Agony Quotes - Page 9

• Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

  William James

  Lonely, Individual, Existence

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.158, Booklassic

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• A child who had been introduced to misery in Saudi Arabia, a teenager who went to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a deeply devout Muslim who had graduated with honors in medicine, a man who had fed a stranger to wild dogs in Damascus, a zealot who had dosed three foreigners with smallpox and watched them die in agony, gave thanks to Allah for the blessings that had been bestowed upon him.

  Terry Hayes

  Dog, Children, Teenager

  Terry Hayes (2014). “I Am Pilgrim: A Thriller”, p.355, Simon and Schuster

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• I won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn't want to be an academic.

  Betty Friedan

  Fellowship, Want, Academic

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• You do not die all at once. Some tissues live on for minutes, even hours, giving still their little cellular shrieks, molecular echoes of the agony of the whole corpus.

  Richard Selzer

  Echoes, Giving, Tissues

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't really feel I deserve something if I haven't had to fight for it. It's not a conscious attitude, and it's stupid and wrong. Sometimes you do deserve things without having to put yourself through agony.

  George Michael

  Attitude, Stupid, Fighting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• In the West, we think of sports and athletics as individual achievement, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat; it all revolves around the ego. This has nothing to do with the Zen of sports and athletics.

  Frederick Lenz

  Sports, Health, Buddhism

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• When I start to paint, it is real agony. I get nervous. The day before, I am already working up to it. Then I get to the studio and, once the image starts to emerge and come together, pleasure kicks in. And then you can see things that no other person can see.

  Luc Tuymans

  Real, Anxiety, Together

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• As my own father was sick, and miserably tied to his invalid's chair, he would have been abandoned had not an old servant performed for him a so-called service of love. My mother gave parties while he was perishing in solitude, and amused herself while he was suffering bitter agonies

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Mother, Father, Party

  "Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy". Book by Rüdiger Safranski, trans. by Ewald Osers, 1987.

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• Part of knowing who we are is knowing we are not someone else. And Jew is only the name we give to that stranger, the agony we cannot feel, the death we look at like a cold abstraction. Each man has his Jew; it is the other.

  Arthur Miller

  Men, Knowing, Names

  1964 Leduc. Incident at Vichy, act1.

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• There is no burden of the spirit but is lightened by kneeling under it. Little by little, the bitterest feelings are sweetened by the mention of them in prayer. And agony itself stops swelling, if we can only cry sincerely, "My God, my God!"

  William Mountford

  Prayer, Feelings, Littles

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 466), 1895.

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• There rises the moon, broad and tranquil, through the branches of a walnut tree on a hill opposite. I apostrophize it in the words of Faust; "O gentle moon, that lookest for the last time upon my agonies!" --or something to that effect.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Moon, Opposites, Tree

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1967). “The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Volume I-II: 1814-1843”, p.469, Harvard University Press

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• Part of what we seek in Buddhism is the sense of quiet observation. We don't get so involved in a state of mind that we forget that it's just another transient state of mind, no matter how much ecstasy or agony is involved.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Mind, Matter

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• The death, and the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus happened over three days. Friday was the day of suffering and pain and agony. Saturday was the day of doubt and confusion and misery. But Easter, that Sunday, was the day of hope and joy and victory. You will face these three days over and over and over in your lifetime. And when you do, you’ll find yourself asking, as I did, three fundamental questions: Number one, what do I do in my days of pain? Two, how do I get through my days of doubt and confusion? Three, how do I get to the days of joy and victory? The answer is Easter.

  Rick Warren

  Friday, Jesus, Easter

  "Rick Warren Says Easter Brings Hope, Joy To Those Dealing With Loss" by Antonia Blumberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 16, 2014.

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• Joy is hidden in sorrow and sorrow in joy. If we try to avoid sorrow at all costs, we may never taste joy, and if we are suspicious of ecstasy, agony can never reach us either. Joy and sorrow are the parents of our spiritual growth.

  Henri Nouwen

  Spiritual, Joy, Parent

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2009). “Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith”, p.2, Harper Collins

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• Love masters agony; the soul that seemed
  Forsaken feels her present God again
  And in her Father's arms
  Contented dies away.

  John Keble

  Death, Father, Soul

  John Keble (1874). “The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays Throughout the Year”, p.82

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• Mountains are nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Writing, Sorrow, Mountain

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1854). “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands”, p.300

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• If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I'm convinced, don't think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they're carried out feet first.

  Philip Larkin

  Thinking, Feet, Ice

  Letter to J.B.Sutton, October 30, 1949.

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• Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.

  Robert Graves

  Home, Fighting, Men

  Robert Graves, Beryl Graves, Dunstan Ward (1999). “Complete poems”, Carcanet Pr

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• One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.

  Henning Mankell

  Writing, Knows

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• A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Pain, Men, Yards

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• Life is a struggle, from the agonies of birth to the railing against death. Devour or be devoured. The law of the wild.

  David Gemmell

  Struggle, Law, Birth

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• A woman in agony of spirit might turn her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built.

  Eleanor Robson Belmont

  Character, Men, Hands

  Eleanor Robson Belmont (1957). “The Fabric of Memory”

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• No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted word, failure and success and measure them by the eternal, not the earthly, standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be pre-eminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross -- was that a failure.

  Frederic Farrar

  Lonely, Work, Men

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• To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

  William Shakespeare

  Laughter, Moving, Soul

  William Shakespeare (2012). “Comedies of Shakespeare in Plain and Simple English (a Modern Translation and the Original Version)”, p.1633, BookCaps Study Guides

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• The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance, but agony.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Exercise, Power, Arrogance

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.496, Best Books on

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