There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another... It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and since we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together.

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

No pain can be greater than the pain of one person. [...] In other words, no suffering can be greater than that of one human being. [...} The whole planet cannot suffer more than a lone soul.

All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.

Suffering is the ancient law of love; there is no quest without pain; there is no lover who is not also a martyr.

The person with whom we are in love is to be recognised only by the intensity of the pain that we suffer.

When one individual comes into intimate contact with another, she — or he, of course, as the case may be — must almost inevitably receive or inflict suffering.

Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

It's impossible for men and women who love each other not to hurt each other now and then, but most women would settle happily for a man who tried not to cause the same hurt twice.

If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?