Distressing Quotes - Page 2

• What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.

  Chinua Achebe

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Chinua Achebe, Bernth Lindfors (1997). “Conversations with Chinua Achebe”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Facts, Paradox, Reason

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.287, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The pains that you suffer, the loneliness that you encounter, the experiences that are disappointing or distressing, the addictions and seeming pitfalls of your life are each doorways to awareness. Each offers you an opportunity to see beyond the illusion that serves as the balancing and growth of your soul.

  Gary Zukav

  Pain, Loneliness, Opportunity

  FaceBook post by Gary Zukav from Apr 16, 2015

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's often a distressing disconnect between the good words we speak and the way we live our lives. In personal relations and politics, the mass media, the academy and organized religion, our good words tend to float away even as they leave our lips, ascending to an altitude where they neither reflect nor connect with the human condition. We long for words like love, truth, and justice to become flesh and dwell among us. But in our violent world, it's risky business to wrap our frail flesh around words like those, and we don't like the odds.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Odds, Media, Like Love

  6 Copy quote

• Joy is the characteristic by which God uses us to re-make the distressing into the desired, the discarded into the creative. Joy is prayer-Joy is strength-Joy is love-Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

  Mother Teresa

  Prayer, Creative, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

  Anatole Broyard

  Inappropriate

  Anatole Broyard (1980). “Men, Women, and Other Anticlimaxes”, Routledge Kegan & Paul

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Within evangelicalism is a distressing drift toward accepting a Christianity that does not demand a life-changing walk with God. Many evangelicals (today) do not realize that the church has always been an island of righteousness in a sea of paganism, but as a result they turned the world upside-down.

  Erwin W. Lutzer

  Life Changing, Islands, Sea

  50 Copy quote

• There is no fate more distressing for an artist than to have to show himself off before fools, to see his work exposed to the criticism of the vulgar and ignorant.

  Moliere

  Fate, Artist, Ignorant

  39 Copy quote

• The fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women, but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes a man.

  Mark Twain

  Dog, Men, Lightning

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.2811, Delphi Classics

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I’ve known a lot of people go mad over the years, and it is more distressing than people dying. People dying is quite natural, people going mad is the complete antithesis of that.

  Alan Moore

  Years, People, Mad

  Interview with Matthew De Abaitua, www.harrybravado.com. October 1, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm an atheist. I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Qur'an and I refute them.

  Emma Thompson

  Atheist, Believe, Libertarian

  "Acting on outspoken beliefs". www.theaustralian.com.au. October 15, 2008.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.

  Alan Kay

  Thinking, Ideas, Make You Think

  16 Copy quote

• One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Men, Thinking, Justice

  Shirley Chisholm (1970). “Unbought and Unbossed”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing is more sweet than harmony in marriage, and nothing more distressing than dissension.

  Martin Luther

  Christian, Sweet, Harmony

  4 Copy quote

• The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.

  Bill Nighy

  Elderly, Way, Cases

  26 Copy quote

• Ok," he said, "I don't like to disturb you at what I know must be a difficult and distressing time for you, but I need to know first of all if you actually realize that this is a difficult and distressing time for you.

  Douglas Adams

  Needs, Firsts, Realizing

  Douglas Adams (2014). “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

  William Hazlitt

  Mean, Passion, Writing

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Poets”, p.9

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• But one must go where one's road leads, even when it's a distressing road.

  Piers Anthony

  Piers Anthony (2002). “Crewel Lye”, p.34, Del Rey

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Giving Up, Real, Struggle

  175 Copy quote

• The more distressing the memory, the more persistent it's presence.

  Sara Gruen

  Memories, Persistent

  Sara Gruen (2016). “The Sara Gruen Collection: Water for Elephants - At the Water's Edge - Ape House”, p.142, Hachette UK

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

  Rose Macaulay

  Life, Stress, House

  Rose Macaulay (1926). “A Casual Commentary”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.

  Andre Breton

  Reality, Process, Brushes

  9 Copy quote

• Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.

  Susan Orlean

  Google, Historical, Important

  "Google It" by Susan Orlean, www.newyorker.com. June 16, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I say manage emotions, I only mean the really distressing, incapacitating emotions. Feeling emotions is what makes life rich. You need your passions.

  Daniel Goleman

  Wisdom, Passion, Mean

  11 Copy quote

• If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.

  Daniel Goleman

  Smart, Emotional, Self

  "The Weeping, the Window, the Way: Will Suffering Make You Bitter Or Better?". Book by John O. Dozier, 2010.

  67 Copy quote

  Show source