Torment Quotes - Page 4

• The painting showed a hairless, oppressed creature with a head like an inverted pear, its hands clapped in horror to its ears, its mouth open in a vast, soundless scream. Twisted ripples of the creature's torment, echoes of its cry, flooded out into the air surrounding it; the man or woman, whichever it was, had become contained by its own howl. It had covered its ears against its own sound. The creature stood on a bridge and no one else was present; the creature screamed in isolation. Cut off by - or despite - its outcry.

  Philip K. Dick

  Cutting, Men, Echoes

  Philip K. Dick (2008). “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, p.130, Ballantine Books

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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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• Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Grief, Evil, Stills

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure.

  Joseph de Maistre

  Eye, Men, Afterlife

  Joseph de Maistre (2017). “The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty, Religion and Enlightenment”, p.235, Routledge

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• Even more than this, however, the sick - like lepers - were often reviled because people believed that they had brought their torments upon themselves.

  Peter Lewis Allen

  People, Sick, Leper

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• If you go to a therapist, they say, 'Are you sure? How do you feel about your wrinkles?' And I say, 'I don't know, because I don't really see them.' I see my hands, but I don't see my face, so it's not a torment. I only see it for five minutes in the morning when I brush my teeth! When you read women's magazines you always read about this drama of getting old, about anti-aging cream and plastic surgery and whatever else. But I think if you're independent, like I have grown to be, it's welcome.

  Isabella Rossellini

  Morning, Drama, Independent

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If it is not strong upon your heart to practice what you read, to what end do you read? To increase your own condemnation? If your light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing a man you are, the more miserable a man you will be in the day of recompense; your light and knowledge will more torment you than all the devils in hell. Your knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash you, and that scorpion that will forever bite you, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw you; therefore read, and labor to know that you may do--or else you are undone forever.

  Thomas Brooks

  Strong, Heart, Men

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• The echoes of childhood torments have great power, even when not brought to mind in such an inexplicable and horrifying way.

  C.J. Sansom

  Echoes, Childhood, Mind

  C. J. Sansom (2004). “Dissolution: A Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery”, p.132, Penguin

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• Reckon then that to acquire soul-winning power, you will have to go through mental torment and soul distress. You must go into the fire if you are going to pull others out of it, and you will have to dive into the floods if you are going to draw others out of the water. You cannot work a fire escape without feeling the scorch of the conflagration, nor man a lifeboat without being covered with the waves.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Winning, Men, Fire

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• You must torment people with your artistic delight, scaring mother and grandmother in the middle of the night.

  Sergei Parajanov

  Mother, Night, People

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• I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.

  Colum McCann

  Real, Thinking, Doors

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• Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension; when he does not torment himself with childish guilt feelings, but avoids tragic adult sins; when he postpones immediate pleasures for the sake of long-term values.... Our generation must be inspired to search for that maturity which will manifest itself in the qualities of tenacity, dependability, co-operativeness and the inner drive to work and sacrifice for a nobler future of mankind.

  Joshua L. Liebman

  Sacrifice, Maturity, Our Generation

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• The vast majority of psychopaths, like an iceberg, are underwater, and like an iceberg, they are inert. They do nothing. They're just there. They torment their spouse by being unempathic, but they don't beat her or kill her. They bully coworkers, but they don't burn the office. They are not dramatic. They are pernicious. Most psychopaths are subtle. They are more like poison than a knife, and they are more like slow-working poison than cyanide.

  Sam Vaknin

  Knives, Office, Bully

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• If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs; then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Want, Pleasure, Drains

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