Agonizing Quotes

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  Never before had a woman put such agonizing poetry on canvas as Frida did

  Diego Rivera

  Art, Canvas, Frida

  Diego Rivera, Gladys March (1960). “My art, my life: an autobiography”

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• I shudder at the very thought of being born again into this world. Life to me . . . has been a monstrous, painful, agonizing affair, and the idea of repeating such an existence - even if better in a way - is horrifying to me. . . . I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it.

  Taylor Caldwell

  Ideas, Looks, World

  "The Search for a Soul". Book by Jess Stearn, 1972.

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• They [his 'Street Scene' paintings and drawings,he made in Berlin] originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars.

  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

  Night, Years, Drawing

  "Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik" by M. M. Moeller, Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart, (p. 184), 1990.

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• It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other.

  Vera Nazarian

  Pain, Struggle, Fighting

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• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Moving On, Powerful

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Feb 14, 2013

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• There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Vanity, Political, Skins

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• I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession.

  Caroline B. Cooney

  Writing, Difficult, Profession

  Caroline B. Cooney (2012). “Twins”, p.188, Open Road Media

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• I still have in my memory, almost agonizing impressions of a serious illness which I had when I was about eight years old. Those about me called it scarlet fever, and its very name seemed to have a diabolical quality.

  Pierre Loti

  Memories, Eight, Years

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• Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Love, Hope, Literature

  Elbert Hubbard, Bert Hubbard (1923). “Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work”

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• Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be.

  Agnes de Mille

  America, People, Forgotten

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• Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Long, Anxiety

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• I know firsthand how agonizing waiting can be.

  Joe Manchin

  Waiting, Knows

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• I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it

  Taylor Caldwell

  Looks, Oblivion

  "The Search For A Soul". Book by Jess Stearn, 1972.

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• It was one thing to accept I couldn't have Dimitri. It was something entirely different to realize someone else could.

  Richelle Mead

  Different, Realizing, Accepting

  Richelle Mead (2008). “Frostbite: A Vampire Academy Novel”, p.68, Penguin

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• Out of the agony and travail of economic America the Committee for Industrial Organization was born.

  John L. Lewis

  Agony, Organization, America

  Labor and the Nation, delivered 3 September 1937 in Washington D.C.

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• Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

  Thomas Sowell

  Blood, Agony, Cost

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.118, Basic Books

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• The Soul unto itself
  Is an imperial friend, -
  Or the most agonizing Spy -
  An Enemy - could send -

  Emily Dickinson

  Friendship, Soul, Enemy

  Emily Dickinson, Ralph William Franklin (1999). “The Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.261, Harvard University Press

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• The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.

  Roger Ebert

  Thinking, Waiting, Lasts

  Roger Ebert (2012). “A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length: More Movies That Suck”, p.175, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• How often are you worrying about the present moment? The present moment is usually all right. If you're worrying, you're either agonizing over the past which you should have forgotten long ago, or else you're apprehensive over the future which hasn't even come yet. We tend to skip over the present moment which is the only moment God gives any of us to live.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Past, Long Ago, Should Have

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• There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Alluring, Conscience

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2011). “The Brothers Karamazov”, p.440, Bantam Classics

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• I know how you guys feel about us. I'm not stupid, and believe me, I've tried to get you out of my head. But there isn't enough liquor or art or any other distraction in the world to do it. I had to stop going to Wolfe's because it was too hard being that close to you, even if it was all just pretend fighting. I couldn't stand the touching. It was agonizing because it meant something to me－and I knew it meant nothing to you. I kept telling myself to stay away altogether, and then I'd find excuses… like the car… anything to be around you again.

  Richelle Mead

  Art, Stupid, Believe

  Richelle Mead (2012). “The Golden Lily: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.323, Penguin

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• I felt like someone had ripped my heart out and tossed it across the other side of the room. There was a burning, agonizing pain in my chest, and I had no idea how it could ever be filled. It was one thing to accept that I couldn't have Dimitri. It was something entirely different to realize someone else could.

  Richelle Mead

  Pain, Heart, Ideas

  Richelle Mead (2008). “Frostbite: A Vampire Academy Novel”, p.68, Penguin

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• I don't know what it is that makes a writer go to his desk in his shut-off room day after day after year after year unless it is the sure knowledge that not to have done the daily stint of writing that day is infinitely more agonizing than to write.

  Edna Ferber

  Writing, Years, Done

  Edna Ferber (1963). “A Kind of Magic”

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• To be put down in this world, and given only eighty years to get to know it in, is like being let loose in the United States of America for the first time with a high-powered car and unlimited gasoline - but with a visa that is valid for only a week. It's agonizing, that's what it is.

  Jan Struther

  Life, Time, Years

  Jan Struther (1946). “A Pocket Full of Pebbles”

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• There's a clarity that comes with great ideas: You can [easily and simply] explain why something's a great business, how and why it's cheap, why it's cheap for temporary reasons and how, on a normal basis, it should be trading at a much higher level. You're never sitting there on the 40th page of your spreadsheet, as Buffett would say, agonizing over whether you should buy or not.

  Joel Greenblatt

  Ideas, Sitting, Levels

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