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1 " To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter everyday. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to. "
― Garth Stein , The Art of Racing in the Rain
2 " Pain anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him...Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded in other words the weak suffer more where the trial is the same than the strong. "
― Alexandre Dumas , The Man in the Iron Mask (The D'Artagnan Romances, #3.4)
3 " Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most?That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost?That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain?That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain? "
― John Milton
4 " Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness. "
― Dag Hammarskjöld
5 " All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up. "
― James Baldwin
6 " Look at the longing, the anguish of a sad fossil world / that cannot find the accent of its first sob. "
― Federico García Lorca
7 " The first condition, then, of what is called a selfish love among men is lacking with God. He has no natural necessities, no passion, to compete with His wish for the beloved's welfare; or if there is in Him something which we have to imagine after the analogy of a passion, a want it is there by His own will and for our sakes. And the second condition is lacking too. The real interests of a child may differ from that which his father's affection instinctively demands, because the child is a separate being from the father with a nature which has its own needs and does not exist solely for the father nor find its whole perfection in being loved by him and which the father does not fully understand. But creatures are not thus separate from their Creator, nor can He misunderstand them. The place for which He designs them in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over. When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go, if we knew what we wanted. He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. "
― C.S. Lewis , The Problem of Pain
8 " I'm so tired of being alone," Heller whispered, voice broken. " So very tired of being on the outside looking in. Please ..." I tightened my arms around him. Could Heller be asking for what I thought? " What, Heller? Please what? What do you want?" " You," Heller murmured. " I want you. Please tell me you don't hate me for what I did. Or how I acted in the beginning. Please give me a chance ... please don't leave me." Squeezing my eyes closed, I fought not to let the tears escape, my heart threatening to break at the anguish I heard in Heller's voice. "
9 " It's so easy to focus on the anguish and the misery; it's harder, somehow, to acknowledge the positive, maybe for fear of jinxing it, bringing the nightmare back down on our heads. "
― Harriet Brown , Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia
10 " How could van Gogh have been born woman? A woman would not have been sent on mission to Boringe, she would not have felt men's misery as her own crime, she would not have sought redemption; so she would never have painted van Gogh's sunflowers. And this without taking into account that the painter's kind of life - the solitude in Arles, going to cafés, whorehouses, everything that feed into van Gogh's art by feeding his sensibility - would have been prohibited to her. A woman could never have become Kafka: in her doubts and anxieties, she would never have recognised the anguish of Man driven from paradise. "
― Simone de Beauvoir , The Second Sex
11 " Taking without being taken in the anguish of becoming prey is the dangerous game of adolescent feminine sexuality. "
12 " Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude. "
― Irvin D. Yalom
13 " There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words. "
― William Styron , Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
14 " I said the Lord's Prayer hundreds of times, hoping to forgive the killers who were murdering all around me. It was no use-every time I got to the part asking God to " forgive those who trespass against us," my mouth went dry. I couldn't say the words because I didn't truly embrace the feeling behind them. My inability to forgive caused me even greater pain than the anguish I felt in being separated from my family, and it was worse than the physical torment of being constantly hunted. "
15 " Those who do not care, escape the anguish of mourning but never know the delights of love. The meaning of life forever eludes them. "
― Wayne Gerard Trotman
16 " The captain’s eyes betrayed what his countenance must conceal: the anguish of an ancient being who must honour his birthright by living beyond those whom he would have given much to keep. "
― Michelle Franklin , Khantara: Vol 1
17 " Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, --as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? --from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. "
― Edgar Allan Poe
18 " We communed together a moment, one with the other—I was deeply fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation, in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,—and the emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I was in the extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might console me for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep. "
― Pierre Loti , Le Roman d'un enfant
19 " Coping with any death is traumatic; suicide compounds the anguish because we are forced to deal with two traumatic events at the same time. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the level of stress resulting from the suicide of a loved one is ranked as catastrophic–equivalent to that of a concentration camp experience. "
20 " The flame of urgent coupling burned hottest against the woman, no matter how romantic and high and heartsick the anguish of the man might be pitched in retrospect. "
― Charles Frazier , Nightwoods
