Unbearable Quotes - Page 7

• ...This fear was unbearable. It unwrapped who she was, as neatly as he'd unwound her bandage, leaving too much pain and ugliness exposed. Nerve endings; he'd said they were the problem [causing phantom pain in the amputated limb]." Things that cut off, that ended abruptly or died--like parents and marriages--kept hurting forever.

  Kristin Hannah

  Hurt, Pain, Cutting

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• For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

  James A. Baldwin

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• The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present. Yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Past, Focus, Gone

  "The Choice". Book by Nicholas Sparks, 2007.

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• Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Heart, Names, People

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• If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.

  David Levithan

  Goodness, Ifs, Bad Things

  David Levithan (2009). “Love Is the Higher Law”, p.104, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.

  Susan Abulhawa

  Loss, Love Is, Sides

  Susan Abulhawa (2010). “Mornings in Jenin”, p.220, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• “This is hurting me a lot more than it’s hurting you,” he said. It was his standard line, but I knew that this time he was right. Worse than the boil was the stuff that came out of it. What got to me, and got to him even worse, was the stench, which was unbearable, and unlike anything I had come across before. It was, I thought, what evil must smell like - not an evil person but the wicked ideas that have made him that way. How could a person continue to live with something so rotten inside? And so much of it!

  David Sedaris

  Hurt, Ideas, Smell

  "Old Faithful" by David Sedaris, www.newyorker.com. November 29, 2004.

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• To increase desires to an unbearable level whilst making the fulfillment of them more and more inaccessible: this was the single principle upon which Western society was based.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Desire, Principles, Levels

  Michel Houellebecq (2006). “The Possibility of an Island”, p.57, Vintage

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• Washington has seldom seen so numerous, so industrious or so insidious a lobby. There is every evidence that money without limit is being spent to sustain this lobby.... I know that in this I am speaking for the members of the two houses, who would rejoice as much as I would to be released from this unbearable situation.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Two, House, Limits

  Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.9, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Home, Secret, Vices

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.213, Rajpal & Sons

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• I love the word warm.
  It is almost unbearable--
  so moist and breathlike.

  Anne Sexton

  Experience, Warm, Warmth

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• Just getting in the pool for seven straight hours is unbearable to me.... It's grueling. There's nothing physically pleasurable about it. If you're doing a hard workout, you're throwing up in the gutter. At night you cling to your pillow and just hope that your body revives before you have to go back and do it again.

  Diana Nyad

  Workout, Hard Work, Swimming

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• There was something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable. The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.

  Elena Ferrante

  Games, Play, People

  Elena Ferrante (2015). “The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante Boxed Set”, p.93, Penguin

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• The concept of 'obscenity' is tested when one dares to look at something that he has an unbearable desire to see but has forbidden himself to look at. When one feels that everything that one had wanted to see has been revealed, 'obscenity' disappears, the taboo disappears as well, and there is a certain liberation.

  Nagisa Oshima

  Desire, Looks, Disappear

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• Coming at twenty to his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation. His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and sullenness.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Father, Silence, House

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• When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you and to laugh at the illusion. But my shoulders are very frail. I was unable to bear the weight of the world's condemnation. And I began to hate you when everything about you would have kindled my love and when love would have made men's contempt unbearable, and their contempt would have made my love unbearable. The fact is, I hate you.

  Jean Genet

  Hate, Men, Laughing

  Jean Genet (1994). “The Blacks: A Clown Show”, p.12, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I felt an unrelenting restlessness. It was the first time I had ever experienced jealousy, and that emotion clung to my skin day and night like a dark stain, a contamination I could not shed; it became so unbearable that when finally I rid myself of it, I was freed forever of the desire to possess another person or the temptation ever to belong to anyone.

  Isabel Allende

  Dark, Night, Forever

  Isabel Allende (2016). “Eva Luna: A Novel”, p.183, Simon and Schuster

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• Luxury cruises were designed to make something unbearable (a two week transatlantic crossing) seem bearable. There's no need to do it now, there are planes. You wouldn't take a vacation where you ride on a stage coach for two months but there's all-you-can-eat shrimp. You wouldn't take a vacation where you had an old-timey appendectomy without anesthesia while steel drums play. You might take a vacation while riding on a camel for two days IF they gave you those little animal towels wearing your sunglasses.

  Tina Fey

  Animal, Vacation, Play

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• I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each I told myself could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Hands, Evil, Identity

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2005). “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, second edition”, p.79, Broadview Press

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• It's bad enough to feel insignificant, but it's unbearable to have it grained into your soul that you will never, can never, be anything but insignificant.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Soul, Enough, Feels

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2013). “The Anne of Green Gables Chronicles (Annotated Edition)”, p.538, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.

  Geoff Dyer

  Life Is, Terrible, Unbearable Things

  Geoff Dyer (2012). “Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence”, p.127, Canongate Books

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• What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realized I'd never really tasted to things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like the dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

  Arthur Golden

  Giving, Dancer, Childhood

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• No one stands on the top of the world. Not you, not me, not even gods. But the unbearable vacancy of the throne in the sky is over. From now on... I will be sitting on it.

  Tite Kubo

  Sky, Vacancy, Bleach

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• I'm extremely unbearable. You know, I'm narcissistic and at the same time I'm very charming - I think.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Thinking, Narcissistic, Charming

  "Marjane Satrapi: Superman is Boring, Batman is Hot, Dictators Are Clueless". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. August 13, 2012.

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• The earth was overwhelmed with beauty and indifferent to it, and I went with a heart ready to crack for its unbearable loveliness.

  Josephine Winslow Johnson

  Heart, Earth, Cracks

  Josephine Winslow Johnson (1934). “Now in November”, p.114, Feminist Press at CUNY

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