worth any of the great art that comes a its by-product.
”
”
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
“
The words madness allows its users to celebrate the pain of its sufferers, to forget that underneath all the acting out and quests for fabulousness and fine poetry, there is a person in huge amounts of dull, ugly agony.
”
”
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
“
It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
“
If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change, free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
”
”
Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives)
“
Don’t envy things you wouldn’t actually want. Don’t absorb criticism from people you wouldn’t go to for advice. Don’t fear missing parties you would probably want to leave. Don’t worry about fitting in. Be your own tribe. Don’t argue with people who will never understand you. Don’t believe anyone has it all figured out. Don’t imagine there is an amount of money or success or fame that could insulate you from pain. Don’t think there is a type of face or job or relationship that safeguards happiness. Don’t say yes to things you wish you had the confidence to say no to. Don’t worry if you do.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)
“
In a friendship, especially in a friendship between two young boys, you are allowed to inflict a certain amount of pain. This is even expected. But you must cause no serious injury; you must never, under any circumstances, leave wounds that will result in permanent scars.
”
”
Joe Hill (20th Century Ghosts)
“
It wasn't until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can't be as bad as that workout.
”
”
Henry Rollins
“
Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery, another was emancipation. It's a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy - and it was. But the way it was done led to tragedy, turning four million people loose with no jobs or trades or learning. And then in 1877 for a few electoral votes, just abandoning them entirely. A huge amount of pain and trouble resulted. Everybody in America is still paying for it.
”
”
Shelby Foote
“
Now can you rate your pain for me on a scale of one to ten?"
But I couldn't. It seemed so wrong to me then that there were only ten options, only ten types of pain. Because I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of types of pain in this world, maybe even thousands. And none of these are numbers on the same scale. They all hurt differently, and amounts have nothing to do with it. They all hurt too much, and not enough.
”
”
Robyn Schneider (Extraordinary Means)
“
لا داعى للخوف من صوت الرصاص ..
فالرصاصة التى تقتلك لن تسمع صوتها..!!
تستطيع أن تعرف كم عمرك ، من خلال حجم الألم الذي تشعر به حين تكون في مواجهة فكرة جديدة !
(بيرل بوك)
” You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea !
”
”
Pearl S. Buck
“
He and his wife loved each other and brought each other daily pain. Everything else he was doing in his life, even his longing for Lalitha, amounted to little more than flight from circumstance. He and Patty couldn't live together and couldn't imagine living apart. Each time he thought they'd reached the unbearable breaking point, it turned out that there was still further they could go without breaking.
”
”
Jonathan Franzen (Freedom)
“
The memory burned like bile in my stomach, and I closed my eyes, wishing it didn't have to be this way. I loved Puck like a brother and a best friend. And yet, during a very dark period when I was confused and lonely and hurt, my affection for him had led me to do something stupid, something I shouldn't have done. I knew he loved me, and the fact that I'd taken advantage of his feelings made me disgusted with myself. I wished I knew how to fix it, but the barely concealed pain in Puck's eyes told me no amount of words would make it better.
”
”
Julie Kagawa (The Iron Queen (The Iron Fey, #3))
“
I had tried years earlier to kill myself, and nearly died in the attempt, but did not consider it either a selfish or a not-selfish thing to have done. It was simply the end of what I could bear, the last afternoon of having to imagine waking up the next morning only to start all over again with a thick mind and black imaginings. It was the final outcome of a bad disease, a disease it seemed to me I would never get the better of. No amount of love from or for other people0and there was a lot-could help. No advantage of a caring family and fabulous job was enough to overcome the pain and hopelessness I felt; no passionate or romantic love, however strong, could make a difference. Nothing alive and warm could make its way in through my carapace. I knew my life to be a shambles, and I believed-incontestably-that my family, friends, and patients would be better off without me. There wasn't much of me left anymore, anyway, and I thought my death would free up the wasted energies and well-meant efforts that were being wasted on my behalf.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide)
“
when children were hospitalized for treatment of severe burns, the development of PTSD could be predicted by how safe they felt with their mothers.31 The security of their attachment to their mothers predicted the amount of morphine that was required to control their pain—the more secure the attachment, the less painkiller was needed.
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet. My
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
“
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Walden or, Life in the Woods)
“
Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.
”
”
Oscar Wilde
“
It's like there are seven candles lit in my stomach. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven candles burning and smoking - lit - seven flames of doubt, fear, sorrow, pain, waste, hopelessness, despair. They turn my insides black with soot and ash. There is something at the back of my eyes - a pressure building, building, building - hot like the flames of seven candles, which no amount of breath can extinguish.
”
”
Nic Sheff
“
There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. Your conscience ferments in it — no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything anymore. Ever. Never ever.
