Neurotic Quotes - Page 5

• I pass for a hypersensitive, reclusive neurotic, which I may well be, but I hope the year won't come when my anxieties and fatigue will destroy my love of this life, of all the things that inspire me--a line of music, a face in a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem.

  Yves Saint Laurent

  Character, Years, Anxiety

  Yves Saint Laurent (1983). “Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume”, p.22, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• Perfection, fortunately, is not the only alternative to mediocrity. A more sensible alternative is excellence. Striving for excellence is stimulating and rewarding; striving for perfection--in practically anything--is both neurotic and futile.

  Ed Bliss

  Perfection, Excellence, Alternatives

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• Humiliation is a vast country of imprecise boundaries. If you think you're there, you are. The neurotic rule: when in doubt, go ahead and feel humiliated.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Country, Thinking, Doubt

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.55, BookBaby

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• To injure another person through atonement is one of the most subtle devices of the neurotic, as when, for example, he indulges in self-accusations.

  Alfred Adler

  Self, Indulge In, Example

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• Are you seeing a psychiatrist?' as a conversation opener would nowadays earn you a punch in the nose, but for fifty years it was a compliment. It meant, 'One can plainly see you are sensitive, intense, and interesting, and therefore neurotic.' Only the dullest of clods trudged around without a neurosis.

  Barbara Holland

  Years, Interesting, Noses

  Barbara Holland (1999). “Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories”, Harcourt

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• Let me say to begin with: It is not neurotic to have conflict ... Conflicts within ourselves are an integral part of human life.

  Karen Horney

  Conflict, Human Life, Let Me

  Karen Horney (2013). “Our Inner Conflicts: A CONSTRUCTIVE THEORY OF NEUROSIS”, p.23, Routledge

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• Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may crush another.

  Karen Horney

  Crush, May, Helpful

  Karen Horney (2013). “Our Inner Conflicts: A CONSTRUCTIVE THEORY OF NEUROSIS”, p.240, Routledge

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• I realise few people get to live the life they always wanted, but I'm so neurotic, I don't really think about it. I'm too busy thinking, 'I hope I don't screw up my next scene.

  Charlie Hunnam

  Live Life, Thinking, People

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• I like to work out every day. I run, walk, do machines. I'm not neurotic about food. My rule is, don't let yourself get over a certain weight. If you gain 5lb, stop before it gets worse.

  Andie MacDowell

  Running, Work Out, Machines

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• I'm incredibly neurotic and a control freak. I like the thought that if there's going to be anyone to blame it's going to be me.

  Laura Marling

  Freak, Blame, Ifs

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• As a young boy, I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely, but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer, where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

  Ridley Pearson

  Thinking, Boys, Years

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• I guess I can be a little neurotic sometimes, but can't everybody?

  Rebecca Romijn

  Littles, Sometimes, I Can

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• Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Character, Thinking, Two

  "Curtis Sittenfeld: Fictionalizing A First Lady". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 13, 2008.

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• During the lifetime of Japan I became very neurotic, very paranoid.

  David Sylvian

  Japan, Lifetime, Paranoid

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• Thus every writer's motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.

  Roland Barthes

  Writing, Mad, Motto

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• We grow up as natural optimists as Americans. Catholic priests were so hopeful as we watched the Vatican II experience. Yet, it's a punch in the belly to see what has happened in the church and the world. Dualistic thinking seems to have taken over the church and our politics to a really neurotic degree.

  Richard Rohr

  Growing Up, Taken, Thinking

  Source: day1.org

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• I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us.

  Sigmund Freud

  Religious, Patterns, Individual

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1964). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

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• I have a disturbing problem with losing things. My vulnerability to loss-distress could properly be labeled not only inordinate, but neurotic.

  Dick Cavett

  Loss, Losing, Problem

  Dick Cavett (2010). “Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets”, p.77, Macmillan

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• Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister.

  Carson McCullers

  Manhattan, Brooklyn, Brilliant

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Analysis does not take into account the creative products of neurotic desires.

  Anais Nin

  Creative, Desire, Doe

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• I like neurotic people. I like troubled people. Not that I don't like squared-away people, but I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.

  Stephen Sondheim

  People, Beneath The Surface, Surface

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• I think with comedy I get very sort of critical of myself and try and do the best I can and it doesn't come as second nature. I work at those kinds of films. It doesn't mean I can't do them - I've done two now, and I have a great time doing them, but I just find myself a little bit more neurotic.

  Elisha Cuthbert

  Mean, Thinking, Two

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• But the center can be a harmful place for one who has lived so long on the edge.... Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

  Tom Robbins

  Civilization, Long, Neurosis

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.257, Bantam

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• A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.

  Cyril Connolly

  Mistake, Reality, Interesting

  The Unquiet Grave Pt II

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• Both dreams and neurotic dream-states have as their function the avoidance of displeasure, but the dream-states also serve to provide a positive pleasure gain.

  Karl Abraham

  Dream, Gains, Pleasure

  Karl Abraham (1988). “Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, M.D.”

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