Torment Quotes - Page 5

And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.

E. L. Doctorow

Heart, Way, Ordinary

E.L. Doctorow (2001). “City of God: A Novel”, p.81, Random House

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I attempt all day, at work, not to think about what lies ahead, but this costs me so much effort that there is nothing left for my work. I handle telephone calls so badly that after a while the switchboard operator refuses to connect me. So I had better say to myself, Go ahead and polish the silverware beautifully, then lay it out ready on the sideboard and be done with it. Because I polish it in my mind all day long—this is what torments me (and doesn't clean the silver).

Lydia Davis

Lying, Thinking, Long

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Even in the running away from hurting, there is hurting. In opening unprotected to the experience that is enslaving you with its torment, there is the willingness to be free.” Are you willing? Or do you just want towait until the world finally gets it and does it your way?

Gangaji

Running, Hurt, Doe

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Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.

Francois Fenelon

Wish, Moments, Depravity

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Cows run away from the storm while the buffalo charges toward it - and gets through it quicker. Whenever I’m confronted with a tough challenge, I do not prolong the torment, I become the buffalo.

Wilma Mankiller

Inspirational, Running, Native American

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It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege.

Louise Bourgeois

Artist, Privilege

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Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Struggle, Trying, Important

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Divine happiness, even the tiniest particle of a grain of it, never leaves one again; and when one attains to the essence of things and finds one's Self-this is supreme happiness. When it is found, nothing else remains to be found; the sense of want will not awaken anymore, and the heart's torment will be stilled forever. Do not be satisfied with fragmentary happiness, which is invariably interrupted by shocks and blows of fate; but become complete, and having attained to perfection, be YOURSELF.

Anandamayi Ma

Being Yourself, Heart, Fate

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While I have very little to say in favor of sex (it's vastly overrated, it's frequently unnecessary, and it's messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion.

Quentin Crisp

Love, Sex, Agony

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What torments of grief you endured, from evils that never arrived

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Grief, Evil

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Cast between the extremes of happiness and misfortune, uncertainty is a cruel torment.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Casts, Extremes, Uncertainty

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The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless torment but occasionally fills him with silent joy.

Georges Rouault

Artist, Names, Joy

"Stella Vespertina" by Georges Rouault, 1947.

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Woodcutter. Cut my shadow from me. Free me from the torment of being without fruit. Why was I born among mirrors? Day goes round and round me. The night copies me in all its stars. I want to live without my reflection. And then let me dream that ants and thistledown are my leaves and my parrots.

Federico Garcia Lorca

Dream, Stars, Cutting

Federico García Lorca, “The Song Of The Barren Orange Tree”

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people commit suicide for only one reason - to escape torment.

Li Ang

Suicide, People, Reason

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There are two gods. The god our teachers teach us about, and the God who teaches us. The god about whom people usually talk, and the God who talks to us. The god we learn to fear, and the God who speaks to us of mercy. The god who is somewhere up on high, and the God who is here in our daily lives. The god who demands punishment, and the God who forgives us our trespasses. The god who threatens us with the torments of Hell, and the God who shows us the true path.
There are two gods. A god who casts us off because of our sins, and a God who calls to us with His love.

Paulo Coelho

Love, Teacher, Punishment

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We must forgive each other our arising, for our existence always torments others. The golden rule in the midst of this mutual misery has always been, not to do no harm, but as little as possible; and not to love one another, but as much as you can.

Ken Wilber

Love, Forgiving, Littles

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We have done with Hope and Honour. we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung; And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

Rudyard Kipling

Love, Truth, Done

Rudyard Kipling (2012). “Gunga Din and Other Favorite Poems”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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...What torments of pain have you endured that haven't as yet arrived? and may never!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pain, May, Anticipation

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Accordingly if the devil should say, 'Do not drink,' you should reply to him, 'On this very account, because you forbid it, I shall drink, and what is more, I shall drink a generous amount. Thus one must always do the opposite of that which Satan prohibits. What do you think is my reason for drinking wine undiluted, talking freely, and eating more often, if it is not to torment and vex the devil who made up his mind to torment and vex me.

Martin Luther

Drinking, Wine, Thinking

Martin Luther, Theodore G. Tappert (2003). “Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel”, p.86, Regent College Publishing

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The slave labors, but with no cheer - it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment.

Henry Ward Beecher

Cheer, Children, Book

"Modern Agitators: or, Pen Portraits of Living American Reformers". Book by David W. Bartlett, 1856.

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What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?

John Donne

Marriage, Sight, Tickling

John Donne, John Carey (2000). “John Donne: The Major Works”, p.320, Oxford University Press, USA

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All work, the genuine work which we must achieve, is that which is most difficult and painful: the work on ourselves. If we do not freely take upon ourselves this pre-acceptance of the pain and torment, they will be visited upon us in an otherwise necessary individual and universal collapse. Anyone disassociated from his origin and his spiritually sensed task acts against origin. Anyone who acts against it has neither a today nor a tomorrow.

Jean Gebser

Pain, Acceptance, Tasks

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When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to it, meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil; while fretting and fuming only serves to increase your own torments.

Thomas Jefferson

Perseverance, Evil, Mind

Thomas Jefferson (1964). “To the Girls and Boys: Being the Delightful, Little-known Letters of Thomas Jefferson to and from His Children and Grandchildren”

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Why must women torment me so?

Theodore Dreiser

Women

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With so many thousand joys, is it not black ingratitude to call the world a place of sorrow and torment?

Jean Paul

Gratitude, Joy, Black

Jean Paul F. RICHTER (1849). “Life of ---,compiled from various sources together with his Autobiography,...”, p.99

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