An inordinate amount of time passes. It is utterly void of struggle. No ex-wives are contained within it
[...] The song of death is sweet and endless... But what is this? Somewhere in the sore, bloated *man-meat* around you — a sensation!
[...] The limbed and headed machine of pain and undignified suffering is firing up again. It wants to walk the desert. Hurting. Longing. Dancing to disco music.
”
”
Robert Kurvitz
“
He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine,
he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He
follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the
amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change
his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say—-
thou knowest not so well as I.
”
”
Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
“
Finally, I could see with startling clarity that the time I had spent experiencing pain on a run was outweighed by the amount of time that I felt good about it. I was aglow. I was invincible. I was thinking I might be able to do it again.
”
”
Alexandra Heminsley (Running Like a Girl)
“
We knew nothing of loss. Nobody has taught us about pain. Until that moment, death had just amounted to a scary sound.
”
”
Francesca Marciano (Casa Rossa)
“
From what I’d seen in such a short amount of time, the tattoos weren’t just random crap people would regret when they were elderly. The pieces clients got seemed to be so much more than that. They were memorials and declarations. They were outpourings of love and pain. Letters and images, icons and symbolism, personal and eternal. It
”
”
Mariana Zapata (Under Locke)
“
Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet. My mother went through it. I went through it. I’ll be damned if I allow my daughter to go through it. I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. “It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (It Ends With Us)
“
One day I woke up and realized no amount of love, care, pain, hurt, anger, or retribution could ever transform those who are evil into good or kind people. That day I let go; I stopped caring for them, gave up any hope for their souls, and knew they were never worthy of me or my time.
”
”
Ken Poirot
“
Surrender is not giving up, far from it. Surrender takes an enormous amount of courage. Often we are only capable of doing so when the pain of trying to control the outcome becomes too much to bear.
”
”
Bronnie Ware
“
It takes an enormous amount of energy—and courage—to free yourself, to follow the path of transformation without abandoning yourself, without fleeing from your pain and all the loss you’ve experienced.
”
”
Jen Beagin (Big Swiss)
“
That was four people right there who loved me. I wished like mad, in that moment, that I had no one at all. Not a single soul. Love was trapping me here. And they didn't know what it was like, what my head was like. Maybe if they were in my head for ten minutes they'd be like, 'Oh, okay, yes, actually. You should jump. There is no way you should feel this amount of pain. Run and jump and close you eyes and just do it. I mean, if you were on fire I could put a blanket around you, but the flames are invisible. There is nothing we can do. So jump. Or give me a gun and I'll shoot you. Euthanasia.'
But that was not how it worked. If you are depressed your pain is invisible.
”
”
Matt Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive)
“
For me, the good death includes being prepared to die, with my affairs in order, the good and bad messages delivered that need delivering. The good death means dying while I still have my mind sharp and aware; it also means dying without having to endure large amounts of suffering and pain. The good death means accepting death as inevitable, and not fighting it when the time comes. This is my good death, but as legendary psychotherapist Carl Jung said, "It won't help to hear what I think about death." Your relationship to mortality is your own.
”
”
Caitlin Doughty
“
She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Nabokov's Dozen: A Collection of Thirteen Stories (Anchor Literary Library))
“
Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any result which might flow from their action should concern them. They have no conception of the necessity of a well-organized society wherein all shall accept a certain quota of responsibility and all realize a reasonable amount of happiness. They think only of themselves because they have not yet been taught to think of society. For them pain and necessity are the great taskmasters. Laws are but the fences which circumscribe the sphere of their operations. When, after error, pain falls as a lash, they do not comprehend that their suffering is due to misbehavior. Many such an individual is so lashed by necessity and law that he falls fainting to the ground, dies hungry in the gutter or rotting in the jail and it never once flashes across his mind that he has been lashed only in so far as he has persisted in attempting to trespass the boundaries which necessity sets. A prisoner of fate, held enchained for his own delight, he does not know that the walls are tall, that the sentinels of life are forever pacing, musket in hand. He cannot perceive that all joy is within and not without. He must be for scaling the bounds of society, for overpowering the sentinel. When we hear the cries of the individual strung up by the thumbs, when we hear the ominous shot which marks the end of another victim who has thought to break loose, we may be sure that in another instance life has been misunderstood--we may be sure that society has been struggled against until death alone would stop the individual from contention and evil.
”
”
Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie)
“
One way to prevent yourself from going through a considerable amount of useless pain is to see the truth of the following and then to act upon your discovery accordingly: judging others doesn't change how much they disturb you; it serves only to distract you from seeing just how little it actually takes to set you off.
