Paul Laurence Dunbar Quotes

For every laugh, there should be a tear.

A minute to smile and an hour to weep in, A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double; And that is life!

Learn weeping, and thou shalt laugh gaining.

You know what my philosophy of life is? That it’s important to have some laughs, but you got to suffer a little too, because otherwise you miss the whole point to life.

Life is very hard, isn't it? It does kill you, after all.

As long as one can suffer, one is living....live and suffer until life is gone.

It's been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.

The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.

I used to think you had to live this miserable life and that that would make you funnier, but you don't. The misery will come. The misery will find you.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Life is not always easy to live, but the opportunity to do so is a blessing beyond comprehension. In the process of living, we will face struggles, many of which will cause us to suffer and to experience pain.

I think everybody has their pain. For me, the time that I really had to grow up was when I was 15 and I had my best friend die of leukemia. Watching somebody so strong go through that is definitely something that will give you a little bit of depth. There have been a lot of things that have happened in my life that has forced me to grow up.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Life is hard and it gets worse and worse and worse.

I never question God. Sometimes I say, 'Why me? Why do I have such a hard life? Why do I have this disease? Why do I have siblings who died?' But then I think and say, 'Why not me?'

The moments that make life worth living are when things are at their worst and you find a way to laugh.

In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping.

Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain.

HAPPY EVER AFTER is a concept I'll never believe in. I would be content to sample some little taste of happiness today, tonight, right now. Though I know without a doubt that tomorrow will come saturated with pain. Life is like that. At least my life. And honestly, I cant think of anyone whose life is any different. The price tag for joy is misery. [...]

As long as one suffers one lives.

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

Joy came always after pain.

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.