There are sufferings that have lost their memory and do not remember why they are suffering. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

May you get what you wish for. – Old Chinese curse

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter