Distressing Quotes

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Sigmund Freud

Missing You, Wisdom, Children

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It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

Naguib Mahfouz

Heart, Mind, Affliction

FaceBook post by Naguib Mahfouz from Mar 05, 2014

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There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

William Gaddis

Reading, Standing Alone, Audience

William Gaddis (2002). “The Rush for Second Place: Essays and Occasional Writings”, p.89, Penguin

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It is distressing to me that we live in an age in which we still must fight to protect our civil rights as Americans, in which a hate crime perpetrated against someone based their sexual orientation can go unpunished, and in which discrimination is being written into our laws.

John Conyers

Hate, Fighting, Rights

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The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder.

Geoffrey Fisher

Punishment, Long, Murder

1957 In the Sunday Times, 24 Feb.

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That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

Elliott Carter

Writing, Style, Pieces

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The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

Aldous Huxley

Next, Literature, Prophet

1956 'Brave New World Revisited', in Esquire.

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Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.

Mahatma Gandhi

Inspirational, Happiness, Stress

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For there is a price ticket on everything that puts a whizz into life, and adventure follows the rule. It's distressing, but there you are.

Leslie Charteris

Travel, Adventure, Tickets

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No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Barbara Tuchman

Government, Decision, Faces

The Guns of August ch. 9 (1962)

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And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?

Bill Bryson

Food, Thinking, Knitting Needles

Bill Bryson (2010). “Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain”, p.145, Random House

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The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us. Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.

Paul Gauguin

Stupid, Struggle, Men

Paul Gauguin (1985). “The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin”, p.93, Routledge

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I think the smartest thing for people to do to manage very distressing emotions is to take a medication if it helps, but don't do only that. You also need to train your mind.

Daniel Goleman

Thinking, People, Mind

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I think experience has shown that privateers have done more toward distressing the trade of our enemies, and furnishing these States with necessaries, than Continental Ships of the same force.

William Whipple

Thinking, Enemy, Experience

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Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiment in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated.

George Washington

Differences, Religion, Acrimony

George Washington (1858). “The Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts : with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.309

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...Force yourself to use the optimist's explanatory style: 'The situation is temporary. The effect will be limited, not pervasive. And it's due to external causes.' If you just can't make that work for you, refocus your attention...Turn your attention in a totally different direction for the time being. Replace the distressing thoughts with other ideas. Distract yourself.

Price Pritchett

Gratitude, Ideas, Style

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Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

William Hazlitt

Happiness, Action, Indolence

William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1029, Delphi Classics

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Mary, my dearest Mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, your heart so full of love and humility, that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life, love Him as you loved Hitn and serve Him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor.

Mother Teresa

Beautiful, Religious, Jesus

"Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others".

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I do think that there is a big difference between family farms and agri-business, and one of the distressing things that I think has occurred is with consolidation of farm lands. You've seen large agri-businesses benefit from enormous profits from existing farm programs, and I think we should be focusing most of those programs on those family farmers.

Barack Obama

Thinking, Land, Differences

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I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality . . . Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.

Dalai Lama

Sports, Pain, Adventure

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Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.

Morris Raphael Cohen

Philosophy, Past, Idols

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The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.

Alister E. McGrath

Violence, Paradox, Intolerance

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The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.

Harold Bloom

Writing, Class, Ideas

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Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.

Jane Austen

Sound, Noise, Matter

Jesse Zuba, Jane Austen (2009). “Persuasion - Jane Austen”, p.211, Infobase Publishing

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An army formed of good officers moves like clockwork; but there is no situation upon earth less enviable, nor more distressing, than that person's who is at the head of troops which are regardless of order and discipline.

George Washington

Moving, Army, Order

George Washington (1795). “Official Letters to the Honorable American Congress,: Written, During the War Between the United Colonies and Great Britain, by His Excellency, George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Forces, Now President of the United States”, p.272

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