Distressing Quotes

#1. Ambitious people understand intelligent people far better than intelligent people understand ambitious people; therefore, ambition will always triumph over intelligence. Once you appreciate this reality, civilization becomes clearer and unfortunately, more distressing.

D.A. Blankinship

#2. If finding a woman in your bed is so distressing, magus, you should rethink the direction your life's taken.

Brandon Nolta

#3. The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

Aldous Huxley

#4. Of course I'm ignorant, that remains true at all events and is extremely distressing for me, but it does have the advantage that the ignorant man dares more, so I shall gladly put up with ignorance and its undoubtedly dire consequences for a while, as long as my strength lasts.

Franz Kafka

#5. [A distressing event] came like a door banging on to a silent room.

Hugh Walpole

#6. I think experience has shown that privateers have done more toward distressing the trade of our enemies, and furnishing these States with necessaries, than Continental Ships of the same force.

William Whipple

#7. But one must go where one's road leads, even when it's a distressing road.

Piers Anthony

#8. For Himme, the cumulative effect of the cumulative listening to the cumulative song was cumulatively distressing.

Etgar Keret

#9. This was distressing. She felt like she'd done so much work to appear as eccentric as possible, and still, when it came down to it, she was sensible.

Maggie Stiefvater

#10. Turn it off," Ryodan says without even looking at me. "You're distressing Dani. No one distresses Dani but me.

Karen Marie Moning

#11. The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#12. At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Rose Macaulay

#13. Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.

Morris Raphael Cohen

#14. It doesn't matter how good the movie is. What matters is what it takes during the opening weekend. It's slightly distressing sometimes but that's how it works.

Emma Thompson

#15. Listening back to your speaking voice for the first time, unless you're James Earl Jones, it's a quite distressing process for most people.

Philip Selway

#16. I've known a lot of people go mad over the years, and it is more distressing than people dying. People dying is quite natural, people going mad is the complete antithesis of that.

Alan Moore

#17. I can sympathise with everything, except suffering", cried Lord Harry, Shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain.

Oscar Wilde

#18. Randal is a lad of about twenty and two, curly-haired and distressingly cherubic in appearance."
"Distressingly? Really, Northrup, I cannot see what could be distressing about a cherub."
His brows drew in a scowl. "They're baby angels, for God's sake." As if this explained all.

Kristen Callihan

#19. Reading was my hobby, my sport and my activity of choice. It was the prime pleasure of my days, an unfailing escape from whatever realities were distressing me, and the only source of pride I knew, other vanities lying beyond my grasp. I couldn't do anything else well, but I could do words.

Cynthia Voigt

#20. It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

Naguib Mahfouz

#21. It is distressing to me that we live in an age in which we still must fight to protect our civil rights as Americans, in which a hate crime perpetrated against someone based their sexual orientation can go unpunished, and in which discrimination is being written into our laws.

John Conyers

#22. The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.

Bill Nighy

#23. It is always distressing when outraged morality does not possess the strength of arm to administer direct chastisement on the sinner.

W. Somerset Maugham

#24. Every day I see Jesus Christ in all his distressing disguises.

Mother Teresa

#25. Nothing is more sweet than harmony in marriage, and nothing more distressing than dissension.

Martin Luther

#26. Me: *is faced with a distressing situation*

Brain: *shuts down*

Me: No, maybe we should actually deal with this.

Brain: Read 7:26 p.m.

Unknown

#27. I can sympathize with everything except suffering. I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing.

Oscar Wilde

#28. I shouldn't tell you about it," Daisy railed, pacing back and forth in the Marsden parlor later that evening. "In your condition you shouldn't be distressed. But I can't keep it to myself or I will explode, which you would probably find infinitely more distressing.

Lisa Kleypas

#29. The question is, rather, whether or not America is to enter a new and distressing phase of history where men no longer pursue happiness but buy it.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#30. In spite of certain distressing but isolated occurrences in the last battle, I certainly hoped that the Army would be in a position to continue to hold out.

Paul Von Hindenburg

#31. She was big on patination. That was how quality wore in, she said, as opposed to out. Distressing, on the other hand, was the faking of patination, and was actually a way of concealing a lack of quality.

William Gibson

#32. It is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without cloaths or blankets.

