Stanislaw Lem Quotes

When hope is gone, time is punishment.

Bear patiently, my heart, for you have suffered heavier things.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.

The first two months were painful and they really tested my manhood because there were times I didn’t want to get up because I was in pain. That willpower has to kick in.

I think about giving up. I almost do.

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.

Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain... Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore... Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.

Hope is such a beautiful word, but it often seems very fragile. Life is still being needlessly hurt and destroyed.

I don't smile much, and I never laugh. If you'd been through what I've been through, you wouldn't be smiling, either.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

Hopelessness has surprised me with patience.

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

You were supposed to have hope, right? You were supposed to respect its power and hold on. And so I did. I held, and held, and let hope fill me. But as the days went on, it seemed I could be holding for a long, long time. Hope could be the most powerful thing or the most useless

I do not murmur, even if my heart break.

Discipline is something we despise for the moment.... We all look for a place to run, an excuse with which to stall. No one enjoys it. Yet those of us who have endured it know that the fruit it produces and the pain from which it ultimately spares us makes it worth the agony.

There was a point that I stopped crying. It's not just because I didn't feel pain anymore, not because I didn't feel sorrow. It was just to keep going. I mean, it just was to survive, to live.

And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain - the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and head - but it was manageable. I could live through it. I didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

We must suffer to the end, to the moment when we stop believing in suffering.

Hey. Pain can last a moment, it can last a day, it can last a week, it can last a long..long time, but it can't last forever and the only thing that can last forever is if you quit.

No matter how hard it rains, withstand the pain.