Pain can come in many forms– a stubbed toe, a chronic illness, or a broken heart, just to name a few. In these Stoic quotes on pain, we’ll explore how some of the wisest minds of history have dealt with the notion of pain and suffering.
Though most of us would say that we actively want to avoid pain in our lives, the truth is that going through difficult experiences has the ability to make us wiser, stronger, and better.
Seneca the Younger tells us that “misfortune is virtue’s opportunity.” If you are in pain right now– whether physical or emotional– it is possible to zoom out and see the potential opportunity for growth.
Avoiding pain in life can be a good idea to a certain extent– for example, it is obviously a wise choice to not jump off the roof into the pool after you’ve had a few. Many people take the avoidance of pain way too far in life, though.
If you aren’t careful, trying to keep yourself free from discomfort can keep you from really living your life and fulfilling your potential.
“When pain is unbearable it destroys us; when it does not it is bearable.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“Death is a release from and an end of all pains.”
- Seneca the Younger
“Whenever you suffer pain, keep in mind that it’s nothing to be ashamed of and that it can’t degrade your guiding intelligence, nor keep it from acting rationally and for the common good. And in most cases you should be helped by the saying of Epicurus, that pain is never unbearable or unending, so you can remember these limits and not add to them in your imagination. Remember too that many common annoyances are pain in disguise, such as sleepiness, fever and loss of appetite. When they start to get you down, tell yourself you are giving in to pain.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“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…”
- Marcus Aurelius
“Death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful - and hence neither good nor bad.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“They have seen but half the universe who never have been shown the house of pain.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy brings pain.”
- William James
“We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.”
- Jim Rohn
“The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There has never been a great athlete who did not know what pain is.”
- Bill Bradley
One of the most powerful lessons we can learn from the Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca is that we have power over our mindset. Even though there are many things in life that are out of our control, our outlook isn’t one of them.
If you’re experiencing pain, consider whether you could look at your situation from a different perspective. Remember what the Stoics teach us– that it is our judgment of a situation that is causing us pain, not the situation itself.
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.”
- Epictetus
“It will suffice thee to remember as concerning pain ... that the mind may, by stopping all manner of commerce and sympathy with the body, still retain its own tranquility.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“The evil which assails us is not in the localities we inhabit but in ourselves. We lack strength to endure the least task, being incapable of suffering pain, powerless to enjoy pleasure, impatient with everything. How many invoke death when, after having tried every sort of change, they find themselves reverting to the same sensations, unable to discover any new experience.”
- Seneca the Younger
“It's normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you're using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal - if he's living a normal life. And if it's normal, how can it be bad?”
- Marcus Aurelius
“I must die. I must be imprisoned. I must suffer exile. But must I die groaning? Must I whine as well? Can anyone hinder me from going into exile with a smile? The master threatens to chain me: what say you? Chain me? My leg you will chain--yes, but not my will--no, not even Zeus can conquer that.”
- Epictetus
“The worst lesson that can be taught to a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.”
- Mark Twain
“It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.”
- Michel de Montaigne
Some philosophies– such as Epicureanism– have proposed that the best way to live is to avoid pain and seek pleasure.
What did the Stoics think about the pain-pleasure spectrum? How about some other Stoic-minded thinkers throughout history?
The wisest minds in history have all recognized that we can't have joy without sorrow, nor pleasure without pain. If you're in pain now, check out the following quotes and see if anything strikes you. You might just find the key to digging yourself out of the hole you're in.
“How can a man find a sensible way to live? One way and one only- Philosophy. And my philosophy means keeping that vital spark within you free from damage and degradation, using it to transcend pain and pleasure, doing everything with a purpose, avoiding lies and hypocrisy, not relying on another person's actions or failings. To accept everything that comes, and everything that is given, as coming from that same spiritual source.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.”
- Epictetus
“It is a sin to pursue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as a evil.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“The pleasure which we most rarely experience gives us greatest delight.”
- Epictetus
“The most miserable mortals are they that deliver themselves up to their palates, or to their lusts; the pleasure is short, and turns presently nauseous, and the end of it is either shame or repentance.”
- Seneca the Younger
“It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.”
- Epictetus
“So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.”
