Pain is something we all face from time to time (no matter how much we want to avoid it).
It can make you feel alone. And like life will never be good or happy again.
In today’s post I want to help out with that by sharing 120 of the most relatable, hopeful and helpful pain quotes.
I truly hope these timeless words of wisdom will bring you some comfort, inspiration and remind you that you’re not alone.
Relatable Pain Quotes to Help You Not Feel Alone
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
– James Baldwin
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“We are all damaged. We have all been hurt. We have all had to learn painful lessons. We are all recovering from some mistake, loss, betrayal, abuse, injustice or misfortune.”
– Bryant McGill
“Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.”
– Veronica Roth
“The worst type of crying wasn’t the kind everyone could see – the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it.”
– Katie McGarry
“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
– Chuck Palahniuk
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
– Lois Lowry
“If you feel pain, you’re alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you’re a human being.”
– Leo Tolstoy
“One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside.”
– John Lennon
“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
– Laurell K. Hamilton
“Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.”
– George R.R. Martin
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
– James Baldwin
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’”
– C.S. Lewis
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away.”
– Andrew Boyd
“Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take can sometimes be the most painful.”
– José N. Harris
“I think that humans have a huge capacity to carry pain and sadness. There are things that haunt us our entire lives; we are unable to let them go.”
– Henry Rollins
“People go through so much pain trying to avoid pain.”
– Neil Strauss
“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
– John Green
“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”
– J.K. Rowling
“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
– Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”
– Fernando Pessoa
Pain Quotes to Give You Hope
“Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.”
– Ovid
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”
– Lao Tzu
“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”
– Tony Robbins
“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”
– Dalai Lama
“Pain is temporary. It may last for a minute, or an hour or a day, or even a year. But eventually, it will subside. And something else take its place.”
– Eric Thomas
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
– Helen Keller
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“After the rain, the sun will reappear. There is life. After the pain, the joy will still be here.”
– Walt Disney
“You may have had unfair things happen to you, but so have most of us. What counts is if you cling to that anger about the unfairness or if you after a while move on.”
– Jim Harper
“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
– Charles Dickens
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
– Winston Churchill
“Just like there’s always time for pain, there’s always time for healing.”
– Jennifer Brown
“When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.”
– Rumi
“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”
– Joseph Campbell
“The only thing that’s the end of the world is the end of the world.”
– Barack Obama
“When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”
– Jane Austen
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
– Neale Donald Walsch
“When pain brings you down, don’t be silly, don’t close your eyes and cry, you just might be in the best position to see the sun shine.”
– Alanis Morissette
“With time the pain eases, the body recovers and the brain figures out new ways to go on.”
– Federico Chini
Pain Quotes That Will Help You to Heal
“Handling our suffering is an art. If we know how to suffer, we suffer much less, and we’re no longer afraid of being overwhelmed by the suffering inside.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
“Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim – letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor.”
– C.R. Strahan
“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.”
– David Richo
“Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.”
– Jack Kornfield
“Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.”
– Tori Amos
“The cure for pain is in the pain.”
– Rumi
“Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go.”
– Roy T. Bennett
“What hurts us is what heals us.”
– Paulo Coelho
“Where the wound has been given, there must the cure be found, if anywhere.”
– Jane Austen
“The pain will leave once it has finished teaching you.”
– Bruce Lee
“Let go of the past.”
– Robert Greene
“The wound is where the light enters you.”
– Rumi
“I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.”
– Frida Kahlo
“Pain is a sudden hurt that can’t be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing.”
– C. JoyBell C.
“I guess that’s what pain can do if you allow it: crack you open, let light in, and show you what’s on the inside.”
– Michelle Cuevas
“The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained was the memory of how painful it had been.”
– Jodi Picoult
“Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.”
– Eckhart Tolle
“We can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering, or we can evolve in a state of joy and inspiration.”
– Joe Dispenza
“Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.”
– Michael J. Fox
Uplifting Pain Quotes to Help You Grow Stronger
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.”
– Bob Marley
“Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”
– Mary Tyler Moore
“Don’t let pain define you, let it refine you.”
– Tim Fargo
“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“Failure gave me strength. Pain was my motivation.”
– Michael Jordan
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
– Frida Kahlo
“Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me pain is pleasure.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
“It is when I struggle that I strengthen. It is when challenged to my core that I learn the depth of who I am.”
– Steve Maraboli
“Our strength grows out of our weaknesses.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”
– Thomas Paine
“Great things never came from comfort zones.”
– Neil Strauss
“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
– Charles Bukowski
“If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it – to love it.”
– Sarah J. Maas
“When you fall, feel the pain. And then stand up. You were born for victory. And failure has no place in your world.”
– Robin Sharma
“Recycle your pain, allow your pain to reach you to greatness.”
– Eric Thomas
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”
– Kenji Miyazawa
“Pain introduces you to your highest self.”
– Paul Domenick
“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”
– African Proverb
“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.”
– Rabindranath Tagore
Short Pain Quotes
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
– Haruki Murakami
“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
– Rumi
“It hurts because it matters.”
– John Green
“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Move toward resistance and pain.”
– Robert Greene
“To hurt is as human as to breathe.”
– J.K. Rowling
“Much of your pain is self-chosen.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“Pain is a great motivator.”
– Naval Ravikant
“Pain is information.”
– Michael Saylor
“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.”
– Robert Gary Lee
“That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt.”
– John Green
“There are no gains without pains.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Adversity is the first path to truth.”
– Lord Byron
“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”
– Aristotle
“The root of all suffering is attachment.”
– Buddha
“First it hurts, then it changes you.”
– Paulo Coelho
“The cost of failure is learning.”
– Neil Strauss
“Pain is temporary. It will not last forever, even if it may seem so right now.”
– Unknown
“Strange how we decorate pain.”
– Margaret Atwood
“Life is pain, so live it up while you can.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“Sweet is pleasure after pain.”
– John Dryden
Deep and Inspirational Pain Quotes
“Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change.”
– Frida Kahlo
“We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”
– Alan Watts
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.”
– Iain Thomas
“Behind every beautiful thing, there’s been some kind of pain.”
– Bob Dylan
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.”
– Sophocles
“Sit with the pain until it passes, and you will be calmer for the next one.”
– Naval Ravikant
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
– John Keats
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
– Maya Angelou
“Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.”
– José N. Harris
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“True self-discovery begins where your comfort zone ends.”
– Adam Braun
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul.”
– Carl Jung
“Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain.”
– Jim Morrison
“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.”
– Eckhart Tolle
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
– Zora Neale Hurston
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
– Maya Angelou
“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
– Haruki Murakami
Want more inspiration and help to deal with tough times? Then have a look at these betrayal quotes, the ungrateful people quotes here and also this post with plenty of failure quotes.