No pains, no gains. [ Proverb ]
No gains without pains. [ Proverb ]
Short pleasures, long pains. [ Proverb ]
Great pains quickly find ease. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Idle people take the most pains. [ Proverb ]
Time and pains will do anything. [ F. W. Robertson ]
Other men's pains are easily borne. [ Cervantes ]
A man of pleasure is a man of pains. [ Young ]
Pains are the wages of ill pleasures. [ Proverb ]
Honesty needs no pains to set itself off. [ Edward Moore ]
Harmless all malice, if our God be nigh;
Fruitless all pains, if he his help deny.
Patient I pass these gloomy hours away,
And wait the morning of eternal day! [ Lady Jane Dudley ]
Pains to get, care to keep, fear to lose. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Little pains
In a due hour employ'd great profit yields. [ John Philips ]
Nothing to be got without pains but poverty. [ Proverb ]
Old Age, a second child, by nature curst
With more and greater evils than the first.
Weak, sickly, full of pains: in every breath
Railing at life, and yet afraid of death. [ Churchill ]
'Tis good for men to love their present pains
Upon example; so the spirit is eased. [ William Shakespeare ]
Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least virtue; life's poor span
Make not an ell by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains;
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains. [ George Herbert ]
But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry. [ William Shakespeare ]
Shall he who soars, inspired by loftier views.
Life's little cares and little pains refuse?
Shall he not rather feel a double share
Of mortal woe, when doubly armed to bear? [ Crabbe ]
Oh! the pain of pains
Is when the fair one, whom our soul is fond of,
Gives transport, and receives it from another. [ Young ]
Death is a release from and an end of all pains. [ Seneca ]
Long pains, with use of bearing, are half eased. [ Dryden ]
From powerful causes spring the empiric's gains.
Man's love of life, his weakness, and his pains;
These first induce him the vile trash to try,
Then lend his name that other men may buy. [ Crabbe ]
We take less pains to be happy than to appear so. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
He that hoards up money takes pains for other men. [ Proverb ]
If pains be a pleasure to you, profit will follow. [ Proverb ]
Too much scratching pains, too much talking plagues. [ Proverb ]
Only the victims of love know how to soften its pains. [ Mme. de Graffigny ]
Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains. [ Hume ]
None but the guilty know the withering pains of repentance. [ Hosea Ballou ]
Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent it. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Youth might be wise; we suffer less from pains than pleasures. [ Bailey ]
He'll rather die with thirst than take the pains to draw water. [ Proverb ]
Mouth civility is no great pains, but may turn to good account. [ Proverb ]
Some had rather guess at much, than take pains to hear a little. [ Proverb ]
Tender-handed stroke a nettle, and 't stings you for your pains. [ Aaron Hill ]
What can we not endure. When pains are lessen'd by the hope of cure? [ Nabb ]
Nature takes as much pains in the forming of a beggar as an emperor. [ Proverb ]
Death is not grievous to me, for I shall lay aside my pains by death. [ Ovid ]
The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Where bright imagination reigns, the fine-wrought spirit feels acuter pains. [ Hannah More ]
The pains that excite the least pity in women are those that we suffer for them. [ Chabanon ]
A fop takes great pains to hang out a sign, by his dress, of what he has within. [ Richardson ]
Nature takes as much pains in the womb for the forming of a beggar as an emperor. [ Proverb ]
Resentment gratifies him who intended an injury, and pains him unjustly who did not intend it. [ Johnson ]
As we advance in life the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts. [ Madame Swetchine ]
We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy than in endeavouring to think so ourselves. [ Confucius ]
The pains we take in books or arts which treat of things remote from the necessaries of life is a busy idleness. [ Fuller ]
Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others. [ Burke ]
If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expense to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us. [ Clarendon ]
Know, he that foretells his own calamity, and makes events before they come, twice over doth endure the pains of evil destiny. [ Sir W. Davenant ]
The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains. [ La Bruyere ]
If time inflicts on thee many a wound, many a joy brings it too in its course; and one short hour of bliss outweighs a year of pains. [ Geibel ]
Happy is it to place a daughter; yet it pains a father's heart when he delivers to another's house a child, the object of his tender care. [ Euripides ]
There is nothing truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure. [ Addison ]
Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant. [ Henry Home ]
No; creation, one would think, cannot be easy; your Jove has severe pains, and fire flames, in the head out of which an armed Pallas is struggling. [ Carlyle ]
Immortality o'ersweeps all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, and peals, like the eternal thunder of the deep, into my ears this truth: Thou livest forever! [ Byron ]
We must not sit down, and look for miracles. Up, and be doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything. [ John Eliot ]
I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored and taken pains to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions. [ Ben Jonson ]
But since, however protracted, death will come. Why fondly study, with ingenious pains. To put it off? - To breathe a little longer is to defer our fate, but not to shun it. [ Hannah More ]
No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]
Men of great learning or genius are too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them. [ Spectator ]
The stoical exemption which philosophy affects to give us over the pains and vexations of human life is as imaginary as the state of mystical quietism and perfection aimed at by some crazy enthusiast. [ Scott ]
As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers, and the sharpest thorns; as the heavens are sometimes overcast — alternately tempestuous and serene — so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasures and with pains. [ Burton ]
Ridicule intrinsically is a small faculty; we may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to thought, to knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is denial, which hovers on the surface, while knowledge dwells far below. [ Carlyle ]
Oceans of ink, reams of paper, and disputes infinite, might have been spared, if wranglers had avoided lighting the torch of strife at the wrong end; since a tenth part of the pains expended in attempting to prove the why, the where, and the when, certain events have happened, would have been more than sufficient to prove that they never happened at all. [ Colton ]
Do you wish to become rich? You may become rich, that is, if you desire it in no half way, but thoroughly. A miser sacrifices all to his single passion; hoards farthings and dies possessed of wealth. Do you wish to master any science or accomplishment? Give yourself to it and it lies beneath your feet. Time and pains will do anything. This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come. [ F. W. Robertson ]
We see a world of pains taken and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life, and after all the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, and want commonsense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is that wisdom, valour, justice and learning cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called good-breeding. [ Steele ]
Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm. [ Swift ]
What is more pleasing than the sight of the affectionate mother, watching with untiring devotion over her helpless child? Who can contemplate her devotion to the object of her love, enduring his waywardness, forgiving his faults, relieving his pains, and enjojdng his pleasures; pouring incessantly into his opening soul the mature wisdom of her counsels, and following him with her untiring prayers, as he finally goes forth to battle with the temptations and trials of life, without feeling that the true mother's heart is the noblest of heaven's gifts? [ H. Winslow ]