”
”
Guy Finley
“
Honestly, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep doing this. It's like there are seven candles lit in my stomach. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven candles burning and smoking - lit - seven flames of doubt, fear, sorrow, pain, waste, hopelessness, despair. They turn my insides black with soot and ash. There is something at the back of my eyes- a pressure building, building, building - hot like the flames of seven candles, which no amount of breath can extinguish.
I imagine drinking glasses of water. One, two, three four, five, six, seven. I dive into the clearest pool. I drown myself in the coarse, dry sand. I swallow handfuls of crushed white salt, but the flames burn still - brighter, hotter, deeper. Sweat runs in delicate patterns down my back, over my crooked spine and jutting hips. I scratch at the wounds these last weeks have left, but I can't break free of them. The flies gather and vultures circle overhead. The fire eats away my flesh. The fire spreads. The fire runs through my veins. The fire courses beneath my muscles - my tendons - the marrow of my bones.
I sit rocking on the street corner. No, I can't keep doing this. I just can't.
”
”
Nic Sheff (Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines)
“
Do human beings have an infinite amount of energy with which to resist death? It is kinder and more accurate to say that they fought until they had no more fight left in them.
”
”
David L. Conroy (Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain)
“
I thought resilience was the capacity to endure pain, so I asked Adam how I could figure out how much I had. He explained that our amount of resilience isn’t fixed, so I should be asking instead how I could become resilient. Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity—and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone. Since
”
”
Sheryl Sandberg (Option B)
“
In heroin addicts, I had seen the debasement that comes from the loss of free will and enslavement to what amounts to an idea: permanent pleasure, numbness, and the avoidance of pain. But man’s decay has always begun as soon as he has it all, and is free of friction, pain, and the deprivation that temper his behavior.
”
”
Sam Quinones (Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic)
“
How could parents raise children and then watch them walk out of their lives? Were thy all masochists? Why would they do that to themselves? He knew the answer deep down; he'd felt it when Chrissie told him she loved him. They did because for all the pain and heartache children brough, they gave back equal amounts of pure, limmitless joy.
”
”
Mary Campisi (A Family Affair (Truth in Lies, #1))
“
It had been so long since Makani had felt any amount of genuine, unadulterated happiness that she’d forgotten that sometimes it could hurt as much as sadness. His declaration pierced through the muscle of her heart like a skillfully thrown knife.
It was the kind of pain that made her feel alive.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (There's Someone Inside Your House)
“
If you try to imagine as nearly as you can what an amount of misery, pain, and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if on the earth as little as on the moon the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state".
”
”
Arthur Schopenhauer (On the Suffering of the World)
“
But emotionally immature people have a completely unrealistic view of what forgiveness means. To them, forgiveness should make it like the rift never happened, as though a completely fresh start is possible. They have no awareness of the need for emotional processing or the amount of time it may take to rebuild trust after a major betrayal. They just want things to be normal again. Others' pain is the only fly in the ointment. Everything would be fine if others would just get past their feelings about the situation.
”
”
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
“
You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can’t do it. It’s not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven’t you ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it’s reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent.
”
”
George Alec Effinger (When Gravity Fails (Marîd Audran #1))
“
... deep inside you was a frantic longing to be something or someone other than you are. It is the greatest scourge a man can suffer, and the most painful. Life becomes bearable only when one has come to terms with who one is, both in one's own eyes and in the eyes of the world. We all of us must come to terms with what and who we are, and recognize that this wisdom is not going to earn us any praise, that life is not gong to pin a medal on us for recognizing and enduring our own vanity or egoism or baldness or our pot-belly. No, the secret is that there's no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as best we can, because no amount of experience or insight is going to rectify our deficiencies, our self-regard, or our cupidity. We have to learn that our desires do not find any real echo in the world. We have to accept that the people we love do not love us, or not in the way we hope. We have to accept betrayal and disloyalty, and hardest of all, that someone is finer than we are in character or intelligence.
”
”
Sándor Márai (Embers)
“
Since the experience is different for each individual, the tension will reflect that experience. In some persons the whole lower half of the body is relatively immobilized and held in a passive state; in others the muscular tensions are localized in the pelvic floor and around the genital apparatus. If the latter sort of tension is severe, it constitutes a functional castration; for, although the genitals operate normally, they are dissociated in feeling from the rest of the body. Any reduction of sexual feeling amounts to a psychological castration. Generally the person is unaware of these muscular tensions, but putting pressure upon the muscles in the attempt to release the tension is often experienced as very painful and frightening.