George Washington

#33. [On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.

Winifred Holtby

#34. I never wanted to make portraits - to photograph celebrities, beautiful people, beautiful landscapes, beautiful buildings, or people in distressing situations ... I have always been interested in everyman - average, ordinary people in everyday situations.

Ray Metzker

#35. The idea of putting old Browborough into prison for conduct which habit had made second nature to a large proportion of the House was distressing to Members of Parliament generally.

Anthony Trollope

#36. The newest victims of the nation's foreclosure crisis are pets, which is extremely distressing to me.

Margaret Cho

#37. When a human being has been taken over by their inner rage it can be very distressing for those around them and unless they are able to remain calm, present and conscious, their inner rage will also be ignited with sometimes devastating results.

Christopher Dines

#38. Reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention where they could be held for years without any representation or charges is distressing.

Dana Perino

#39. Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.

Mother Teresa

#40. Do not grow overconfident following a few victories. Should you not rely upon the Holy Spirit you will soon be thrown once more into a distressing experience. With holy diligence you must cultivate an attitude of dependency.

Watchman Nee

#41. There is a distressing tendency of the L&D profession to latch on to half read and barely understood concepts.

Robin Hoyle

#42. There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

William Gaddis

#43. That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

Elliott Carter

#44. She used to suffer these intense bouts of homesickness in her own bedroom. When she was very small, she would wake up tearing at her bedspread and shrieking, "I wanna go home! I wanna go home!" Which was distressing to all of us, of course, because she was home.

Karen Russell

#45. It is very distressing that anyone would look at these matters from a political viewpoint. Core beliefs about when life begins and ends are far too important for any such calculations.

Mac Thornberry

#46. The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.

Edward Hirsch

#47. We are taught from the very first moment to discover Christ under the distressing disguixe of the poor, the sick, the outcasts. Christ presents Himself to us under every disguise: the dying, the paralytic, the leper, the invalid, the orphan.

Mother Teresa

#48. When I say manage emotions, I only mean the really distressing, incapacitating emotions. Feeling emotions is what makes life rich. You need your passions.

Daniel Goleman

#49. The big story of 2013, a very distressing year, is that Americans continue not to be able to find the full-time jobs they need, and that's something which the president has to recognize as the first priority of his administration.

Mitt Romney

#50. A sloppy performance in a photograph is as distressing as a sloppy performance in music.

Fred Picker

#51. My mother, who died aged 82, had Alzheimer's. Losing your memory is bad enough, but everything shuts down. You can't remember how to eat or go to the toilet. It's a terrible disease and so distressing to watch it take over someone you love.

Bonnie Tyler

#52. The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder.

Geoffrey Fisher

#53. What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Sigmund Freud

#54. Gelsey Kirkland has had more than her share of demons, as her two distressing memoirs - and her violently checkered career - attest.

Robert Gottlieb

#55. Her first marriage, a distressing experience involving an umbrella, had to be annulled.

Michael Holroyd

#56. The day on which I received confirmation was a distressing one to me.

Maria Monk

#57. Reconciliation is a long process. We don't have the kind of race clashes that we thought would happen. What we have is xenophobia, and it's very distressing. But maybe you ought to be lenient with us. We've been free for just 12 years.

Desmond Tutu

#58. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure, and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging is such acts of brutality.

Dalai Lama

#59. Economics is not a gay science. It is a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.

Thomas Carlyle

#60. For there is a price ticket on everything that puts a whizz into life, and adventure follows the rule. It's distressing, but there you are.

Leslie Charteris

#61. It's distressing when intellect can't detect its own defects.

Juan Filloy

#62. Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.

Susan Orlean

#63. All revered spiritual leaders, political leaders, and diplomats, captains of industry, intellectuals, and winning generals exhibit genuine humility that empowers them to act with integrity and courage under the most distressing circumstances.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#64. That sort of thing always leads to trouble! It is all kindness, and I am sure I am quite as sorry for Miss Broughty as anyone, but one cannot make a friend of everybody in distressing circumstances!

Georgette Heyer

#65. inhabitants of countries that were colonized by the Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries knew how profoundly distressing it was to watch a cherished way of life disappearing and beloved traditions decried by powerful, disdainful foreigners.

