Psychological treatment can be used to counteract the pain. Professor Hunter Hoffman, University of Washington
Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail? Jeremiah 15:18
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul? John Keats
But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain. Charles Bukowski
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better. Oscar Wilde
There is no coming to consciousness without pain. Carl Jung
No pain, no gain. Jane Fonda
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty. Samuel Butler
The villain’s only weapon is pain. Stephen Birkoff
The NHS clinic offering detox for people who are hooked on prescription drugs. Panorama: Hooked on Painkillers, BBC 2015
GPs are prescribing record doses of potentially addictive painkillers. Around four million people in the UK are now taking drugs in the same family as heroin. ibid.
Time cancels young pain. Euripides, Alcestis, 438 B.C.
There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows – in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain – in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine – it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Pain – where, on the evolutionary view, does it come from? Pain, like everything else about life, we presume, is a Darwinian device, which functions to improve the sufferer’s survival ... Why the searing agony, an agony that can last for days, and from which the memory may never shake itself free? ... What’s wrong with the little red flag? I don’t have a decisive answer. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth pp392-393
The door opened quietly and closed. A quick whisper ran through the class: the prefect of studies. There was an instant of dead silence and then the loud crack of a pandybat on the last desk. Stephen’s heart leapt up in fear.
— Any boys want flogging here, Father Arnall? cried the prefect of studies. Any lazy idle loafers that want flogging in this class?
He came to the middle of the class and saw Fleming on his knees.
— Hoho! he cried. Who is this boy? Why is he on his knees? What is your name, boy?
— Fleming, sir.
— Hoho, Fleming! An idler of course. I can see it in your eye. Why is he on his knees, Father Arnall?
— He wrote a bad Latin theme, Father Arnall said, and he missed all the questions in grammar.
— Of course he did! cried the perfect of studies, of course he did! A born idler! I can see it in the corner of his eye.
He banged his pandybat down on the desk and cried:
— Up, Fleming! Up, my boy!
Fleming stood up slowly.
— Hold out! cried the prefect of studies.
Fleming held out his hand. The pandybat came down on it with a loud smacking sound: one, two, three, four, five, six.
— Other hand!
The pandybat came down again in six loud quick smacks.
— Kneel down! cried the prefect of studies.
Fleming knelt down, squeezing his hands under his armpits, his face contorted with pain; but Stephen knew how hard his hands were because Fleming was always rubbing rosin into them. But perhaps he was in great pain for the noise of the pandybat was terrible. Stephen’s heart was beating and fluttering.
— At your work, all of you! shouted the prefect of studies. We want no lazy idle loafers here, lazy idle little schemers. At your work, I tell you. Father Dolan will be in to see you every day. Father Dolan will be in tomorrow.
He poked one of the boys in the side with his pandybat, saying:
— You, boy! When will Father Dolan be in again?
— Tomorrow, sir, said Tom Furlong’s voice.
— Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, said the prefect of studies. Make up your minds for that. Every day Father Dolan. Write away. You, boy, who are you?
Stephen’s heart jumped suddenly.
— Dedalus, sir.
— Why are you not writing like the others?
— I ... my ...
He could not speak with fright.
— Why is he not writing, Father Arnall?
— He broke his glasses, said Father Arnall, and I exempted him from work.
— Broke? What is this I hear? What is this your name is! said the prefect of studies.
— Dedalus, sir.
— Out here, Dedalus. Lazy little schemer. I see schemer in your face. Where did you break your glasses?
— Stephen stumbled into the middle of the class, blinded by fear and haste.
— Where did you break your glasses? repeated the prefect of studies.
— The cinder-path, sir.
— Hoho! The cinder path! cried the prefect of studies. I know that trick.
Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment Father Dolan’s white-grey not young face, his baldy white-grey head with fluff at the sides of it, the steel rims of his spectacles and his no-coloured eyes looking through the glasses. Why did he say he knew that trick?
— Lazy idle little loafer! cried the prefect of studies. Broke my glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Out with your hand this moment!
Stephen closed his eyes and held out in the air his trembling hand with the palm upwards. He felt the prefect of studies touch it for a moment at the fingers to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot burning stinging tingling glow like the loud crack of a broken stick made his trembling hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the pain scalding tears were driven into his eyes. His whole body was shaking with fright, his arm was shaking and his crumpled burning livid hand shook like a loose leaf in the air. A cry sprang from his lips, a prayer to be let off. But though the tears scalded his eyes and his limbs quivered with pain and fright he held back the hot tears and the cry that scalded his throat.
— Other hand! shouted the prefect of studies.
Stephen drew back his maimed and quivering right arm and held out his left hand. The soutane sleeve swished again as the pandybat was lifted and a loud crashing sound and a fierce maddening tingling burning pain made his hand shrink together with the palms and fingers in a livid quivering mass. The scalding water burst forth from his eyes and, burning with shame and agony and fear, he drew back his shaking arm in terror and burst out into a whine of pain. His body shook with a palsy of fright and in shame and rage he felt the scalding cry come from his throat and the scalding tears falling out of his eyes and down his flaming cheeks.
— Kneel down, cried the prefect of studies.