- Seneca the Younger
“Pleasure, like a kind of bait, is thrown before everything which is really bad, and easily allures greedy souls to the hook of perdition.”
- Epictetus
“Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”
- Seneca the Younger
“I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.”
- Michel de Montaigne
Pain is one thing, but fear of pain is an entirely different animal. If we let fear of pain, death, or anything else, for that matter, get in the way of our ability to live authentically and virtuously, we’ll seriously be missing out.
Do you keep yourself from living fully because you're afraid? If you aren't careful, trying to avoid pain can have disastrous consequences for your life.
Have you been too afraid to ask that girl out because of the fear of rejection? Are you second-guessing your decision to go on a solo backpacking trip because you're afraid you'll get hurt?
It's always good to be thoughtful of potential outcomes no matter what you're doing, but don't let fear rule you. If you do, you'll wake up old one day and realize you never lived.
“It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.”
- Epictetus
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
- Mark Twain
“A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.”
- Michel de Montaigne
Sometimes, we can experience levels of pain we didn’t even know were possible. It’s important to not pretend like the pain isn’t there– Stoicism isn’t about shoving your feelings under the rug and acting as if everything is alright.
At the same time, we can’t let our pain tear us down. We must endure. We must know within ourselves that this experience will teach us priceless lessons that will help us become more competent, more dependable, more self-reliant, and wiser to boot.
“Remember that pain has this most excellent quality. If prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.”
- Seneca the Younger
“Does what's happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforward ness, and all other qualities that allow a person's nature to fulfill itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“When men are unhappy, they do not imagine they can ever cease to be so; and when some calamity has fallen on them, they do not see how they can get rid of it. Nevertheless, both arrive; and the gods have ordered it so, in the end men seek it from the gods.”
- Epictetus
“Don't foul, don't flinch– hit the line hard.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
While many of our Stoic quotes on pain talk about dealing with pain that is inflicted upon you by some outside force, pain is also something you can purposefully impose upon yourself.
The point isn’t to become a masochist or anything of the sort. The point, instead, is to be willing to train yourself by creating difficult situations for yourself that you can overcome.
Self-awareness is key if you want to live a Stoic life, and sometimes, your self-awareness shows you that you need to overcome certain weaknesses. In the first quote here, Seneca shows us what it means to be moderate by discussing the importance of going both easy and hard on yourself sometimes.
“Watch over yourself. Be your own accuser, then your judge; ask yourself grace sometimes, and, if there is need, impose upon yourself some pain.”
- Seneca the Younger
“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
- M. Scott Peck
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
- Dale Carnegie
“Learn to convert the discomfort of discipline into the satisfaction of personal growth.”
- Tony Robbins
Have you ever had a shift in attitude that completely changed the way you saw a situation? The good news is that you don’t have to wait around for your outlook to change– you can change it yourself.
“Remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is unable
to hold out against even this.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”
- Henry David Thoreau
All of us find ourselves in a state of deep despair at one point or another. We feel like we can’t go on. We feel like the pain is just too much to bear.
If this is the headspace you’re currently in, read on.
“What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.”
- Seneca the Younger
“Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power.”
- Epictetus
“A man who suffers or stresses before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.”
- Seneca the Younger
“There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.”
- Seneca the Younger
“What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.”
- Seneca the Younger
“Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.”
- Seneca the Younger
“Nature has made us passive, and to suffer is our lot. While we are in the flesh every man has his chain and his clog; only it is looser and lighter to one man than to another, and he is more at ease who takes it up and carries it than he who drags it.”
- Seneca the Younger
“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”
- Aristotle
“The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.”
- Thomas Merton
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
- Helen Keller
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
- Khalil Gibran
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” While this can be one of the most irritating things to hear when you’re going through a rough spot, it really is true that difficulties can be one of the greatest catalysts for personal growth.
If you can make it to the other side of your pain, it’s possible that you will be more empathetic, more resilient, and more appreciative of life’s positive aspects than you were before.
“Don't get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.”
- Rumi
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Life, in all its uniqueness, would not be life without the negatives and the positives.”
- Jim Rohn
“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.”
- Rumi
“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whether you’ve got a nasty cold or a terminal illness, being sick can give you a new perspective on life. If you’re under the weather in any way, consult the following Stoic quotes to help you make the most of your situation.
