James A. Baldwin Quotes about Pain

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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

James A. Baldwin

Forgiveness, Encouragement, Pain

"Me and My House". Harper's Magazine, November 1955.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

James A. Baldwin

Pain, Thinking, People

"Doom and glory of knowing who you are". Jane Howard, Life Magazine, Volume 54, No. 21 (p. 89), May 24, 1963.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

James A. Baldwin

Pain, People, Way

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

James A. Baldwin

Pain, Thinking, Empathy

"Doom and glory of knowing who you are". "LIFE" Magazine, Vol. 54, No. 21, (p. 89), May 24, 1963.

People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.

James A. Baldwin

Pain, People, Hatred

"Giovanni's Room". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1956.

The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

James A. Baldwin

Morning, Pain, Terrible Events

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]

James A. Baldwin

Gratitude, Pain, Thinking