Torment Quotes - Page 16

• Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.

  Samuel Daniel

  Brother, Time, Sleep

  'Sonnets to Delia' (1592) no. 54

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• Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment.

  William Blake

  Time, Swiftness, Mercy

  William Blake (2008). “The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake”, p.121, Univ of California Press

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• Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

  William James

  Lonely, Independent, Science

  William James (2012). “The Will to Believe and Human Immortality”, p.133, Courier Corporation

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• The tango is the man and woman in search of each other. It is the search for an embrace, a way to be together, when the man feels that he is a male and the woman feels that she is female, without machismo. She likes to be led; he likes to lead. Disagreements may occur later or they may not. When that moment comes, it is important to have positive and productive dialogue, fifty-fifty. The music arouses and torments, the dance is the coupling of two people defenseless against the world and powerless to change things.

  Juan Carlos Copes

  Dance, Men, Two

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• For arousing compassion, the nineteenth-century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggested imagining beings in torment - an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommended imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching as a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in the woman's shoes.

  Pema Chodron

  Mother, Children, Animal

  Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.65, Shambhala Publications

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• Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things.

  Tertullian

  Beauty, Eye, Carpe Diem

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• Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. It was not mere pleasure; it was perfect bliss. Escaped from the frightful torments of persecution and of calumny, I felt that I was answering all in rising above all.

  Jacques Charles

  Airplane, Calumny Is, Perfect

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• Ambition is torment enough for an enemy; for it affords as much discontentment in enjoying as in want, making men like poisoned rats, which, when they have tasted of their bane, cannot rest till they drink, and then can much less rest till they die

  Joseph Hall

  Ambition, Men, Enemy

  Joseph Hall (1837). “The Works of Joseph Hall: Devotional works; Miscellaneous theology”, p.26

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• No one has ever been accused for not providing ornaments, but for those who neglect their neighbour a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and torment in the company of the demons. Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Brother, Fire, Church

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• Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch's soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated.

  Marquis de Sade

  Hope, Old Wounds, Soul

  Sade (marquis de) (1965). “Selected letters”

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• They smiled in their pains and laughed to scorn those who inflicted torments on them, resigned up their souls with great alacrity, expecting to receive them again.

  Josephus

  Pain, Healing, Past

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• A man obtains the fear of God if he has the remembrance of his unavoidable death and of the eternal torments that await sinners; If he tests himself every evening as to how he has spent the day, and every morning as to how he has spent the night, and if is not sharp in his relations with others.

  Dorotheus of Gaza

  Inspirational, Christian, Religious

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• It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Media, Everyday, Poverty

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• The excesses of love soon pass, but its insufficiencies torment us forever.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Love, Forever, Excess

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.27, BookBaby

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• We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Happiness, Joy

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• I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.

  Susanna Clarke

  Silence, Solitude, After Hours

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.66, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I cannot help it - in spite of myself, infinity torments me.

  Alfred de Musset

  Infinity, Helping, Spite

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• Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.

  Claude Bernard

  Discovery, Joy, Knows

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.239, Courier Corporation

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• Walk in the way of the Lord with simplicity and do not torment your spirit. You must hate your defects, but with a quiet hate, not troublesome and restless.

  Pio of Pietrelcina

  Hate, Simplicity, Way

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• A man too careful of danger liveth in continual torment, But a cheerful expecter of the best hath a fountain of joy within him.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Men, Joy, Cheerful

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1860). “Tupper's Complete Poetical Works: Containing "Proverbial Philosophy," "A Thousand Lines," "Hactenus," "Geraldine," and "Miscellaneous Poems"”, p.15

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• A person may say I am not much concerned how long I stay in purgatory, provided I may come to eternal life. Let no one reason thus. Purgatory fire will be more dreadful than whatever torments can be seen imagined, or endured in this world. He who is afraid now to put his finger into the fire, does he not fear lest he be then all buried in torments for a long time?

  Caesarius of Arles

  Fire, Long, World

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• Sometimes, in the course of my hopeless quest, I would pick up and dip into one of the ordinary books that lay strewn around the castle. Whenever I did, it seemed so insipid and insubstantial that I flew into a rage and hurled it at the wall after reading the first few sentences. I was spoilt for any other form of literature, and the mental torment I endured was comparable to the agony of unrequited love compounded by the withdrawal symptoms associated with a severe addiction.

  Walter Moers

  Love, Wall, Book

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• And you, Prince Elric? She attracted the albino's wandering attention. Do you know his story? Elric shook his head. I only know, he said, that he is a shape-changer and, that most cursed of souls, a person of rare goodness and sanity. Imagine such torment as is his!

  Michael Moorcock

  Soul, Attention, Stories

  Michael Moorcock (2010). “Elric Swords and Roses”, p.139, Del Rey

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• God shields the souls of the innocent the best He can from the Devil's torments.

  Katherine Howe

  Soul, Devil, Shields

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• In this life our sorrows are either not very long or not very great because nature either overcomes them by habits or puts an end to them by sinking under their weight. But in hell the torments cannot be overcome by habit, for while they are of terrible intensity they are at the same time of continual variety, each pain, so to speak, taking fire from another and re-endowing that which has enkindled it with a still fiercer flame.

  James Joyce

  Pain, Flames, Fire

  James Joyce (2013). “The Best of James Joyce”, p.268, Simon and Schuster

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