Ella Wheeler Wilcox Quotes

Aand in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else But that I was a journeyman to grief?

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

The regrets I have are strong enough that I wouldn't share 'em. I think that you can't live without suffering some.

The Gospel frees us to speak honestly about the reality of pain, confident that nothing is riding on our ability to cope with or fend off suffering.

[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68)

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.

What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!

Learn weeping, and thou shalt laugh gaining.

Heartbreak is funny to everyone but the heartbroken.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!

If you evade suffering, you also evade the chance of joy.

Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.

Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, can hold it at bay.

And if there's love, you can do without happiness too. Even with sorrow, life is sweet.

There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.

Sorrows must die with the joys they outnumber.

Each time we love,We turn a nearer and a broader markTo that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.

Sometimes it's not bad to hurt. Sometimes you don't want things until you get hurt. We got hurt today, let's see what we do.

But pain may be a gift to us. Remember, after all, that pain is one of the ways we register in memory the things that vanish, that are taken away. We fix them in our minds forever by yearning, by pain, by crying out. Pain, the pain that seems unbearable at the time, is memory's first imprinting step, the cornerstone of the temple we erect inside us in memory of the dead. Pain is part of memory, and memory is a God-given gift.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

If drinking don't kill me, her memory will.

As there is no worldly gain without some loss, so there is no worldly loss without some gain; if thou hast lost thy wealth, thou hast lost some trouble with it; if thou art degraded from thy honor, thou art likewise freed from the stroke of envy; if sickness hath blurred thy beauty, it hath delivered thee from pride. Set the allowance against the loss, and thou shalt find no loss great; he loses little or nothing, that reserves himself.