Yet all I've learnt from hours rife
With painful brooding here,
Is, that amid this mortal strife.
The lapse of every year
But takes away a hope from life.
And adds to death a fear. [ Hoffman ]
Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom. [ Montaigne ]
It is more painful to do nothing than to do something. [ Proverb ]
It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age. [ Proverb ]
Fear is far more painful to cowardice than death to true courage. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Be the business never so painful, you may have it done for money. [ Proverb ]
No cheerfulness can ever be produced by effort which is itself painful. [ Goldsmith ]
I am sick of this bad world! The daylight and the sun grow painful to me. [ Addison ]
Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought. [ Balzac ]
O Lucius, I am sick of this bad world! The day-light and the sun grow painful to me. [ Addison ]
It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. [ Bacon ]
Life, upon the whole, is much more pleasurable than painful, otherwise we should not feel pain so impatiently when it comes. [ Leigh Hunt ]
Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant. [ Pascal ]
Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors. [ Swift ]
Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure. [ Addison ]
It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace; it is the act of giving that is hard and painful. How little does a smile cost! [ Bruyere ]
Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence. [ Hume ]
The most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or immaterial, - namely, our impatience, and the delusion that it will last forever. [ Richter ]
We die every day; every moment deprives us of a portion of life and advances us a step toward the grave; our whole life is only a long and painful sickness. [ Massillon ]
Mothers are more fond of their children than fathers are; for the bringing them forth is more painful, and they have a more certain knowledge that they are their own. [ Aristotle ]
Even sleep is characteristic. How beautiful are children in their lovely innocence! how angel-like their blooming features! and how painful and anxious is the sleep of the guilty! [ Wilhelm von Humboldt ]
If we can sleep without dreaming, it is well that painful dreams are avoided. If, while we sleep, we can have any pleasing dreams, it is as the French say, tant gagne, so much added to the pleasure of life. [ Franklin ]
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them: but we can be said only to fulfill our destiny in the place that gave us birth. [ Hazlitt ]
Resentment is, in every stage of the passion, painful, but it is not disagreeable, unless in excess; pity is always painful, yet always agreeable; vanity, on the contrary, is always pleasant, yet always disagreeable. [ Horne ]
To die, and thus avoid poverty or love, or anything painful, is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble, and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honorable, but in order to avoid evil. [ Aristotle ]