Karen Armstrong

#66. Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.

Andre Breton

#67. The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of.

Diana Wynne Jones

#68. The fear, though, is unassailable. The dark balls of dread pinball through my brain. This is what anxiety does to a brain, I know that. A barrage of intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts that the person thinking them can't turn them off no matter how hard they try...

Lauren Miller

#69. If you film a scene in a wide shot, especially a disturbing, distressing moment, I do feel like that helps you feel as though you're the room with these people, instead of cutting it up and getting close - which you wouldn't be doing if you were actually in a room with these people.

Alex Karpovsky

#70. There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

Edward Hirsch

#71. Thanks to aid, a distressing number of African leaders care little about what their citizens want or need - after all it's the reverse of the Boston tea-party - no representation without taxation.

Dambisa Moyo

#72. The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.

Harold Bloom

#73. He never asks for endearment, all quiet,
Only gazes at me all the time,
And he bears with a blissful smile
This distressing oblivion of mine.

Anna Akhmatova

#74. While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend.

Ulysses S. Grant

#75. The more distressing the memory, the more persistent it's presence.

Sara Gruen

#76. The nurses' job is emotional and distressing. Their day-to-day work is dealing with people withering and falling to pieces. So black humour is essential for them cope with that. It's just a consequence of their environment.

Peter Capaldi

#77. How distressing to stumble on a dominant social habitus, just when one was convinced of one's own uniqueness in the matter!

Muriel Barbery

#78. The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.

Wole Soyinka

#79. In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises.

Mother Teresa

#80. Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it.

Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

#81. What I have experienced, and experienced repeatedly, is the silence of God. For many years, this was a distressing matter for me. I did not consider it an experience, but the absence of an experience.

James P. Carse

#82. The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure ... you are above everything distressing.

Baruch Spinoza

#83. What children learn from punishment is that might makes right. When they are old and strong enough, they will try to get their ownback; thus many children punish their parents by acting in ways distressing to them.

Bruno Bettelheim

#84. The number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands. And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing.

Barack Obama

#85. She had a distressing sense of life's rushing by before she had a chance to fully make up her mind in which direction she wanted to go.

Hila Colman

#86. There are some moments that are pretty distressing in 'Prometheus.' In fact, the last hour is pretty distressing.

Ridley Scott

#87. The soul of the world had opened and I fantasized that everything wicked, distressing and painful was on the point of vanishing ... all notion of the future paled and the past dissolved. In the glowing present, I myself glowed.

Robert Walser

#88. It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself.

Heath Ledger

#89. Depression in its major stages possesses no quickly available remedy: failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder as it reveals itself to the victim, and one that helps situate it squarely in the category of grave diseases.

William Styron

#90. Perhaps, in a few people, I have seen what can be described as a struggle with death, and it can be distressing to behold. But for the vast majority of people death is gentle, tender.

Jennifer Worth

#91. That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.

Charles Baudelaire

#92. Voluntary euthanasia occurs only when, to the best of medical knowledge, a person is suffering from an incurable and painful or extremely distressing condition. In these circumstances one cannot say that to choose to die quickly is obviously irrational.

Peter Singer

#93. She was a superhero. She was my hero. Therefore, moments when she allowed herself to display vulnerability were distressing. It was like watching Superman struggle through a bout of kryptonite exposure.

Penny Reid

#94. Not being able to find a cause is profoundly distressing; it creates anxiety because it implies a loss of control. The desire to find a cause is driven by fear.

Sidney Dekker

#95. Mary, give me your Heart: so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate; your Heart so full of love and humility that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life and love Him as you love Him and serve Him in the distressing guise of the poor.

Mother Teresa

#96. It is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it.

George Stigler

#97. I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn't love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...

Sarah-Patton Boyle

#98. Next, the psychiatrist's report must demonstrate how the claimant relives the traumatic event in one of the four following ways: recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event;

John D. Roche

#99. I think the smartest thing for people to do to manage very distressing emotions is to take a medication if it helps, but don't do only that. You also need to train your mind.

Daniel Goleman

#100. One guiding post to determine where the distressing issues, needs and aspirations is Maslow's Needs Hierarchy. If you can identify their fears and concerns, you can choose a story that provides hope.

Gideon For-mukwai