Emily Dickinson Quotes

The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it?

Desires are but pain and torment, and enjoyment is sweet because it delivers us from them.

Most human behavior is nothing other than the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure.

Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.

Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.

My God! I thank Thee for the bath of sleep, That wraps in balm my weary heart and brain, And drowns within its waters still and deep My sorrow and my pain. I thank Thee for my dreams, which loose the bond That binds my spirit to its daily load, And give it angel wings, to fly beyond Its slumber-bound abode.

You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things

There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and to cling to pleasure.

Closing down in the midst of pain is a denial of a man's true nature. A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place.

I can hear my heart beating. I can hear my stomach growling. I can hear my teeth grinding and my joints creaking. My body's so noisy, I can't sleep.

So, when a raging fever burns, We shift from side to side by turns; And 't is a poor relief we gain To change the place, but keep the pain.

We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Pain in all its forms is also a message, a kind of distress signal to our hearts and minds. There are times when it's really important to tune into that message and just listen to it.

If you have to end up in the hospital, try to focus all your pain in your heart rather than your head.

That sweet sleep which medicines all pain.

There is only one effective antidote for mental suffering and that is physical pain.

Anaesthesia, that's one technique: if it hurts, invent a different pain.

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.

The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

I have a big hole in my heart," I said. "But it'll close over." I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil," she said. "But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?" That's good advice," I said. "I hope I can manage it.