”
”
Alexander Lowen (Fear Of Life)
“
This, and much more, she accepted - for after all living did mean accepting
the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case - mere
possibilities of improvement. She thought of the endless waves of pain
that for some reason or other she and her husband had to endure; of the
invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the
incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of
this tenderness, which is either crushed, or wasted, or transformed into
madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners;
of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to
watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as
the monstrous darkness approaches.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Signs and Symbols (Stories of Vladimir Nabokov))
“
[Marilyn] Monroe, the consummate sexual doll, is empowered to act but afraid to act, perhaps because no amount of acting, however inspired, can convince the actor herself that her ideal female life is not a dreadful form of dying. She grinned, she posed, she pretended, she had affairs with famous and powerful men. A friend of hers claimed that she had so many illegal abortions wrongly performed that her reproductive organs were severely injured. She died alone, possibly acting on her own behalf for the first time. Death, one imagines, numbs pain that barbiturates and alcohol cannot touch.
”
”
Andrea Dworkin (Right-Wing Women)
“
But there’s another way to look at it. Consider this: the pain doesn’t come from losing your soul mate, but from the disappointment that this guy wasn’t your soul mate. It’s sad, but it’s not catastrophic. And if you look at it this way—that in some regard, he failed to live up to your values and standards, so how could he have been your soul mate?—the pain is likely to be less severe. I don’t mean to minimize the amount it hurts. I’ve been there, believe me. But by grieving only for your disappointment and dashed expectations, you allow yourself to remain open to the next guy who comes along. It’s a much more manageable type of pain. We can now say more easily, “Although I’m hurt right now, this person wasn’t right for me. Now I can allow myself to find the right person.” This might sound like a small difference, but just allowing ourselves to take on this more correct understanding of what has happened can free us to move forward.
”
”
Matthew Hussey (Get the Guy: Learn Secrets of the Male Mind to Find the Man You Want and the Love You Deserve)
“
In the emptiness that was all around me, I noticed an old tennis ball in the plantings; I picked it up and dropped it at Zoë’s feet. I didn’t know what I was doing, if I had a specific intention. Was I trying to lighten the mood? I don’t know, but I felt I had to do something. So there the ball bounced to a stop at her bare feet.
She looked down at the ball but did nothing with it.
Maxwell noticed what I had done, and he noticed Zoë’s lack of reaction. He picked up the ball and, with a mighty heave, threw it so far into the woods behind the house that I lost sight of it and could only barely hear it crash through the leaves of bushes on its way back to earth. It was quite an impressive toss, the pale tennis ball sailing through the air against the clear blue sky. What amount of psychic pain was expended on that ball, I had no idea.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
Surrender is not giving up, far from it. Surrender takes an enormous amount of courage. Often we are only capable of doing so when the pain of trying to control the outcome becomes too much to bear. Reaching that point is actually liberating, even if it is not fun. Being able to accept there is absolutely nothing more you can do, other than hand it over to the greater force, is the catalyst that finally opens the flow.
”
”
Bronnie Ware (The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing)
“
I used to cry to the stars in the sky and begged them to have mercy on me cause I longed for the moment when the amount of pain I felt would be unbearable and I would simply go numb. Numb. The very taste of that word was a sweet symphony to me. A relief. An alleviation in my unendurable existence. A cure. I ached because of more reasons than I could contain. My mother's cancer, my unrequited love, my worn body. The absence of my dignity and innocence. The utter feeling of abandonment. My yearning for love and family. My beloved father who left me. My freakiness and lack of belonging somewhere. My bisexuality and faith deprivation. My poverty, being insolvent most of my life, having no money to my name since forever. My shack of a house, cold and loathed from the very first days. My sorrow and grief caused by my weaknesses and deficiencies...
”
”
Magdalena Ganowska
“
No pain, no gain." You can hear the phrase in the world of physical exercise and conditioning. Muscles that feel no pain are probably getting neither stronger, nor more flexible. It presents an analogy for the exercise of the heart. Those who run the risk of genuine love alone must worry about emotional pain. The more friends; the more good-byes - and the more wakes to attend, the more graves to visit, the more deaths to share. Those who truly live life to the fullest will bear the full cup of suffering. Only those who are willing to pay the price in pain and anguish find life full to the brim. Happy people also suffer; they are no more lucky than the rest. They create their own happiness. That's the rule of thumb.
Some thumbs, however, don't seem to rule very well. Slogans and catch-words, for all their conventional wisdom, fail to carry the whole weight of truth; they leave too much room for false inferences. "No pain, no gain" may leave one with nothing but pain - an intolerable amount of it. There is simply no guarantee that pain will bring gain, that hardship will yield happiness, that suffering will make one a better person. It may; but it's not inevitable.
”
”
Robert Dykstra (She Never Said Good-Bye)
“
The moments that you choose to be
silent
when someone's soul is
screaming at you,
begging you to say,
"My heart is with you,"
those moments leave
scars on our souls
that no amount of excuses can
erase.
If you love someone,
you love them.
