Inability Quotes - Page 5

• The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

  Alain de Botton

  Memories, Lying, Leaving

  Alain de Botton (2006). “On Love: A Novel”, p.126, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.

  David Foster Wallace

  Sadness, Hatred, My Love For You

  David Foster Wallace (2004). “The Broom of the System: A Novel”, p.187, Penguin

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• Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.

  Nhat Hanh

  Anxiety, Moments, Illness

  Nhất Hạnh (Thích.), Thich Nhat Hanh (1998). “The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering Into Peace, Joy, & Liberation : the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, & Other Basic Buddhist Teachings”

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• It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other.... For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.

  David Levithan

  Race, Focus, Different

  David Levithan (2012). “Every Day”, p.77, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—-to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.

  Alan Watts

  Intelligent, Technology, Men

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.112, New World Library

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• If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Strong, Sunset, Appreciate

  Robert M. Sapolsky (2004). “Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated”, p.272, Macmillan

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• God actually delights in exalting our inability. He intentionally puts his people in situations where they come face to face with their need for him.

  David Platt

  People, Needs, Delight

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• God does not ask your ability Or your inability. He asks only your availability.

  Mary Kay Ash

  God, Religious, Availability

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• So this is it. You are scored on my heart, Clark. You were from the first day you walked in, with your ridiculous clothes and your bad jokes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt.

  Jojo Moyes

  Heart, Clothes, Firsts

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• Remember that introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events. So don’t mistake a child’s caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others. He’s recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact. Introverts are just as likely as the next kid to seek others’ company, though often in smaller doses

  Susan Cain

  Children, Mistake, Kids

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• Class warfare or soaking the so-called rich may make for good populist demagoguery and serve the political ends of the governing masterminds, but it does nothing to solve the grave realities of the federal government's insatiable appetite for spending and its inability to reform itself.

  Mark Levin

  Reality, Government, Class

  Mark R. Levin (2013). “The Liberty Amendments”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

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• In the short term, corporal punishment may produce obedience. But it is a fact documented by research that in the long term the results are inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying, cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that of one's own children, even drug addiction and suicide, unless there are enlightened or at least helping witnesses on hand to prevent that development.

  Alice Miller

  Suicide, Bullying, Children

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• Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Thinking, Stupidity

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• The historian ought to be the humblest of men; he is faced a dozen times a day with the evidence of his own ignorance; he is perpetually confronted with his own humiliating inability to interpret his material correctly; he is, in a sense that no other writer is, in bondage to that material.

  C. V. Wedgwood

  Ignorance, Men, History

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• The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.

  Mark Twain

  Humor, Deep Thought, Remember

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• Our lack of compassion stems from our inability to see deeply into the nature of things.

  Surya Das

  Compassion, Spirituality, Stem

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• I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Religious, Distance, Ignorance

  Barbara Brown Taylor (2011). “Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith”, p.224, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity-advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary.

  Jean Baker Miller

  Men, Community, Identity

  Jean Baker Miller (2012). “Toward a New Psychology of Women”, p.88, Beacon Press

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• Actually, the inability of any society to resist immigration, the inability to find other solutions to the problem of employment at the lower, more physical, and menial levels of the economic process, is a serious weakness, and possibly even a fatal one, in any national society. The fully healthy society would find ways to meet those needs out of its own resources.

  George F. Kennan

  Healthy, Weakness, Immigration

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• Despite my inability to qualify to qualify in South Africa, I did really appreciate the support I got from the IOC particularly the Olympic Solidarity, members of the ICF, my own National Olympic Committee, friends and athletes from the Slalom Community. When I got the wild card, it was the cherry on the cake that I could not have imagined. It was much more than I expected for myself.

  Benjamin Boukpeti

  Athlete, Cake, Appreciate

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• The mystery of life is certainly the most persistent problem ever placed before the thought of man. There is no doubt that from the time humanity began to think it has occupied itself with the problem of its origin and its future which undoubtedly is the problem of life. The inability of science to solve it is absolute. This would be truly frightening were it not for faith.

  Guglielmo Marconi

  Faith, Science, Men

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• The chief enemy of peace is the spirit of unreason itself: an inability to conceive alternatives, an unwillingness to reconsider old prejudices, to part with ideological obsessions, to entertain new ideas or to improve new plans.

  Lewis Mumford

  Ideas, Justice, Diversity

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• In opposition to the plenary ability taught by the Pelagians, the gracious ability of the Arminians, and the natural ability of the New School theologians, the Scriptures declare the total inability of the sinner to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God's sight

  Augustus Hopkins Strong

  School, Sight, Scripture

  Augustus Hopkins Strong (2014). “Systematic Theology : Volume II (Illustrated)”, p.481, Lulu Press, Inc

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• B*tch: a reflection of people’s lack of creativity & inability to acknowledge & embrace a powerful woman; a woman who won’t comply.

  Kelly Cutrone

  Powerful, Creativity, Reflection

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• Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else's happiness or success

  Matthieu Ricard

  Buddhism, Envy, Suffering

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