Conditions Quotes - Page 5

A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.

Martha Gellhorn

Broken Heart, Hate, Disease

Martha Gellhorn, Caroline Moorehead (2006). “The letters of Martha Gellhorn”, Vintage

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

Frederick Douglass

Inspirational, Thinking, Black History

Frederick Douglass (2016). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.160, Frederick Douglass

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I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success.

Og Mandino

Inspirational, Mind, Action

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Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

Arthur Rubinstein

Life, Happiness, People

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Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed.

John Dewey

Change, Education, Memories

John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Ralph Ross (2008). “The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1920”, p.146, SIU Press

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In depression . . . faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come - - not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute . . . It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

William Styron

Sad, Depression, Crush

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Certainly, I think being depressed is absolutely part of the human condition, it has to be, if there's joy there's its opposite, and it's something you ride if you possibly can.

Bob Geldof

Depression, Thinking, Opposites

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The family is the corner stone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Family, Attitude, Children

"Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966".

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Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fitness, Health, Sleep

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.227

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When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.

Catherine Ponder

Relationship, Forgiveness, Emotional

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God forgives not capriciously, but with wise, definite, Divine pre arrangement; forgives universally, on the grounds of atonement and on the condition of repentance and faith.

Richard Salter Storrs

Forgiveness, Wise, Forgiving

Richard Salter Storrs (1875). “Conditions of Success in Preaching Without Notes: Three Lectures Delivered Before the Students of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, Januray 13, 20, 27: 1875; with an Appendix”, p.114

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If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

Flannery O'Connor

Happiness, Survival, Routine

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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.

William James

Happiness, Pain, Routine

William James (1918). “The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2”, p.553, Courier Corporation

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It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. As a matter of experience, we find that true happiness comes in seeking other things, in the manifold activities of life, in the healthful outgoing of all human powers.

Hugh Black

Happiness, Self, Missing

Hugh Black (1901). “Culture and Restraint”

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Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Meaningful, Cancer, Waiting Rooms

Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.4, Grove Press

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