Distressing Quotes - Page 4

• The number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands. And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing.

  Barack Obama

  Gun, Numbers, Issues

  Interview with Jon Sopel, www.bbc.com. July 24, 2015.

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• At this very moment,... the most frightful horrors are taking place in every corner of the world. People are being crushed, slashed, disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rot and their eyes decay with the rest. Screams of pain and fear go pulsing through the air at the rate of eleven hundred feet per second. After travelling for three seconds they are perfectly inaudible. These are distressing facts; but do we enjoy life any the less because of them? Most certainly we do not.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sympathy, Pain, Eye

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• That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Mediocrity, Reign, Becoming

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• I think Pope Francis is a good shepherd and has great experience in following people in joyful, but also distressing situations and he knows what he is speaking about when he discusses how to accompany families in their lives toward joy and love.

  Christoph Schonborn

  Thinking, People, Joy

  "INTERVIEW: Cardinal Schönborn on ‘Amoris Laetitia’: Pope Francis Knows What He Is Talking About". zenit.org. April 12, 2016.

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• What children learn from punishment is that might makes right. When they are old and strong enough, they will try to get their ownback; thus many children punish their parents by acting in ways distressing to them.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Strong, Children, Punishment

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• The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not the superficial happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the happiness and contentment that fills the soul even in the midst of the most distressing of circumstances and most bitter environment.

  Billy Graham

  Soul, Contentment, Bitter

  Billy Graham (1977). “The Secret of Happiness”, Pocket

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• One of the uses of poetry - one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances, ... or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night.

  E. Nesbit

  Sleep, Night, Poetry

  E. Nesbit (2013). “Delphi Complete Novels of E. Nesbit”, p.1027, Delphi Classics

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• I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn't love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country.

  Sarah-Patton Boyle

  Country, Loneliness, Men

  Sarah Patton Boyle (2016). “The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian’s Stand in Time of Transition”, p.115, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• This is not about charity, it's about justice... The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty - I didn't say that, Colin Powell said that . . . In these disturbing and distressing times, surely it's cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than it is to defend yourself against them..Justice is the surest way to get peace.

  Edward de Bono

  War, Justice, Enemy

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• It seems that some consideration should be given to the cause of our mounting physical disabilities, but instead of going to the root of our troubles - wrong habits of eating and drinking - we rush to the medicine shelf and smother our uncomfortable and distressing symptoms under an avalanche of pills, potions and palliatives.

  Lester Roloff

  Drinking, Roots, Medicine

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• With the right person in place, a very distressing chapter in the Justice Department's history can be closed and the process of restoring its credibility as a strong and independent department can begin.

  Dianne Feinstein

  Strong, Independent, Justice

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• Reconciliation is a long process. We don't have the kind of race clashes that we thought would happen. What we have is xenophobia, and it's very distressing. But maybe you ought to be lenient with us. We've been free for just 12 years.

  Desmond Tutu

  Xenophobia, Race, Years

  Interview with Sonja Steptoe, content.time.com. October 17, 2006.

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• When you engage in compassion, and you hear a distressing sound, like someone calling for help, there is an activation in an area of the brain called the insular, which has to do with empathy and altruism, that is vastly more activated than in non-meditators.

  Matthieu Ricard

  Compassion, Empathy, Brain

  Source: www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu

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• I never wanted to make portraits - to photograph celebrities, beautiful people, beautiful landscapes, beautiful buildings, or people in distressing situations.... I have always been interested in everyman - average, ordinary people in everyday situations.

  Ray Metzker

  Beautiful, Average, People

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• We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it our power to be in heaven with him right now-to be happy with him at this very moment. But this means being: Loving as he loves, helping as he helps, giving as he gives, serving as he serves, rescuing as he rescues, being with him all 24 hours of the day, touching him in his distressing disguise.

  Mother Teresa

  Mean, Long, Giving

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• Do not grow overconfident following a few victories. Should you not rely upon the Holy Spirit you will soon be thrown once more into a distressing experience. With holy diligence you must cultivate an attitude of dependency.

  Watchman Nee

  Attitude, Rely Upon, Victory

  Watchman Nee (2009). “The Spiritual Man”, p.204, Christian Fellowship Publishers

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• There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

  Edward Hirsch

  Students, Sometimes, Poet

  "A Poet Is Born". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. February 4, 2010.

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• The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.

  Edward Hirsch

  Thinking, America, Risk

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Therefore, philosophy does not give sense in mind happiness. It keeps in mind the only truth. However, it is very possible that the truth may be painful, may be distressing, may be destructive of happiness or makes it impossible. Religion, unlike philosophy, is under the category of the useful one. It promises happiness and says what it is necessary to do and what it is necessary to be to deserve or to obtain it. Consequently, illusion is more important than truth if it gets happiness.

  Marcel Conche

  Truth, Philosophy, Giving

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• Every day I see Jesus Christ in all his distressing disguises.

  Mother Teresa

  Jesus, Stress, Christ

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• Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure, and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging is such acts of brutality.

  Dalai Lama

  Sports, Funny Inspirational, Adventure

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• Humor is a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing effects that interface with it.

  Sigmund Freud

  Happiness, Mean, Pleasure

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• Social Science, is not a 'gay science' but rueful, which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone. Not a 'gay science', no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, the dismal science

  Thomas Carlyle

  Ignorance, Gay, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.472, Lulu.com

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• There is nothing more distressing ... than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Laughter, Heart, Men

  The Man with the Muck-rake, delivered 14 April 1906

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• It could well be argued that the continuing rights abuses of the present Iraqi regime, if it is allowed to survive, will prove most distressing. This is beyond any doubt. But the West has been required to witness terrible scenes in China, Russia, Vietnam, East Timor, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world. It is simply not possible for the United States to impose humanity on a worldwide scale unless it is prepared to enter into permanent global war.

  Frederick Forsyth

  War, Russia, Rights

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