Dean Koontz Quotes

You can't avoid pain, but you can choose to overcome it.

If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it- to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger.

The hardest thing you can do is smile when you are ill, in pain, or depressed. But this no-cost remedy is a necessary first half-step if you are to start on the road to recovery.

There’s always going to be ups and downs in life and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel the pain. Pain is good. It makes you stronger in time. You will realize how great the ‘great’ really is. Life is about ups and downs. You just have to be able to ride the waves.

My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself - not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest.

I understand there are inevitable things that we have to go through: heartbreak, family problems. I don't feel like some Quixotic idiot who says, 'We don't have to feel pain.' No! Let's feel it, let's make it work for ourselves. But I want us all to be able to get past it.

[The] pain is temporary. It may last a minute, an hour, a day, or a year, but eventually it subsides. And when it does, something else takes its place, and that thing might be called a greater space for happiness ... Each time we overcome pain, I believe that we grow.

Survival is as much a matter of grace as fight. The expression, 'grace under pressure' implies the attainment of equanimity and equilibrium. The fundamental durability of the human body surprises us because the pain can be so intense - yet pain is often transient and hides the tremendous effforts the body is engaged in to heal itself.

Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it that is great, that belongs to greatness.

Patient acceptance is often considered a weak and passive response to problems that we do not have the power or courage to solve. In reality, however, being patient is far from being passive. There is nothing strong or courageous in reacting to hardship or insults with anger - all we are doing is being defeated by our delusions.

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .

Pain is one of life's great lessons. You need to know how you'll react to the negatives in your life. Only then will you learn from the pain, and the next time it happens, you can speed up your healing process.

Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

One day at a time. You rise, you eat, you bathe, and you talk to the few people you can tolerate while feeling so wretched. Over time, it hurts a little less. Then a little less. And so on...Until one morning, you will awake and realize the pain is only a memory. It will always be with you, but it will eventually lack the power to cripple you.

Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's own situation so as not to be overcome by them.

Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

Pain is fear, and I'm not afraid.

You have to learn to smile through your pain. Sometimes it’s all we got.

The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.

We have become accustomed to living our life with joy amidst pain and challenges.

The pain is what you make of it. You have to find something in it that yields. I understood my guiding imperative as: keep bleeding, but find some love in the blood.

Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.

Every champion has discovered that pain is seasonal. It will pass... Don't be discouraged by it. A New Day is about to dawn in your life!

it is not tears but determination that makes pain bearable.