Numbing Quotes

• Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.

  J. K. Rowling

  Inspirational, Life, Depression

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• It is our choices... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

  J. K. Rowling

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ch. 18 (1999)

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• It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

  J. K. Rowling

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ch. 12 (1997)

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• To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

  J. K. Rowling

  Death, Travel, Adventure

  J. K. Rowling (2002). “Spark Notes Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone”, Spark Notes

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• Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.

  J. K. Rowling

  Forgiveness, People, Forgiving

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• Curiosity is not a sin.... But we should exercise caution with our curiosity... yes, indeed.

  J. K. Rowling

  Exercise, Curiosity, Inspirational Harry Potter

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• We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Life, Running, Darkness

  Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005). “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”, Hyperion

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• What is meditation?... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk.

  Hermann Hesse

  Pain, Drinking, Wine

  Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2014). “The 10 Greatest Books of All Time”, p.1457, Google Publishing

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• Why, oh why must one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing responsibility of living an undiscovered life? Out of the nothingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of herself! But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a direction! But whither? How take even one step? And yet, how stand still? This was torment indeed, to inherit the responsibility of one’s own life.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Growing Up, Responsibility, Obscurity

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “D. H. Lawrence: The Complete Novels (Centaur Classics)”, p.849, D. H. Lawrence

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• The numbing mind-ream of knowing you're alone not because people won't accept you but because you find so little worth accepting. An imposed solitude is better than simply tolerating your company in waiting for something better. So loneliness is not such a terrible thing when you consider that the alternative to thought provoking solace is to be surrounded only by remindings of why that solitude is preferable.

  Jhonen Vasquez

  Loneliness, Knowing, People

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• What was the difference between love and the agony of waiting? Like love, the agony of waiting began in the muscles and somewhere around the upper belly but soon spread out to the chest, the thighs, and the forehead, to invade the entire body with numbing force.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Differences, Like Love, Agony

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “Snow”, p.252, Faber & Faber

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• Is the beauty myth good to men? It hurts them by teaching them how to avoid loving women. It prevents men from actually seeing women. It does not, contrary to its own professed ideology, stimulate and gratify sexual longing. In suggesting a vision in place of a woman, it has a numbing effect, reducing all senses but the visual, and impairing even that.

  Naomi Wolf

  Hurt, Self Esteem, Teaching

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• He: What’s the matter with you? Me: Nothing. Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, "but there was nothing the matter with her.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Forever, Soul, Matter

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• In the end it was Shadowhunting they had bonded over—a shared love of sharp-edged weapons, gleaming seraph blades, the painful pleasure of burning Marks, the thought-numbing swiftness of battle. When Alec had wanted to go out hunting alone with Jace, leaving Izzy behind, Jace had spoken up for her: “We need her with us; she’s the best there is. Aside from me, of course.” She had loved him just for that.

  Cassandra Clare

  Hunting, Leaving, Battle

  Cassandra Clare (2014). “City of Lost Souls”, p.148, Simon and Schuster

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• The numbing lists of things you were supposed to have as an American to make you happy, which ultimately, of course, don't. Those aren't the things that make you happy.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Lists, Make You Happy, Courses

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• I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain A use measured language lie's The sad mechanic exercise Like dull narcotic's, numbing pain In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er Like coarsest clothes against the cold But large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Weed, Pain, Lying

  1850 In Memoriam A.H.H., canto 5, l.1-8.

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• When I tell children that they are far too dependent on their gizmos, they do not deny it. But they really don't care. This is their real life - texting about trivial things; listening to numbing music on their private headphones. The machines block everything out - you create your own little trivial world.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Children, Block, Real

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• I'm not terribly happy about rock and roll. Certain rock music is uninspiring, numbing; it makes you feel like an idiot.

  Manuel Puig

  Rocks, Rock And Roll, Literature

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• The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Humorous, Blow, Men

  Understanding Media (1964) p. 32

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• There's something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia that disabuses you of the belief in the externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things, but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even if it's painful and you're afraid.

  Caroline Knapp

  Simple, Thinking, Long

  Caroline Knapp (1999). “Drinking: A Love Story”, p.108, Dial Press

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• The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstaticâ but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.

  Joanna Macy

  Flower, Emotional, Psychics

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• There is no disappointment so numbing...as someone no better than you achieving more.

  Joseph Heller

  Disappointment, Envy, Achieve

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• Faith and feelings are the warm marrow of evil. Unlike reason, faith and feelings provide no boundary to limit any delusion, any whim. They are virulent poison, giving the numbing illusion of moral sanction to every depravity ever hatched. Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason’s light. Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death.

  Terry Goodkind

  Light, Evil, Giving

  Terry Goodkind (2015). “Faith Of The Fallen”, p.366, Head of Zeus

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• Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.

  Jane Yolen

  Memories, Numbers, People

  Jane Yolen (1990). “The Devil's Arithmetic”, p.100, Penguin

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• It is almost impossible for anyone outside this damn beltway to really understand how the Congress works. If you aren't here, walking the halls of Congress, sitting at bars and attending parties where you get to knock back some brews with Hill staffers, you don't have a handle on the almost numbing amount of bullshit that goes on.

  Brock N. Meeks

  Party, Bullshit, Bars

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