You don't allow your pride to
stop you from expressing your love
to them.
If you expect them to understand
your love through silence,
don't be surprised when their soul
slips out of your hands in silence.
”
”
Najwa Zebian (The Nectar of Pain)
“
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed. Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman’s body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth. Men love to put things inside women, don’t they?
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Sharp Objects)
“
A healthy heart doesn’t pump at the same rate all the time. That would actually be a really unhealthy heart. The healthiest hearts are adaptable, and the quicker they adapt, the better. When you start running, your heart should ideally speed up quickly. Then, when you rest, it should slow down quickly. It’s the same for your emotions. When something really tragic happens, it would be weird if you were still happy, right? Or if you just sat there with no reaction. When something tragic happens, you should be there with that pain, feeling that sadness. When something unjust happens, you should feel how aggravating it is. And then, after you’ve sat with those feelings for the appropriate amount of time—and it could be an hour, or a day, or months, depending on the severity of what happened—then, you can go back to a state of rest. Or joy. Or whatever. Being healed isn’t about feeling nothing. Being healed is about feeling the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times and still being able to come back to yourself. That’s just life.
”
”
Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
“
Well, thought Winnie, crossing her arms of the windowsill, she was different. Things had happened to her that were hers alone, and had nothing to do with them. It was the first time. And no amount of telling about it could help them understand or share what she felt. It was satisfying and lonely, both at once. She rocked, gazing out at the twilight, and the soothing feeling came reliably into her bones. That feeling—it tied her to them, to her mother, her father, her grandmother, with strong threads too ancient and precious to be broken. But there were new threads now, tugging and insistent, which tied her just as firmly to the Tucks”
"Winnie watched the sky slide into blackness over the wood outside her window. There was not the least hint of a breeze to soften the heavy August night. And then, over the treetops, on the faraway horizon, there was a flash of white. Heat lightning. Again and again it throbbed, without a sound. It was like pain, she thought. And suddenly she longed for a thunderstorm."
"She cradled her head in her arms and closed her eyes. At once the image of the man in the yellow suit rose up. She could see him again, sprawled motionless on the sun-blanched grass. 'He can't die,' she whispered, thinking of Mae. 'He mustn't.
”
”
Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting)
“
Forgiveness is not just a selfish pursuit of personal satisfaction or righteousness. It actually alleviates the amount of suffering in the world. As each one of us frees ourselves from clinging to resentments that cause suffering, we relieve our friends, family, and community of the burden of our unhappiness. This is not a philosophical proposal; it is a verifiable and practical truth. Through our suffering and lack of forgiveness, we tend to do all kinds of unskillful things that hurt others. We close ourselves off from love, for example, out of fear of further pains or betrayals. This alone—a lack of openness to the love shown to us—is a way that we cause harm to our loved ones. The closed heart lets no one in or out.
”
”
Noah Levine (The Heart of the Revolution: The Buddha's Radical Teachings on Forgiveness, Compassion, and Kindness)
“
I still can’t believe that someone as hot as you has validation issues but I also know that being a very sensitive person on this planet is painful and some of us are built like sieves, or have holes where any external validation just pours right through and we never get full, and I also know it’s ultimately an inside job anyway and no amount of external validation will ever be enough (though damn it can feel good in the moment, and it sort of makes me mad at god, actually, like, okay god, you built me like this so teach me how to validate myself in a way that feels as good as when a boy does it or the Internet does it, because there is always a cost when a boy does it or when the Internet does it): a love story.
”
”
Melissa Broder (So Sad Today: Personal Essays)
“
If she'd said she loved me and still did all those cruel and careless things, would my child mind have decided to accept that as the definition of love?
Probably.
Would I have ended up believing that love was manipulative and hurtful and full of pain, gotten use to being shoved aside, sworn at and disregarded, picked up and hugged, and then slapped around for getting in the way, starved and smiled at, neglected and cursed, told I was no good and would never amount to anything, then hefted high and proudly shown off down at the Walmart, introduced as a little pisser and a big mistake in the same breath?
Yes, I would have, because if she said she loved me and then acted that way I would have thought that was how you loved someone, and how someone should love you back.
”
”
Laura Wiess (Ordinary Beauty)
“
The reason I despised families with many children in particular was because each child they forced into the world tended to force even more, as did each subsequent generation, which resulted in an exponential growth of new human beings, none of whom asked to be born.
As the philosopher David Benatar has pointed out, assuming each couple has three children, their total descendants over ten generations amount to 88,572 new people. Now that’s a lot of unnecessary human beings! A lot of unnecessary pain and suffering! A lot of unnecessary British tourists!
