Dynamics
One moment may with bliss repay unnumbered hours of pain. (Thomas Campbell)
It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow. (Cervantes)
The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. (Virginia Woolf)
It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures. (William Hazlitt)
To a great extent, suffering is a sort of need felt by the organism to make itself familiar with a new state, which makes it uneasy, to adapt its sensibility to that state. (Marcel Proust)
Affability contains no hatred of men, but for that very reason too much contempt for men. (Nietzsche)
The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure. (George Bernard Shaw)
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or langour; 'tis like spending this year part of the next year's revenue. (Jonathan Swift)
Custom determines what is agreeable. (Pascal)
They must know but little of mankind who can imagine that, after they have been once seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it. (Rousseau)