Harold Kushner Quotes

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.

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.

Even when our heart aches, we summon the strength that maybe we didn't even know we had, and we carry on; we finish the race.

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

If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.

It's necessary to use suffering. Otherwise, one is used by it.

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

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

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

The pain barrier was not a barrier for her; she could go beyond it.

My father taught me that one of the most important abilities in life is to be able to take the pain and persevere, and for years this lesson had served me well.

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

[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.

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

Something hurts, lean in. You just lean into that point until it loses its power over you. There's a certain amount of suffering that you have to be willing to sustain if you want to have a good life. And the real trick is to be able to sustain it with your heart open and still be loving.

Use pain as a stepping stone, not a camp ground.

I've always been pretty independent, no matter what situation: good, bad, ugly, happy, sad. I dig deep, and I get over it.

What I learned for myself... is that no matter what the circumstances, people survive.

Strength doesn't mean an absence of pain.

Sometimes things don't go exactly as you'd wish. You have to be mentally strong to overcome those moments.

Pain, tolerance, endurance-when it comes down to that point, there's always something left. You just have to find it.

The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.

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.

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.

If you can go through the pain period, you make it to be a champion. If you can't go through it, forget it. And that's what most people lack: having the guts - the guts to go in and just say... "I don't care what happens"