Seneca the Younger Quotes

Don’t worry about me handling the pain," I say. "I’ve had a lot of practice.

When pain is unbearable it destroys us; when it does not it is bearable.

There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.

Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.

I told myself – as I’ve told myself before – that the body shuts down when the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I didn’t slip away. I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown.

I have a high tolerance for pain.

There are those who suffer and grow strong; there are those who suffer and grow weak. This mystery of pain is still for me the saddest of earth's disabilities.

They discovered that even in the face of pain that seems unbearable, even in the face of pain that wrings the last drop of blood out of your heart and leaves its scrimshaw tracery on the inside of your skull, life goes on. And pain grows dull, and begins to fade

Pleasure is hard to come by, but pain is everywhere these days, I must learn to subsist on it.

we do not die of anguish, we live on. We continue to suffer. We drink the cup drop by drop.

Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.

You're never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take.

Pain can make a whole winter bright, like fever, force us to live deep and hard.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.

More than most, I know the pain of surviving.

I can take more pain than anyone.

The nip of an ant hurts a martyr more than the cut and thrust of weapons, for those are more welcome to him than sweet, cold water on a hot summer day.

Be humble as the blade of grass that is being trodden underneath the feet. The little ant tastes joyously the sweetness of honey and sugar. The mighty elephant trembles in pain under the agony of sharp goad

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.

I know things are unbearable but in spite of that we have to bear them.

A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.

Pain is a part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that.