Let's pause for a minute or should we stop?

I don't know exactly how transports and CD player work exactly, but I'm certain that the disk continues spinning in pause mode and stops when stopped. I has to be more wear and tear on the spinning mechanism, but it's possible that starting and stopping is harder on things than just maintaining. Think of it as highway vs. in-town miles on a car. I don't know if the laser gets to "relax" in pause mode or not.

Does it cause more stress on the transport to be spinning continuously as opposed to starting, stopping and then starting again?

If I'm going to be gone longer than the length of a song I generally push stop.