Been reading a lot on suffering and pleasure lately. :lol:

The great attraction and the great danger of passion is that it is something outside of oneself, a strong wind from nowhere in the face of which the forest of everyday thought and behavior cannot stand.
--Dan Simmons

Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you to stop suffering.
-Jane Roberts

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
--Karl Marx

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
--W. Somerset Maugham

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
--William Butler Yeats

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches.  If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers.  To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
--Denis Diderot

Suffering isn't ennobling, recovery is.
--Christian Barnard

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
--Thomas Jefferson

Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.
--Scott Adams

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
--Arthur Schopenhauer

And some unrelated, yet always trusty Crowley:

"Stoop down unto the darkly splendid world,