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Who really said it

Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you

Written by Ovid 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18 · Roman poet of the Amores, Ars Amatoria & Tristia
Verified Rights unconfirmed

Ovid really did write this line. It is Amores Book 3, Elegy 11a, line 7 — “Perfer et obdura! dolor hic tibi proderit olim” — confirmed in two independent scholarly Latin texts. The catch is the English: the familiar “Be patient and tough” wording is a loose modern rendering with no translator credited anywhere I could find, and the standard 1914 Loeb translation words it quite differently.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you” Ovid, Amores 3.11a, line 7 (Amores first published 16 BC): "Perfer et obdura! dolor hic tibi proderit olim." Ovid genuinely wrote this line. The familiar English — "Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you" — is a loose modern rendering with no identified translator; Grant Showerman's 1914 Loeb translation reads "Persist, and endure! this smart will some day bring thee good." Verified via Quotle.info.

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In context

Evoking the world of Ovid — Roman poet, born Publius Ovidius Naso. Theme: "Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source: Amores 3.11a, line 7

Work
Amores, Book 3, Elegy 11a, line 7
Original Latin
“Perfer et obdura! dolor hic tibi proderit olim”
First published
16 BC, in five books; later revised by Ovid into the surviving three
Translation
Popular English wording — no translator credited. Loeb (Showerman, 1914): “Persist, and endure! this smart will some day bring thee good.”

Vicimus et domitum pedibus calcamus amorem;
    venerunt capiti cornua sera meo.
Perfer et obdura! dolor hic tibi proderit olim;
    saepe tulit lassis sucus amarus opem. Amores 3.11a.7

Lines 5–8 of the elegy. Grant Showerman’s 1914 English renders them: “Victory is mine, and I tread under foot my conquered love; courage has entered my heart, though late. Persist, and endure! this smart will some day bring thee good; oft has bitter potion brought help to the languishing.” The bitter-medicine image in the fourth line is the point — the pain is framed as a purgative for love, not as life advice.

Scanned edition
Heroides and Amores (1914) — Latin and English on facing pages
Read Amores 3.11a in the Latin at Perseus

How we verified this

  • The line sits at Amores 3.11a, line 7 in the critical Latin text of R. Ehwald (Teubner, 1907), hosted by Perseus ↗: “Perfer et obdura! dolor hic tibi proderit olim.”
  • The Latin Library’s text of Amores III ↗ carries the identical line in the same position — an independent confirmation of the wording.
  • The 1914 bilingual edition translated by Grant Showerman ↗ prints the Latin (p. 488) opposite his English (p. 489), which reads “Persist, and endure! this smart will some day bring thee good” — showing the popular wording is not the standard translation.
  • Neither Quote Investigator nor the Wikiquote page for Ovid ↗ carries an entry for this line, so the attribution here rests on the Latin texts directly rather than on prior quote research.

Ovid’s Latin has been in the public domain for centuries, and Grant Showerman’s 1914 English translation is public domain in the United States as a pre-1931 publication. But rights on a translated quotation attach to the exact English shown, and the wording displayed here matches no translation I could identify — no translator, edition, or first-publication date is credited by any source that circulates it. Because its origin is unknown, no public-domain status is asserted for this specific English phrasing. Anyone needing a clearly free English text should quote Showerman’s 1914 rendering, or the Latin itself.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The author is right. Two other things aren’t.

This is an unusual case for a viral classical quote: the attribution actually holds up. Ovid wrote the line, and it can be pinned to a single verse. What travels badly is the English wording and the situation the line belongs to.

The familiar English translation uncredited

No translator is named for “Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you” in any source I could locate. The standard published English differs markedly: Grant Showerman’s 1914 Loeb translation gives “Persist, and endure! this smart will some day bring thee good” (1914 edition, p. 489 ↗). Treat the popular phrasing as a paraphrase, not as Ovid’s translated words.

Motivational and self-help use stripped

Quoted alone it reads as universal advice about hardship. In place it is one man’s self-administered pep talk in a poem about quitting a destructive affair — and it does not work. Later in the same elegy he concedes “love, I think, is winning” and that he can live neither with her nor without her (Amores 3.11 ↗).