”
”
Keijo Kangur (I Hate Traveling)
“
And once it's reached that point, I'm left as alone as I've always known is the safest I could ever be. Except that I have the worst pain I've ever felt, and I feel it all. It's all of mine to feel. The only thing I'm sure is absolutely real. It keeps me company. The same way it would be trapped somewhere with someone that you hate. Wishing they weren't there, but needing them to be there. This is where the old survival skills start coming back, not quite as at my command as they used to be. They tell me to keep my right amount of distance, the only real way to be strong. But then I realize those parts of me that have been pieced together and have come back, to different degrees. Their revival works against survival. I know how to make myself untouchable. But when I tell myself how to, something answers me by telling me it's too late for that.
”
”
Ashly Lorenzana (Sex, Drugs, and Being an Escort)
“
What we, and others, often fail to realise is the depth and reach of our loss: that not only will we never have children, but we will never create our own family. We will never watch them grow up, never throw children's birthday parties, never take that 'first day at school' photo, never teach them to ride a bike. We'll never see them graduate, never see them possibly get married and have their own children. We'll never get a chance to heal the wounds of our own childhood by doing things differently with our children. We'll never be grandmothers and never give the gift of grandchildren to our parents. We'll never be the mother of our partner's children and hold that precious place in their heart. We'll never stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our siblings and watch our children play together. We'll never be part of the community of mothers, never be considered a 'real' woman. And when we die, there is no one to leave our stuff to, and no one to take our lifetime's learnings into the next generation.
If you take the time to think about it all in one go, which is more than most of us are ever likely to do because of the breathtaking amount of pain involved, it's a testament to our strength that we're still standing at all.
”
”
Jody Day (Living the Life Unexpected: How to find hope, meaning and a fulfilling future without children)
“
I tend to imagine the self-regulating system like little gremlins hoping on the pain side of the balance to counteract the weight on the pleasure side. The gremlins represent the work of homeostasis, the tendency of any living system to maintain physiologic equilibrium. Once the balance is level, it keeps going, tipping an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain.
In the 1970s social scientists Richard Solomon and John Corbett called this reciprocal relationship between pleasure and pain "The Opponent Process Theory". Any prolonged or repeated departure from hedonic or adaptive neutrality has a cost. That cost is an after-reaction, that is opposite in value to the stimulus, or as the old saying goes: "What goes up, must come down".
”
”
Anna Lembke (Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence)
“
In this world, the thing people fear the most, and what pains people the most— is giving more than they receive. God forbid I cut off more of my fingernail for you than you cut from your fingernail, for me! Heaven forbid I hold my breath in longer while thinking about you, than the amount of time your breath is held in for me! Not a second longer! It is sad fact of the human nature that there you stand as an Infinite Soul and yet your greatest fear is not receiving from another person in proportion to what you give. Your viewpoint is low, your vision is clouded. You have become, in your eyes, a funny little drawing on the paper pad of the universe. Indeed, this race is yet to evolve. And yet, I am surrounded by such fear, to such a great extent that I begin to fear the same!
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
Life is not perfect
It's a place of pain,
a place of shame,
a place of danger,
and maybe a place of joy,
No, life is not perfect,
And it doesn't matter what aspect.
Some times it's a sunset and a sunrise,
Or the blue skies,
Or a prize in disguise,
But sometimes it's also sour,
A wail and a roar,
With no one to implore,
Life is a test
It throws problems at us
And waits for us to crumble,
under the distress,
And looks as we struggle,
And gathers the pieces that are left,
But if we look at it differently,
We can carry on brilliantly,
It's just a matter of will power,
And being courageous,
A matter of refusing to be a coward,
and facing what is dangerous,
Life doesn't throw problems at us,
to see us lose hope,
No, it expects us to become strong,
It doesn't expect us to mope
Or mourn,
Life is like a teacher,
It teaches a lesson,
That whatever the situation,
Life must go on
Time won't stop,
And wait for you to gain hope
No, it'll carry on,
And let you mope,
Time can't be reversed,
No amount of crying will change the situation,
So stop thinking that your life is cursed,
Because life must go on...
”
”
Rida Altaf
“
...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.
I hear my father-in-law's response: 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell *me* about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes that they are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!'
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
”
”
David Mitchell
“
There is a further (non-distributional) consideration that can affect an assessment of a life’s quality. Arguably, once a life reaches a certain threshold of badness (considering both the amount and the distribution of its badness), no quantity of good can outweigh it, because no amount of good could be worth that badness. It is just this assessment that Donald (‘Dax’) Cowart made of his own life—or at least of that part of his life following a gas explosion that burnt two-thirds of his body. He refused extremely painful, life-saving treatment, but the doctors ignored his wishes and treated him nonetheless. His life was saved, he achieved considerable success, and he reattained a satisfactory quality of life. Yet, he continued to maintain that these post-burn goods were not worth the costs of enduring the treatments to which he was subjected. No matter how much good followed his recovery, this could not
outweigh, at least in his own assessment, the bad of the burns and treatment that he experienced.
