Involuntary Quotes - Page 4

• Eros is not tranquil-it gives us spikes of happiness rather than a constant feeling of wellbeing. It's the love we feel at the beginning of a love affair and corresponds to the expression 'falling in love' since it is as involuntary an impulse as a physical fall.

  François Lelord

  Falling In Love, Expression, Giving

  "Ideas for modern living: love" by François Lelord, www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2011.

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• The evidence here, as elsewhere, suggests that education is certainly relevant, but more because better education is associated with general differences in patterns of life than because discrete parts of a lifestyle can be changed. Health-change policies which focus entirely on the individual may be ineffective not only because exposure to health risks is largely involuntary, but also, as this study has shown, because of unwarranted assumptions about the extent to which behaviour can, in these circumstances, be effective in improving health.

  Mildred Blaxter

  Differences, Focus, Risk

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• The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Mistake, Eye, Imagination

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• PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Gentleman, Church, Palaces

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.171, 谷月社

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• The text moves like a small crustacean with compound eye and complex nervous system; throbbing, involuted, it becomes a parasite on a different body, animal, using ‘filiform protrusions through which it sucks the vital juices of its host.’ Parasite or creature in mutation on the shore, torrid / delirium: mordant mortality, systematic competition the narrator against the I, leaking gas, a lapse of memory against a promise, an inset in a book. A muscular, involuntary bulging in the breast, circling all its inner surface: mesoblast: visceral.

  Nicole Brossard

  Memories, Moving, Book

  Nicole Brossard, Larry Shouldice, Patricia Claxton (2003). “The Blue Books: A Book, Turn of a Pang, French Kiss, Or, A Pang's Progress”, p.255, Coach House Books

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• Love is an involuntary gift that manifests unplanned.

  Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

  Love Is

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• I would never behave with so little dignity. Nor would I wish to be confronted in such a manner by anyone else. Vampires inspire screams, not squees. Involuntary urination is common, I grant, but it properly flows from a sense of terror, not an ecstatic sense of hero worship.

  Kevin Hearne

  Hero, Inspire, Vampire

  Kevin Hearne (2011). “Hammered (with bonus short story): The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Three”, p.93, Del Rey

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• Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it is, therefore, contended that it cannot be resisted. This is true in part only, for like all things else, when nourished and supplied plentifully with ailment, it is rapid in its progress; but let these be withdrawn and it may be stifled in its birth or much stinted in its growth.

  George Washington

  Love, Passion, Growth

  Jay A. Parry, Andrew M. Allison, George Washington (1991). “The real George Washington”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that, in the end, life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

  Earl Warren

  Law, Police, Feelings

  Writing for the court, Spano v. New York 360 U.S. 321, 1959.

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• The fact of the matter is that, since we are determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never given any thought to the manner in which we should express them. And suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal making itself heard, whose tones may inspire as much alarm in the person who receives the involuntary, elliptical and almost irresistible communication of one's defect or vice as would the sudden avowal indirectly and outlandishly proffered by a criminal who can no longer refrain from confessing to a murder of which one had never imagined him to be guilty.

  Marcel Proust

  Communication, Animal, Inspire

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume III: The Guermantes Way”, p.257, Modern Library

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• There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do; there are movements that are involuntary proofs of what the soul feels.

  Vittorio Alfieri

  Children, Silence, Soul

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  One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Love, Hate, Forever

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1984). “Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.54, U of Nebraska Press

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• Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect.

  Honore de Balzac

  Simplicity, Inspire, Disrespect

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• Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.

  Plato

  Vices, Virtue

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.

  William Hazlitt

  Genius, Talent, Capacity

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• Love may be likened to a disease in this respect, that when it is denied a vent in one part, it will certainly break out in another; hence what a woman's lips often conceal, her eyes, her blushes, and many little involuntary actions betray.

  Henry Fielding

  Love, Eye, Break Out

  Henry Fielding (1783). “The Beauties of Fielding. Carefully Selected ... To which is Added Some Account of His Life”, p.111

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• Most real relationships are involuntary.

  Iris Murdoch

  Real, Real Relationship

  Iris Murdoch (1999). “A Severed Head, The Black Prince, The Sea, The Sea”

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• Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings.

  Walter Bagehot

  Life, Campaigns, Half

  Walter Bagehot (1873). “Physics and Politics: Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "natural Selection" and "inheritance" to Political Society”, p.79

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• I wanted to know more about the young ... strange that though they laughed so loud, they so seldom smiled. Perhaps laughter was involuntary whereas smiling was part of an attitude to life.

  Dodie Smith

  Laughter, Attitude, Strange

  Dodie Smith (2012). “The Town in Bloom”, p.200, Hachette UK

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• Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world — a place where they are one.

  Alan Watts

  Practice, Breathing, Bridges

  Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.71, New World Library

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• When Alexander had subdued the world, and wept that none were left to dispute his arms, his tears were an involuntary tribute to a monarchy that he knew not, man's empire over himself.

  Jane Porter

  Men, Tears, World

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.33

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• Some imitation is involuntary and unconscious.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Imitation, Unconscious

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

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• It is that faculty by which we discover and enjoy the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime in literature, art, and nature; which recognizes a noble thought, as a virtuous mind welcomes a pure sentiment by a involuntary glow of satisfaction. But while the principle of perception is inherent in the soul, it requires a certain amount of knowledge to draw out and direct it.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Beautiful, Art, Soul

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• The effusions of genius are entitled to admiration rather than applause, as they are chiefly the effect of natural endowment, and sometimes appear to be almost involuntary.

  William Benton Clulow

  Genius, Admiration, Sometimes

  William Benton Clulow (1843). “Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion”, p.338

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• When you see persons slip down on the ice, do not laugh at them. ... It is more feminine on witnessing such a sight, to utter an involuntary scream than a shout of laughter.

  Eliza Leslie

  Laughter, Sight, Ice

  Eliza Leslie (2016). “The Ladies' Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners”, p.25, Summersdale Publishers LTD - ROW

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