Anguish Quotes - Page 14

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency... God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed.

Brennan Manning

Fear, Lying, Self

Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.4, NavPress

30 Copy quote

Show source
An anguish of longing would boil up inside me; a hysterical thirst for contradictions and contrasts would appear, and I would embark on dissipations.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Longing, Reason, Hysterical

6 Copy quote
No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency - a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect.

Richard M. Nixon

Pain, Regret, War

4 Copy quote
My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.

William Godwin

Depression, Mind, Loathing

William Godwin (1831). “Caleb Williams”, p.347

5 Copy quote

Show source
She lived for others, her heart tuned to their anguish and their needs.

Dean Koontz

Heart, Needs

Dean Koontz (2007). “From the Corner of His Eye: A Novel”, p.1, Bantam

4 Copy quote

Show source
It's hard to look pleasant when anguish is present, and yet it is strictly worth while; Not all of your scowling and fussing and growling can show off your grit like a smile.

Walter Mason Camp

Looks, Grit, Growling

8 Copy quote
...my soul bleeding tears of anguish

Katie MacAlister

Broken Heart, Soul, Tears

Katie Macalister (2006). “Even Vampires Get the Blues”, p.123, Penguin

9 Copy quote

Show source
And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.

Milan Kundera

Fall, Heart, Sight

4 Copy quote
People with mental problems are our neighbors. They are members of our congregations, members of our families; they are everywhere in this country. If we ignore their cries for help, we will be continuing to participate in the anguish from which those cries for help come. A problem of this magnitude will not go away. Because it will not go away, and because of our spiritual commitments, we are compelled to take action.

Rosalynn Carter

Spiritual, Country, Commitment

44 Copy quote
I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.

Barack Obama

Art, Men, Self

Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.86, Canongate Books

8 Copy quote

Show source
...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.

Lionel Shriver

Life, Thinking, Attachment

Lionel Shriver (2010). “We Need To Talk About Kevin”, p.167, Profile Books

10 Copy quote

Show source
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.

James A. Baldwin

Art, Kindness, Survival

"Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1961.

8 Copy quote

Show source
She was moved by a kind of commiseration... a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.

Kate Chopin

Delirium Tremens, Soul, Contentment

Kate Chopin (2016). “THE AWAKENING - A Solitary Soul (Feminist Classics Series): One Women's Story from the Turn-Of-The-Century American South”, p.72, e-artnow

23 Copy quote

Show source
The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our ‘natural’ condition.

Bell Hooks

Believe, Love Is, Our Society

16 Copy quote
It is sometimes forgotten how much wit there is in certain works of abstract art. There is a certain point in undergoing anguish when one encounters the comic.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Encounters, Sometimes

Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

7 Copy quote

Show source
Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?" was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.

Emily Bronte

Eye, Tears, Despair

Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.480, Penguin

4 Copy quote

Show source
In this way, his unhappy soul struggled with its anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being, in whom all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity come together, He too, while the olive trees trembled in the fierce breath of the Infinite, had brushed away the fearful cup that appeared before him, streaming with shadow and running over with darkness, in the star-filled depths. (pg. 236)

Victor Hugo

Running, Stars, Men

7 Copy quote
Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.

Albert Camus

Heart, Sweat, Darkness

10 Copy quote
There is no man in this world without some manner of tribulation or anguish, though he be king or pope.

Thomas a Kempis

Kings, Adversity, Men

Thomas a Kempis (1913). “The Imitation of Christ”

12 Copy quote

Show source
...in a time lacking in truth and certainty and filled with anguish and despair, no woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart.

Louise Bogan

Heart, Giving, Despair

Louise Bogan (1970). “A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation”, New York : McGraw-Hill

15 Copy quote

Show source
Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.

Michel de Montaigne

Slavery, Losing, Poor

Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.92, 谷月社

4 Copy quote

Show source
God! how is it that we fail to recognize that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is that of anguish?

Georges Bernanos

Hypocrisy, Failing, Mask

6 Copy quote
He saw before him two roads, both equally straight ; but he saw two; and that terrified him — him, who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.

Victor Hugo

Two, Lines, Saws

"Les Miserables".

10 Copy quote

Show source
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

Neil Postman

Laughter, Sea, Voice

39 Copy quote
But a sort of rupture-in anguish-leaves us at the limit of tears: in such a case we lose ourselves, we forget ourselves and communicate with an elusive beyond.

Georges Bataille

Tears, Rupture, Limits

Georges Bataille (1988). “Inner Experience”, p.11, SUNY Press

4 Copy quote

Show source

You May Also Like Quotes On:

Love Hurt

Love Pain

Love And Pain

Love Is Pain

Heart Hurts