”
”
David Benatar (Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence)
“
Samson caused the house to collapse, knowing his death would also result. Despite Samson’s deliberate suicide, Samson died faithful after having judged Israel for 20 years. His name rightly appears among men who, through faith, were made powerful. (Jg 15:20; 16:29-31; Heb 11:32-34)
We are surrounded by thousands of unseen cruelties, that mostly go unseen. The total amount of suffering each year is beyond comprehension. This world is barbed, dangerous and painful—too painful for some. Give them their space.
On any given day, your nod of approval may perpetuate cruelties that rasp away at the soul of another. We are all bound together in this delicate web of consequence. Tread light. Be kind. Many among us make unseen bargains to push ourselves onward—another hour, another day, another week. Occasionally their bargains create a deadly, unstoppable momentum.
Consider King Saul: When he realized that he would not survive his final battle against the Philistines, rather than letting his enemy humiliate him, or extort Israel, “Saul took the sword and fell upon it.” –1Sam 31:4
”
”
Michael Ben Zehabe (Unanswered Questions in the Sunday News)
“
Do you know what a honey mushroom is?" she blurted out, plucking at the hairs on his arm, which was wrapped around her.
He was silent for a moment before letting out a husky laugh "No. Why?"
"It's the largest living thing on earth. Larger than trees, elephants, whales-this one living thing takes up over three square miles in Oregon." She could almost feel him turning that random fact over in his brain. She was glad she wasn't facing him. This would be so much harder if she had to look into his eyes instead of at the wall.
"Like the mushroom cap is over three miles across?" he asked.
Harper shook her head. "No, no. That's the amazing part. When you look at it-the part you see aboveground-it's this tiny little mushroom head. It looks so insignificant. They just pop up here and there" she gestures with her fingertips as though she could draw them in the air. "But it creates this root-like system called hyphae. And the hyphae-it spreads and grows and, kind of... takes over underground. One living thing, every cell genetically identical, spreading below the surface to take up this enormous amount of space."
Dan was quiet for a moment. "Why are you telling me this?" he asked, placing a kiss into her neck. Harper swallowed and fiddled with the edge of the sheet.
"Because thats' what my anxiety feels like-a honey mushroom." She felt Dan tense behind her, but she pushed on." A lot of times, someone on the outside, like you, maybe, sees these clues to it-my fidgeting, my mind seeming a million miles away, panic attacks. But inside" -she tapped her chest- "it's this intricate network of sharp pain and fear that's constantly growing and pulsing through me. It's always there, right beneath my skin, huge and controlling, but no one can see it. I just feel it. And it hurts. So badly. It makes me want to curl up into a ball or sprint out of my skeleton. This huge, inescapable thing inside me that controls me." she paused, picking aggressively at her nails; "It feels cruel to have your own body do that to you".
”
”
Mazey Eddings (A Brush with Love (A Brush with Love, #1))
“
efficiently means providing slots in our schedules where we can maintain an attentional set for an extended period. This allows us to get more done and finish up with more energy. Related to the manager/worker distinction is that the prefrontal cortex contains circuits responsible for telling us whether we’re controlling something or someone else is. When we set up a system, this part of the brain marks it as self-generated. When we step into someone else’s system, the brain marks it that way. This may help explain why it’s easier to stick with an exercise program or diet that someone else sets up: We typically trust them as “experts” more than we trust ourselves. “My trainer told me to do three sets of ten reps at forty pounds—he’s a trainer, he must know what he’s talking about. I can’t design my own workout—what do I know?” It takes Herculean amounts of discipline to overcome the brain’s bias against self-generated motivational systems. Why? Because as with the fundamental attribution error we saw in Chapter 4, we don’t have access to others’ minds, only our own. We are painfully aware of all the fretting and indecision, all the nuances of our internal decision-making process that led us to reach a particular conclusion. (I really need to get serious about exercise.) We don’t have access to that (largely internal) process in others, so we tend to take their certainty as more compelling, in many cases, than our own. (Here’s your program. Do it every day.)
”
”
Daniel J. Levitin (The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload)
“
Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes.
What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.
What precipitates acts? Belief.
Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?
Why? Because of this: -- one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
Is this the entropy written in our nature?
If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers [sic] races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Tortuous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.
A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.
I hear my father-in-law's response. 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell me about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the red-necks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & grey in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!'
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
24시간 문의상담과 서울 경기지방은 퀵으로도 가능합니다
믿고 주문하시면 좋은인연으로 vip고객님으로 모시겠습니다.
