Torment Quotes - Page 3

• I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Ideas, Expectations, Lasts

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• A great step forward was made the day men understood that in order to torment one another more efficiently they would have to gather together, to organize themselves into a society

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Order, Together

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• It was all a lie, it all stank, stank of lies, it all gave the illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty, and all of it was just putrefaction that no one would admit to. Bitter was the taste of the world. Life was a torment.

  Hermann Hesse

  Lying, World, Taste

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• Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you.

  Marquis de Sade

  War, Men, Race

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• The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine... And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.

  Harlan Ellison

  Revenge, Hate, Passion

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• What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Heart, Men, People

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• The world is divided into those who understand me and those who don’t. In the case of the latter, I simply leave them to torment themselves trying to gain my sympathy.

  Paulo Coelho

  Hard Times, Trying, World

  "Aleph". Book by Paulo Coelho, 2011.

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• He had put his hand up in class, a declaration of existence, a claim that he knew something. And that was forbidden to him. They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting. But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.

  John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Real, Hands Up, Numbers

  John Ajvide Lindqvist (2010). “Let Me In”, p.10, Macmillan

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• I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand.

  Clara Schumann

  Memories, Play, Agony

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• Mother's Day is a torment if your mother is dead. Valentine's Day is a torment if you don't got one. And at some point in our lives, we will be tormented by Valentine's Day even if we're relatively lucky in love.

  Dan Savage

  Valentines Day, Mother, Lucky

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 08, 2006.

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• Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

  Joseph Addison

  Love, Life, Pain

  Joseph Addison (1811). “The Works of the Right Honorable Joseph Addison”, p.283

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• It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.

  Louise Glück

  Art, Swim, Desire

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• In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Funny, Humorous, Giving

  'Letters to Arthur Charles Stanhope, Esq.' (1817) Letter to A. C. Stanhope, 12 October 1765

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• Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain, Have put on black and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. And truly not the morning sun of heaven Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, Nor that full star that ushers in the even, Doth half that glory to the sober west, As those two mourning eyes become thy face: O! let it then as well beseem thy heart To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace, And suit thy pity like in every part. Then will I swear beauty herself is black, And all they foul that thy complexion lack

  William Shakespeare

  Morning, Stars, Pain

  William Shakespeare (2014). “Arden Shakespeare Complete Works”, p.40, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Heart, Wish, Church

  Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain”, p.68, Booklassic

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• I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.

  Daphne du Maurier

  Adversity, Giving, Growth

  Daphne Du Maurier (1980). “The Rebecca notebook and other memories”, Book Sales

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• Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli son of Glóin!

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Taken, Son, Saying Goodbye

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.267, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Years, Office

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• He felt all the torment of his and her position, all the difficulties they were surrounded by in consequence of their station in life, which exposed them to the eyes of the whole world, obliged them to hide their love, to lie and deceive, and again to lie and deceive, to scheme and constantly think about others while the passion that bound them was so strong that they both forgot everything but their love.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Strong, Lying, Passion

  Leo Tolstoy (graf), Aylmer Maude (1937). “The Works of Leo Tolstoy ...: Anna Karénina, tr. by Louise and Aylmer Maude”

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• I was keenly conscious of the comrades-in-arms who had fallen with me. A bond surpassing by a hundredfold that which I had known in life bound me to them. I felt a sense of inexpressible relief and realized that I had feared, more than death, separation from them. I apprehended that excruciating war survivor's torment, the sense of isolation and self-betrayal experienced by those who had elected to cling yet to breath when their comrades had let loose their grip.

  Steven Pressfield

  Betrayal, War, Self

  Steven Pressfield (2010). “Gates Of Fire”, p.29, Random House

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• It may be a childish torment, but we do not get to choose our demons.

  Andrew Sean Greer

  May, Demon, Our Demons

  Andrew Sean Greer (2008). “The Story of a Marriage: A Novel”, p.164, Macmillan

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• This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom. Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Morning, Pain, Heart

  W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.1854, eBookIt.com

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• Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Passion, Giving, Way

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.70, Penguin

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• The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.

  T. S. Eliot

  Lying, Love Is, Fire

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 4 (1942)

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• No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.

  Jane Austen

  Inspiring, Love You, Men

  Jane Austen (2009). “Northanger Abbey”, p.92, Wild Jot Press

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