Recoil Quotes - Page 2

• No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the shooter of it.

  St. Jerome

  Arrows, Stones, Care

  "Saint Jerome Collection [5 Books]". Book by Saint Jerome, Aeterna Press, Letter LII, 2016.

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• There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor skills, blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue - the mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting, because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can’t control it.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Loss, Men, Skills

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• It's fine to dress in polka dots and pink crinoline if you want. What I recoil from is the idea that that alone is the only way to be female.

  Susan Faludi

  Ideas, Dresses, Female

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Either still I find Some imperfection in the chosen theme, Or see of absolute accomplishment Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself, That I recoil and droop, and seek repose In listlessness from vain perplexity, Unprofitably travelling towards the grave.

  William Wordsworth

  Accomplishment, Imperfection, Vain

  'The Prelude' (1850) bk. 1, l. 265

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• Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby recoils in horror at the prospect of automatic coverage (including, when it was first proposed, Social Security), no matter how efficient it may be. Automatic coverage eliminates sales commissions and profit.

  Andrew Tobias

  May, Matter, Firsts

  "The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know". Book by Andrew Tobias, 1982.

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• He who sports compliments, unless he takes good aim, may miss his mark, and be wounded by the recoil of his own weapon.

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton

  Sports, Missing, May

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• It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils; in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon.

  James Russell Lowell

  Heart, Forget Everything, Childhood

  James Russell Lowell (1845). “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”, p.141

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• The good or evil we confer on others very often, I believe, recoils on ourselves; for as men of a benign disposition enjoy their own acts of beneficence equally with those to whom they are done, so there are scarce any natures so entirely diabolical as to be capable of doing injuries without paying themselves some pangs for the ruin which they bring on their fellow-creatures.

  Henry Fielding

  Believe, Men, Evil

  Henry Fielding (1975). “The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling”, p.765, Wesleyan University Press

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• The persons whom you have idolized can never, in the end, be ungrateful, and, probably, at the time of retreat they still do justice to your heart. But, so long as you must draw persons too near you, a temporary recoil is sure to follow. It is the character striving to defend itself from a heating and suffocating action upon it.

  Margaret Fuller

  Heart, Character, Long

  Margaret Fuller, Bell Gale Chevigny (1976). “The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings”, p.134, UPNE

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• This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness; hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish, but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good--these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.

  James Martineau

  Jesus, Heart, Invisible Hand

  James Martineau (1905). “A Martineau year book: Extracts from sermons”

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• Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.

  Lucretius

  Violence, Mesh, Commit

  Titus Lucretius Carus (1866). “De rerum natura libri sex with nołes and a translation by H. A. J. Munro: II”, p.144

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• Evil on itself shall back recoil.

  John Milton

  Evil

  John Milton (1829). “Paradise Lost: Paradise Regained”

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• Analysis takes back with one hand what it gives with the other. I recoil in fear and loathing from that deplorable evil: continuous functions with no derivatives.

  Charles Hermite

  Hands, Evil, Giving

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• We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that trans-figuration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor.

  Georges Duhamel

  Memories, Real, Color

  "The Heart's Domain". Book by Georges Duhamel, 1919.

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• For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sympathy, Lying, Ebb And Flow

  D. H. Lawrence, Michael Squires (2002). “Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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• The promise of God is that you are His son. Her offspring. Its likeness. His equal. Ah...here is where you get hung up. You can accept "His son," "offspring," "likeness," but you recoil at being called "His equal." It is too much to accept. Too much bigness, too much wonderment-too much responsibility. For if you are God's equal, that means nothing is being done to you-and all things are created by you. There can be no more victims and no more villains-only outcomes of your thought about a thing.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Religious, Mean

  "Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue". Book by Neale Donald Walsch, 1995.

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• Force, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by science; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air, they recoil, and bruise itself.

  Albert Pike

  Dark, Blow, Air

  Albert Pike (2013). “Morals and Dogma”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• Crime oft recoils upon the author's head.

  Seneca the Younger

  Crime

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• Sole and self-commanded works,
  Fears not undermining days,
  Grows by decays,
  And, by the famous might that lurks
  In reaction and recoil,
  Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Flames, Ice

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.48, Graphic Arts Books

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• I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Blood

  Thomas Jefferson, Barbara B. Oberg, Lyman Henry Butterfield, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti (2003). “The papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 January 1798 to 31 January 1799”, Princeton Univ Pr

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• If you throw a stone in a pond... the waves which strike against the shores are thrown back towards the spot where the stone struck; and on meeting other waves they never intercept each other's course... In a small pond one and the same stroke gives birth to many motions of advance and recoil.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Nature, Travel, Giving

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.23, OUP Oxford

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• See with what force yon river's crystal stream
  Resists the weight of many a massy beam.
  To sink the wood the more we vainly toil,
  The higher it rebounds, with swift recoil.
  Yet that the beam would of itself ascend
  No man will rashly venture to contend.
  Thus too the flame has weight, though highly rare,
  Nor mounts but when compelled by heavier air.

  Lucretius

  Science, Men, Rivers

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• What do I feel when I shoot an enemy? Recoil.

  RaeLynn

  Enemy, Feels

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• Most Americans instinctively recoil from the claim that there is an antireligious bias running through the underlying assumptions with which their society approaches church-state issues. However, there is persuasive evidence that among some influential segments of the population, there is a very real antireligious strain.

  Stephen V Monsma

  Christian, Running, Religious

  Stephen V. Monsma (1995). “Positive Neutrality: Letting Religious Freedom Ring”, Baker Publishing Group

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• Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing; the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear; and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.

  Allen Tate

  Friendship, Silence, Gathering

  Allen Tate (1967). “T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work”, London : Chatto & Windus

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