“One exaggerates, imagines, anticipates affliction. Do not let us build a second story to our sorrow by being sorry for our sorrow. "
- Marcus Aurelius
“Illness has actually given many people a new lease on life; the experience of being near to death has been their preservation. You will die not because you are sick but because you are alive. That end still awaits you when you have been cured.”
- Seneca the Younger
“If you meet sickness in a sensible manner, do you really think you are achieving nothing? You will be demonstrating that even if one cannot always beat it one can always bear an illness. There is room for heroism, I assure you, in bed as anywhere else. War and the battle-front are not the only spheres in which proof is to be had of a spirited and fearless character: a person’s bravery is no less evident under the bed-clothes.”
- Seneca the Younger
"'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes."
Pain doesn’t just come when we fall off our bikes or fall ill. One of the most emotionally painful things we can experience comes from the feeling of failure, whether in our careers or in our personal lives.
One of the most tempting things in life is to stay down after you’ve fallen off the ladder. In reality, though, the most successful people in history all went through tremendous failures before they reached the heights they are now known for.
If you’re hurting because you feel like you failed, step back and try to shift your perspective. This failure is just another learning experience, another gauntlet you’ve gone through that will bring you to victory. However, you have to get back up and keep going if you’re ever going to make it to the top.
“No matter what happens, it is within my power to turn it to my advantage.”
- Epictetus
“Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”
- Jim Rohn
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
“What is joy without sorrow? What is success without failure? What is a win without a loss? What is health without illness? You have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. There is always going to be suffering. It’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”
- Mark Twain
“Learn from the negative as well as the positive, from the failures as well as the successes.”
- Jim Rohn
“Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.”
- William James
“Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.”
- Jim Rohn
“Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
All of us, at one point or another, will experience the deep pain associated with loss. Whether this is the loss of a loved one, the loss of important possessions, or the loss of an opportunity, it can be difficult to move forward when something essential we once had is now gone.
The Stoics took a bird’s-eye view of life, and you can too. They saw the impermanence of everything, the fact that everything we know and love today will one day be gone. If we can embrace this impermanence, we can learn to appreciate what we have at the moment and learn to accept the loss of things we love.
“Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for thus when they die, you will not be disturbed.”
- Epictetus
“No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.”
- Seneca the Younger
“To lose a friend is the greatest of all evils, but endeavour rather to rejoice that you possessed him than to mourn his loss.”
- Seneca the Younger
“It is better to conquer our grief than decieve it.”
- Seneca the Younger
“I made a prosperous voyage when I was shipwrecked.”
- Zeno of Citium
"Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not."
- Xenophon
“Everything is changeable, everything appears and disappears; there is no blissful peace until one passes beyond the agony of life and death.”
- Gautama Buddha
“Embrace your grief. For there, your soul will grow.”
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
- Jonathan Safran Foer
Finally, let’s take a look at some Stoic quotes about how pain and adversity can lead to growth.
We are actually presented with a tremendous opportunity every time we deal with something difficult– hidden in every painful experience are lessons that we can carry with us through our lives.
"Misfortune is virtue's opportunity."
- Seneca the Younger
"Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it—turns it to its purposes, incorporates it into itself—so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal."
- Marcus Aurelius
“The true man is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material.”
- Epictetus
"A setback has often cleared the way for greater prosperity. Many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted heights."
– Seneca the Younger
“Adversity introduces a man to himself.”
- Albert Einstein
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
– Thomas Paine
"A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it."
- Marcus Aurelius
“Adversity is the first path to truth.”
- Lord Byron
Modern society seems to be built in a way that makes it easy to avoid pain. Everything is set up so our lives are as comfortable and convenient as possible. While this sounds nice at the outset, the truth is that it can keep us sheltered from experiencing the adversity that will help us grow.
It can be hard to zoom out and look at the bigger picture if you're suffering or in pain. If you’re able to, though, you will be able to see that this experience is just another opportunity to learn and grow.
Are you interested in learning more about Stoic philosophy? Are you ready to become the best version of yourself? Make sure you check out the rest of our Stoic Quotes blog for more articles, quotes, and philosophical musings.
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