Conditions Quotes - Page 24

These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.

Anne Lamott

Children, People, Awkward

6 Copy quote
We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.

Sigmund Freud

Littles, Gains, Intense

9 Copy quote
There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).

John Berryman

Wall, Humility, Important

10 Copy quote
I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.

Hubert Selby, Jr.

Pain, Thinking, Here I Am

53 Copy quote
Juliana?” the words were low and far—too calm for her husband, who had found that he rather enjoyed the full spectrum of emotion now that he had experienced it. “Yes?” “What are you doing twenty feet in the air?” “Looking for a book.” “Would you mind very much returning to the earth?” “What are you thinking, climbing to the rafters in your condition?” “I am not an invalid, Simon, I still have use of all my extremes.” “You do indeed—particularly your extreme ability to try my patience—I believe, however, that you mean extremities.

Sarah MacLean

Husband, Believe, Book

4 Copy quote
When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.

Eckhart Tolle

Nature, Survival, World

Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.30, Penguin

7 Copy quote

Show source
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut

Thinking, People, Slaughterhouse Five

KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

7 Copy quote

Show source
Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.

Saul Bellow

Brother, Father, Ambition

15 Copy quote
He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.

George MacDonald

Prayer, Father, Heart

George MacDonald (2016). “Unspoken Sermons, completed: MacDonald's Works”, p.172, VM eBooks

55 Copy quote

Show source
Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of human condition that something as precious as the future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that's what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you're young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture.

Simon Pegg

Children, Decisions We Make, Details

13 Copy quote
Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

Sarah Hall

Solitude, Misunderstood

Sarah Hall (2009). “How to Paint a Dead Man”, p.16, Faber & Faber

4 Copy quote

Show source
A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

B. F. Skinner

Philosophy, Answers, May

B. F. Skinner (1974). “Walden Two”, p.120, Hackett Publishing

6 Copy quote

Show source
In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may be, war and want-- but we must vote for a man.

B. F. Skinner

War, Believe, Men

B. F. Skinner (1974). “Walden Two”, p.221, Hackett Publishing

29 Copy quote

Show source
Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Heart, Self, People

8 Copy quote
To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken. But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can´t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren´t satisfied - before working some more.

Mitch Albom

Taken, Self Worth, Mirrors

4 Copy quote
[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.

Jared Diamond

People, Triumph, Inappropriate

10 Copy quote
At first it was a bit strange and daunting to have to wear a mask, but afterwards I came to enjoy it. In warm conditions, though, it started to slip off my face. Other times they used this double-sided sticky tape, and I literally couldn't get it off my face. I would feel like I was ripping my face off and I had a lot of cuts and bruises because of it-huge red marks. People might think it was method acting.

Gerard Butler

Cutting, Thinking, People

6 Copy quote
Scientists want full proof under laboratory conditions. And the answer is very simple: When Im put under pressure, I cant perform. Even the phenomenon Im most known for. When Im on stage, Im not under pressure and it happens. In other important places, it happens. But in a laboratory where I really want it to happen, its very hard for me.

Uri Geller

Simple, Important, Answers

4 Copy quote
The Jake Gyllenhaal workout planstarts with growing long, long hairgorgeous greasy locks and then washing every day.Wash, shampoo, then condition. Washing works the biceps and then the triceps by conditioning. And vigorously rubbing all of your body with soap really defines the abs and the pectoral muscles. And if you do squats while you're bathing - that's it!

Jake Gyllenhaal

Workout, Long, Biceps

14 Copy quote
If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests.

Richard Dawkins

Medicine, Alternatives, Tests

"The Enemies of Reason". Documentary, 2007.

17 Copy quote

Show source
The best entertainment speaks to the human condition in an honest way.

Gregory Hines

Way, Entertainment, Honest

24 Copy quote
As an actress, I'm drawn to emotion and expressing the human condition in all its forms, and I'm fortunate to have thoughts and feelings at my fingertips.

Diane Keaton

Feelings, Actresses, Emotion

15 Copy quote
Fame is a very unnatural human condition. When you stop to realize that Abraham Lincoln was probably never seen by more than 400 people in a single evening, and that I can enter over 40 million homes in a single evening due to the power of television, you have to admit the situation is not normal.

Chevy Chase

Home, People, Television

7 Copy quote
I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.

Sharon Gless

Thinking, Understanding, Human Condition

7 Copy quote
I get out, I get out of all your boxes. I get out, you can't hold me in these chains. I'll get out. Father free me from this bondage. Knowin' my condition is the reason I must change

Lauryn Hill

Father, Reason, Bondage

Song: I Get Out, Album: MTV Unplugged 2.0, 2002

27 Copy quote

Show source