Peter Cameron’s 2007 novel how it spread

Many readers encounter the sentiment as the title of the novel Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, published in 2007 by Frances Foster Books. The title alludes to Ovid’s line rather than originating it (Wikipedia ↗).

“Ovid” with no work named vague

Quote sites routinely credit this to Ovid with no reference. It has a precise address — Amores 3.11a, line 7 — and the same two-word imperative appears elsewhere in his work with a different ending, so naming the work matters (Ars Amatoria 2.178 ↗).

Ovid wrote it, at Amores 3.11a, line 7 ↗ — but as a man bracing himself for a breakup he is about to lose, and in words no named translator has ever claimed.

Context

A pep talk that fails 32 lines later

Amores 3.11 is not a poem of consolation. It is a breakup poem, and the man being addressed is the poet himself. He opens by announcing that he has finally broken free — “Much have I endured, and for long time… withdraw from my tired-out breast, base love!” — and then, at line 7, braces himself for the withdrawal: bear it, hold firm, this hurt will pay off eventually.

It does not pay off. Later in the same poem (line 39) the resolve collapses completely: sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum — I can live neither with you nor without you. In the lines just before it he admits that love and hate are fighting over his “fickle heart” and that “love, I think, is winning.” The motivational poster keeps line 7 and quietly drops the ending.

The line is Ovid talking himself out of a relationship — and losing the argument.

Where else Ovid uses the phrase

The two-word command perfer et obdura appears at least three times across Ovid’s career, each time meaning something different. In Ars Amatoria 2.177–78 it is tactical dating advice: if she is not kind to you, “Perfer et obdura: postmodo mitis erit” — endure, and later she will soften.

In Tristia 5.11 it is addressed to his wife amid his banishment: “Perfer et obdura; multo graviora tulisti, / eripuit cum me principis ira tibi” — bear it and hold firm; you have borne far worse, when the prince’s anger snatched me from you.

Only the Amores instance carries the second half — dolor hic tibi proderit olim — which is the clause the modern quotation actually depends on. So while the imperative is vintage Ovid, the specific sentence people quote lives at exactly one address.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Hope Growth

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Amores 3.11a (Latin, Ehwald 1907)perseus.tufts.edu

Perseus Digital Library’s critical Latin text, R. Ehwald (Teubner, 1907), showing the line at 3.11a.7.
Ovid, Amores Book III (Latin)thelatinlibrary.com

An independent Latin text of the whole book, carrying the identical line — a second confirmation of the wording.
Heroides and Amores (1914), Latin & Englisharchive.org

Full scan of Grant Showerman’s bilingual edition; the Latin sits on p. 488 and his English translation faces it on p. 489.
Ars Amatoria, Book II (Latin)thelatinlibrary.com

Shows Ovid reusing “Perfer et obdura” at 2.178 — without the “dolor hic tibi proderit olim” clause.
Amores (Ovid)en.wikipedia.org

Background on the collection: first published 16 BC in five books, later cut by Ovid to the surviving three.
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to Youen.wikipedia.org

Peter Cameron’s 2007 novel, whose title alludes to this line — the route by which many readers first meet it.

The true author

Who was Ovid?

Ovid

20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18 · Roman poet, born Publius Ovidius Naso

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman poet of the Augustan age, best known for the Metamorphoses, the Ars Amatoria and the Amores — the three-book collection of love elegies in which this line appears. The imperative perfer et obdura (“bear it and hold firm”) was something of a personal refrain for him: it turns up as courtship advice in Ars Amatoria 2.178, and again in the Tristia, written after, as he puts it there, the emperor’s anger tore him away. Only in the Amores, though, is it followed by the clause that made the quote famous.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Ovid. Amores 3.11a, line 7, in Heroides and Amores, with an English translation by Grant Showerman, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1914), 488–89. Latin: “Perfer et obdura! dolor hic tibi proderit olim.” Showerman’s English: “Persist, and endure! this smart will some day bring thee good.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-patient-and-tough-some-day-this-pain-will-be-useful-to/

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