원하시는제품있으시면 추천상으로 구입문의 도와드릴수있습니다
현재까지 많은단골분들 모시고있구요 단골분들 추천으로구입하시는분들에게는 저희가 사은품 넉넉히 챙겨드리고있습니다
Laugh, even when you feel too sick or too worn out or tired.
Smile, even when you're trying not to cry and the tears are blurring your vision.
Sing, even when people stare at you and tell you your voice is crappy.
Trust, even when your heart begs you not to.
Twirl, even when your mind makes no sense of what you see.
Frolick, even when you are made fun of. Kiss, even when others are watching. Sleep, even when you're afraid of what the dreams might bring.
Run, even when it feels like you can't run any more.
And, always, remember, even when the memories pinch your heart. Because the pain of all your experience is what makes you the person you are now. And without your experience---you are an empty page, a blank notebook, a missing lyric. What makes you brave is your willingness to live through your terrible life and hold your head up high the next day. So don't live life in fear. Because you are stronger now, after all the crap has happened, than you ever were back before it started.
☆100%정품보장
☆총알배송
☆투명한 가격
☆편한 상담
☆끝내주는 서비스
☆고객님 정보 보호
☆깔끔한 거래
카톡【ACD5】텔레【KC98K】
♥경영항목♥
수면제,여성최음제,ghb센트립,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아그라,시알리스,88정,99정,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마그라젤,비닉스,센돔,남성조루방지제,네노마정,등많은제품판매하고있습니다
The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat
”
”
Mary Stewart (The Hollow Hills (Arthurian Saga, #2))
“
His booted feet pounded out an insane, frantic rhythm underneath him as he raced into the cavern across from Baba Yaga’s den at a dead sprint. Pieces of dragon dung flew off him and hit the ground behind him in miniature chunks. He didn’t dare look behind him to see if the dragon had risen from the ground yet, but the deafening hiss that assaulted his ears meant she’d woken up. Icy claws of fear squeezed his heart with every breath as he ran, relying on the night vision goggles, the glimpse he’d gotten of the map, and his own instincts to figure out where to go.
Jack raced around one corner too sharply and slipped on a piece of dung, crashing hard on his right side. He gasped as it knocked the wind out of him and gritted his teeth, his mind screaming at him to get up and run, run, run. He pushed onto his knees, nursing what felt like bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and then paled as an unmistakable sensation traveled up the arm he’d used to push himself up.
Impact tremors.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom, boom, boom.
Baba Yaga was coming.
Baba Yaga was hunting him.
Jack forced himself up onto his feet again, stumbling backwards and fumbling for the tracker. He got it switched on to see an ominous blob approaching from the right. He’d gotten a good lead on her—maybe a few hundred yards—but he had no way of knowing if he’d eventually run into a dead end. He couldn’t hide down here forever. He needed to get topside to join the others so they could take her down.
Jack blocked out the rising crescendo of Baba Yaga’s hissing and pictured the map again. A mile up to the right had a man-made exit that spilled back up to the forest. The only problem was that it was a long passage. If Baba Yaga followed, there was a good chance she could catch up and roast him like a marshmallow. He could try to lose her in the twists and turns of the cave system, but there was a good chance he’d get lost, and Baba Yaga’s superior senses meant it would only be a matter of time before she found him. It came back to the most basic survival tactics: run or hide.
Jack switched off the tracker and stuck it in his pocket, his voice ragged and shaking, but solid. “You aren’t about to die in this forest, Jackson. Move your ass.”
He barreled forward into the passageway to the right in the wake of Baba Yaga’s ominous, bubbling warning, barely suppressing a groan as a spike of pain lanced through his chest from his bruised ribs. The adrenaline would only hold for so long. He could make it about halfway there before it ran out. Cold sweat plastered the mask to his face and ran down into his eyes. The tunnel stretched onward forever before him. No sunlight in sight. Had he been wrong?
Jack ripped off the hood and cold air slapped his face, making his eyes water. He held his hands out to make sure he wouldn’t bounce off one of the cavern walls and squinted up ahead as he turned the corner into the straightaway. There, faintly, he could see the pale glow of the exit.
Gasping for air, he collapsed against one wall and tried to catch his breath before the final marathon. He had to have put some amount of distance between himself and the dragon by now.
“Who knows?” Jack panted. “Maybe she got annoyed and turned around.”
An earth-shattering roar rocked the very walls of the cavern.
Jack paled.
Boom, boom, boom, boom!
Boom, boom, boom, boomboomboomboom—
Mother of God.
The dragon had broken into a run.
Jack shoved himself away from the wall, lowered his head, and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
”
”
Kyoko M. (Of Blood & Ashes (Of Cinder & Bone, #2))