Compulsion Quotes - Page 13

• I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names. Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.

  Susan Sontag

  Names, Anxiety, Principles

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.251, Macmillan

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• We should ask our commanders..." Elayne trailed off. "If there are any we trust not to be under Compulsion." "There's only one," Mat said grimly, meeting her eyes. "And he's telling you we are finished if we continue as we have. The earlier plan was a good enough one, but after what we lost today...Elayne, we're dead unless we choose one place to stand, gather together, and fight." One last toss of the dice.

  Robert Jordan

  Eye, Fighting, Together

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• Mencheres slid through the water toward her, drawn by the same inexorable compulsion that led moths to dance with flames. He'd had several lifetimes' worth of reason, cold machinations, and, ultimately, emptiness. Perhaps the moths knew what he didn't, that the joy of the flame was worth the price of destruction.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Flames, Water, Joy

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• I'll be writing until I can't write anymore. It's a compulsion with me. I love writing.

  J. K. Rowling

  Writing, I Can

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• In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Heart, Museums, Losing

  "Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence - in pictures", www.theguardian.com. April 27, 2012.

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• There came a time in everyone’s life when they realized that in spite of how hard they’d been running from themselves, everywhere they went, there they were: Addictions and compulsions were nothing but marching bands of distraction, masking truths that were unpleasant, but ultimately undeniable.

  J.R. Ward

  Running, Addiction, Band

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• There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.

  Jon Ronson

  Interesting, Personality, Anxiety

  Jon Ronson (2011). “The Psychopath Test”, p.170, Pan Macmillan

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• Contact would hurt, might be fatal, and yet she couldn’t stop herself. Obsession or compulsion, she didn’t know, but she did know that before this was over, she’d either end up in Dmitri’s bed . . . or one of them would bleed darkest red.

  Nalini Singh

  Hurt, Bed, Might

  Nalini Singh (2011). “Archangel's Blade”, p.120, Penguin

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• ...If I don't have twenty or thirty books right here, waiting to be read, I start jonesing. That's my compulsion.

  Nora Roberts

  Book, Waiting, Twenties

  Nora Roberts (2011). “Nora Roberts' Key Trilogy”, p.69, Penguin

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• Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

  J. K. Rowling

  Writing, Thinking, Kind

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• The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Liberation, Divine Mercy

  C. S. Lewis (1966). “Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life”, p.239, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and His compulsion is our liberation.

  C. S. Lewis

  Struggle, Eye, Men

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• Grooming oneself with all the crazed compulsion of an under-exercised lab rat in order to hook a rich man and obtain a lush lifestyle makes a certain (albeit seedy) sense.

  Julie Burchill

  Men, Order, Hook

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• If we become aware of its limitations and compulsions, we can transcend them.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Ifs, Limitation

  B.K.S. Iyengar, John J. Evans, Douglas Abrams (2006). “Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom”, p.12, Rodale

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• The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

  Max Horkheimer

  Machines, Inversions, Produce

  "The Essential Frankfurt School Reader" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 34), 1982.

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• The rhythmic pattern of the poem, which forces continuity of attention - incites a pleasurable compulsion to 'follow' - is either a tried metrical suasion-contrivance or a specially invented pattern of physical insistences, equally, if not more, binding in its effect on the reader. From a straight linguistic point of view, there is room for wonder if there is not latent vice in this environment in which pleasurable physically-compelled responses, produced by incidents of poetic utterance, are identified with the Good.

  Laura Riding

  Views, Vices, Attention

  "The Promise of Words". London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 17, p. 23, September 07, 1995.

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• I wasn't driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.

  Paul Newman

  Running, Acting, Driven

  "Verdict on a Superstar". John Skow, Time Magazine, December 6, 1982.

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• Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Motivation, Should Have, Giving

  "Aphorisms" by Georg C. Lichtenberg, ("Notebook L", L 24), (1793-1796).

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• He that would be a painter must have a natural turn thereto. Love and delight therein are better of the Art of Painting than compulsion.

  Albrecht Durer

  Art, Joy, Would Be

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• Affections injured by tyranny, or rigor of compulsion, like tempest-threatened trees, unfirmly rooted, never spring to timely growth

  John Ford

  Spring, Tree, Growth

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• I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.

  Tennessee Williams

  Writing, Stills, Ifs

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• The search for some ultimate significance in the universe, and in our little transient role in it, the compulsion to learn, to know, to find the truth, to answer questions and solve problems - these constitute the essence of an aware existence, the central core of intelligent life.

  Dale Rex Coman

  Life, Intelligent, Essence

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• Compulsion is the death of friendship.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Patrick O'Brian (1990). “Post Captain (Vol. Book 2) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)”, p.78, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.

  Russell Kirk

  Kings, Men, Self

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• As a child, I was always making sound; it was a compulsion. I loved to scream and yell and sing; it freed me from all the thoughts in my head. I begged for opera lessons because opera singing is the most formidable, most emotional way to use your voice.

  Zola Jesus

  Children, Emotional, Voice

  Interview with Elliott Sharp, www.avclub.com. April 25, 2011.

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