Neurotic Quotes - Page 10

• But the center can be a harmful place for one who has lived so long on the edge.... Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

  Tom Robbins

  Civilization, Long, Neurosis

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.257, Bantam

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• I like neurotic people. I like troubled people. Not that I don't like squared-away people, but I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.

  Stephen Sondheim

  People, Beneath The Surface, Surface

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• Analysis does not take into account the creative products of neurotic desires.

  Anais Nin

  Creative, Desire, Doe

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• One of the most dangerously vicious circles menacing the continued existence of all mankind arises through that grim striving for the highest possible position within the ranked order, in other words, the reckless pursuit of power which combines with an insatiable greed of neurotic proportions that the results of acquired power confer.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Power, Order, Circles

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• Both dreams and neurotic dream-states have as their function the avoidance of displeasure, but the dream-states also serve to provide a positive pleasure gain.

  Karl Abraham

  Dream, Gains, Pleasure

  Karl Abraham (1988). “Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, M.D.”

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• Psychoanalysts have been occupied for a long time with the difficult question of what the psychological conditions are which determine the form of the neurotic disease to which the individual will succumb. It is as though he had a choice between different illnesses and led by unknown impulses selected one or other of them.

  Karl Abraham

  Difficult Questions, Long, Choices

  Karl Abraham (1988). “Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, M.D.”

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• My mother's father drank and her mother was an unhappy, neurotic woman, and I think she has lived all her life afraid of anyone who drinks for fear something like that might happen to her.

  John Hurt

  Mother, Father, Thinking

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• I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. Then one day someone said to me, Don't change. I love you just as you are. Those words were music to my ears: Don't change, Don't change. Don't change . . . I love you as you are. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!

  Anthony de Mello

  Change, Selfish, Love You

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• Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.

  Jon Ronson

  Adventure, Trying, Littles

  RINF News Interview, rinf.com. April 3, 2005.

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• I think coming to work and being absurd and neurotic and thoughtful at the same time is far more interesting.

  Lake Bell

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Interesting

  "Lake Bell Dives Right In". Interview with Jillary Busis, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 29, 2011.

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• I think with comedy I get very sort of critical of myself and try and do the best I can and it doesn't come as second nature. I work at those kinds of films. It doesn't mean I can't do them - I've done two now, and I have a great time doing them, but I just find myself a little bit more neurotic.

  Elisha Cuthbert

  Mean, Thinking, Two

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• I'm a neurotic Jew who doesn't want loans. I can't even carry a balance on my credit card without having a nervous breakdown.

  Duff Goldman

  Balance, Cards, Credit

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• In [Philip] Howard's view, our reliance on law, lawyers, and lawsuits has turned Americans into fat, neurotic cowards who 'go through the day looking over their shoulder instead of where they want to go.'

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Views, Law, Coward

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• I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic.

  Tennessee Williams

  Block, Writing, Thinking

  Tennessee Williams (2008). “Sweet Bird of Youth”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

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• Precision in dress is the neurotic refuge of the perpetually insecure.

  G. Bruce Boyer

  Insecure, Style, Dresses

  G. Bruce Boyer (2015). “True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear”, p.139, Hachette UK

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• Part of my reaction to my diagnosis of infertility was deeply sarcastic and critical, part of it was morbid, part of it was numb, part of it was neurotic and desperate. To mush all of those notes together would cancel them out. I ended up just trying to keep them as separate as possible.

  Monica Youn

  Sarcastic, Together, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

  Iain Banks

  Civilization, Might, Emptiness

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• Our normal tendency is to feel dissatisfied and to criticize our body, speech, and mind - My body is out of shape; my voice is unpleasant; my mind is confused. - We are so caught up in this pointless, neurotic habit of criticism that we disparage others as well as ourselves. This is extremely damaging.

  Thubten Yeshe

  Confused, Voice, Mind

  Thubten Yeshe (2005). “Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire”, p.116, Simon and Schuster

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• The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one. We make our recommendations clear. But we do not grudge our clients the right to the final say. It is their money.

  David Ogilvy

  Pride, Finals, Lines

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• The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.

  Ayn Rand

  Range, Interest, Persons

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• God knows we have our own demons to be cast out, our own uncleanness to be cleansed. Neurotic anxiety happens to be my own particular demon, a floating sense of doom that has ruined many of what could have been, should have been, the happiest days of my life, and more than a few times in my life I have been raised from such ruins, which is another way of saying that more than a few times in my life I have been raised from death - death of the spirit anyway, death of the heart - by the healing power that Jesus calls us both to heal with and to be healed by.

  Frederick Buechner

  Jesus, Healing, Heart

  FaceBook post by Frederick Buechner from Aug 02, 2013

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• Awakening is not a state but a process: an ethical way of life and commitment that enables human flourishing. As such, it is no longer the exclusive preserve of enlightened teachers or accomplished yogis. Likewise, nirvana-the stopping of craving-is not the goal of the path but its very source. For human flourishing first stirs in that clear, bright, empty space where neurotic self-centredness realizes that it has no ground at all to stand on. One is then freed to pour forth like sunlight.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Teacher, Commitment, Self

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• Psycho-analysis has taught us that a boy's earliest choice of objects for his love is incestuous and that those objects are forbidden ones - his mother and his sister. We have learnt, too, the manner in which, as he grows up, he liberates himself from this incestuous attraction. A neurotic, on the other hand, invariably exhibits some degree of psychical infantilism. He has either failed to get free from the psychosexual conditions that prevailed in his childhood or he has returned to them - two possibilities which may be summed up as developmental inhibition and regression.

  Sigmund Freud

  Mother, Growing Up, Boys

  Sigmund Freud (2003). “Totem and Taboo”, p.19, Routledge

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• We all have obligations and duties toward our fellow men. But it does seem curious enough that in modern neurotic society, men's energies are consumed in making a living and rarely in living itself. It takes a lot of courage for a man to declare, with clarity and simplicity, that the purpose of life is to enjoy it.

  Lin Yutang

  Men, Simplicity, Fellow Man

  Yutang Lin (1962). “The pleasures of a nonconformist”

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• The more I focused on my need to get better the worse I actually got - the more neurotic and self-conscious and self-absorbed I became.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Self, Get Better, Needs

  Source: www.lifeisstory.com

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