Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts at least 12 weeks. It can have real effects on your day-to-day life because it not only harms physically, but also mentally and emotionally. It destroys your inspiration, resolve, and strength. Most famous chronic pain quotes will offer up their best advice and help you cope to lift you up when you’re in pain.

If you’re searching for quotes about sadness that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of inspirational stress quotes, bipolar quotes, and bitter quotes.

Best Chronic Pain Quotes

Living in the past is like choosing to cling to a chronic illness. Asa Don Brown

Positive self-talk is to emotional pain as pain pill is to physical pain. Edmond Mbiaka

Behind every chronic illness is just a person trying to find their way in the world. We want to find love and be loved and be happy just like you. We want to be successful and do something that matters. We’re just dealing with unwanted limitations in our hero’s journey. Glenn Schweitzer

You wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before, and that, my love, is bravery. Unknown

Turn your wounds into wisdom. Oprah Winfrey

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Buddhist Proverb

Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you. Mary Tyler Moore

Live to inspire and one day people will say, because of you, I didn’t give up Unknown

Language is always inadequate in the face of pain. John Green

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being. Hafiz

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain. Vivian Greene

The strongest people I’ve met have not been given an easier life. They’ve learned to create strength and happiness from dark places. Kristen Butler

We must let go of the life we had planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the presence of God. R Schuller

God’s purpose in increasing our trials is to sensitize us to people we never would have been able to relate to otherwise. Joni Eareckson Tada

Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. Don’t sell out. Christopher Reeve

There are two kinds of disabled persons: Those who dwell on what they have lost and those who concentrate on what they have left. Thomas S. Szasz

The biology of pain is never really straightforward, even when it appears to be. Lorimer Moseley

There are those who suffer and grow strong; there are those who suffer and grow weak. This mystery of pain is still for me the saddest of earth’s disabilities. Silas Weir Mitchell

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Frank Herbert

Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. Tony Robbins

Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me pain is pleasure. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’ Mary Anne Radmacher

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. C.S. Lewis

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. Kenji Miyazawa

If you’re going through hell, keep going. Winston Churchill

Life is pain, so live it up while you can. Ernest Hemingway

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

It hurts because it matters. John Green

It’s better to feel pain than nothing at all. Unknown

Don’t let pain define you, let it refine you. Tim Fargo

Stay focused on your purpose, not your pain. Ranal Currie

Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have life itself. Walter Anderson

No matter how far life pushes you down, no matter how much you hurt, you can always bounce back.– Unknown

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place. Kurt Vonnegut

Chronic pain or other challenges are invitations; gifts that challenge us to learn how to manage the mind. Cheryl Richardson

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself. Norman Cousins

Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain. Jim Morrison

Chronic pain can be very lonely. It can have a shame-based quality. Jennifer Grey

God gave us pain to remind us we are alive, so we will learn to value the joys and beauty of the world. Tom Corr

Don’t quit. You’re already in pain. You’re already hurt. Get a reward from it. Unknown

It’s not who’s the best it’s who can take the most pain. Steve Prefontaine

Pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit. Unknown

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. Friedrich Nietzsche

Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes. George Orwell

I don’t want my pain and struggle to make me a victim. I want my battle to make me someone else’s hero.– Unknown

You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering. Ernest Hemingway

It is not what happens to us in life that defines us. It is what we do with it that defines us. Tom Seaman

Time is not a cure for chronic pain, but it can be crucial for improvement. It takes time to change, to recover, and to make progress. Unknown

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.– Siri Hustvedt

Don’t fight your pain; you can’t win. The paradox of recovery is that you have to surrender to win. Accepting what you cannot change makes the difference. Unknown

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. George Edward Woodberry

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, show up, and never give up. Unknown

That is all I want in life; this pain to seem purposeful. Elizabeth Wurtzel

The most powerful words you can say to someone with an invisible illness is… ‘I Believe You’ Unknown

Life is tough my darling, but so are you. Stephanie Bennett Henry

Being able to walk pain-free is a blessing. Being able to walk without showing the pain is a skill Kylie McPherson

I use to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. Henry Rollins

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain. Gene Tierney

One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives. Polly Toynbee

The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply. Joseph Campbell

You don’t know pain until you’re staring at yourself in the mirror with tears streaming down your face and you’re begging yourself to just hold on and be strong. Anonymous

Chronic pain shatters productive lives. Chronic pain almost always is accompanied by depression, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, isolation, and lowered self-esteem. Jed Diamond

Behind every beautiful thing, there’s some kind of pain. Bob Dylan

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. Lance Armstrong

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. Kahlil Gibran

My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain. Charlie Chaplin

What a person did when they were in pain said a lot about them. Veronics Roth

It’s a complete physical, mental and emotional assault on your body. Jamie Wingo

Pain is not the same as suffering. Left to itself, the body discharges pain spontaneously, letting go of it the moment that the underlying cause is healed. Suffering is pain that we hold on to. It comes from the mind’s mysterious instinct to believe that pain is good, or that it cannot be escaped, or that the person deserves it. Deepak Chopra

There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. R.D. Laing

If your body is screaming in pain, whether the pain is muscular contractions, anxiety, depression, asthma or arthritis, a first step in releasing the pain may be making the connection between your body pain and the cause. Beliefs are physical. A thought held long enough and repeated enough becomes a belief. The belief then becomes biology. Marilyn Van Derbur

Pain will come with time, but time will heal the pain. Anthony Liccione

If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain, in time you will move through your pain. Bryant McGill

Pain is when you’re slowly dying on the inside and you’re way too weak to speak about it so you keep silent and suffer alone. Anonymous

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your ‘thorn’ uncomplainingly, that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak, is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace. J. I. Packer

The body cannot take chronic terror; it must defend itself by refusing to harbor the spirit that wants to soar through it and experience life to the fullest. Carmen Aguirre

That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt. John Green

You feel your strength in the experience of pain. Jim Morrison

Avoiding our pain is needlessly exhausting. Pain can not be killed. When we attempt to bury our pain, it rises up from the grave of our emotions, haunting us, until we acknowledge its presence. We can heal our pain when we allow it to move through us. Jaeda Dewalt

Generally speaking, chronic pain and other physical and mental disorders have been categorized as ‘silent disorders’ in the workplace simply because most employees are afraid of the consequences if employers find out. Wayne Hochwarter