Blown Out Of Proportion Quotes

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The most successful relationships are ones with a really low negativity threshold. In those relationships, couples allow each other to complain, and work together to constantly repair the tiny issues between them. In such cases, couples don't bottle up their feelings, and little things don't end up being blown completely out of proportion.
Hannah Fry
When you enter the woods of a fairy tale and it is night, the trees tower on either side of the path. They loom large because everything in the world of fairy tales is blown out of proportion. If the owl shouts, the otherwise deathly silence magnifies its call. The tasks you are given to do (by the witch, by the stepmother, by the wise old woman) are insurmountable - pull a single hair from the crescent moon bear's throat; separate a bowl's worth of poppy seeds from a pile of dirt. The forest seems endless. But when you do reach the daylight, triumphantly carrying the particular hair or having outwitted the wolf; when the owl is once again a shy bird and the trees only a lush canopy filtering the sun, the world is forever changed for your having seen it otherwise. From now on, when you come upon darkness, you'll know it has dimension. You'll know how closely poppy seeds and dirt resemble each other. The forest will be just another story that has absorbed you, taken you through its paces, and cast you out again to your home with its rattling windows and empty refrigerator - to your meager livelihood, which demands, inevitably, that you write about it.
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew (On The Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness)
These diseases are not really there, are they? A: They can be if people choose to allow those energies to enter into their body. But for the most part, they are only in the energetic fields. And like anything else that is talked about, or thought about, it can become reality in the physical. D: Yes, if enough people accept it as their reality. A: But the diseases are extremely blown out of proportion, and they are not epidemics as they are portrayed to be. The media and the movies are showing you their desperation as they insist in presenting to the masses information that is completely negative and fear-based. Subject matter such as murder, death and betrayal, attacks and such that keep the consciousness focused on these matters, as opposed to portraying in the media images of hope and inspiration. But nevertheless, there are enough of those positive messages being broadcast at this time, that like a domino effect, they are no longer stoppable. D: Another fear the government is trying to promote is terrorism. A: Yes. It is just another tool, like the diseases, to find excuses to give people a reason to be afraid and not unify, but to trust that the government will solve their problems. They are imaginary problems, and in the subconscious, many people are becoming aware of this. They are no longer believing, although many are in the masses. But on their subconscious level, they are beginning to awaken, and the power knows this. That is the reason they are resorting to ridiculous stories that only those who wish to believe, believe in them because anybody with a logical and reasonable mind could not believe them.
Dolores Cannon (The Three Waves of Volunteers and the New Earth)
Because I questioned myself and my sanity and what I was doing wrong in this situation. Because of course I feared that I might be overreacting, overemotional, oversensitive, weak, playing victim, crying wolf, blowing things out of proportion, making things up. Because generations of women have heard that they’re irrational, melodramatic, neurotic, hysterical, hormonal, psycho, fragile, and bossy. Because girls are coached out of the womb to be nonconfrontational, solicitous, deferential, demure, nurturing, to be tuned in to others, and to shrink and shut up. Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because I’m fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice. Because slightly more than half of the population is regularly told that what happens doesn’t or that it isn’t the big deal we’re making it into. Because your mothers, sisters, and daughters are routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied, harassed, threatened, punished, propositioned, and groped, and challenged on what they say. Because when a woman challenges a man, then the facts are automatically in dispute, as is the speaker, and the speaker’s license to speak. Because as women we are told to view and value ourselves in terms of how men view and value us, which is to say, for our sexuality and agreeability. Because it was drilled in until it turned subconscious and became unbearable need: don’t make it about you; put yourself second or last; disregard your feelings but not another’s; disbelieve your perceptions whenever the opportunity presents itself; run and rerun everything by yourself before verbalizing it—put it in perspective, interrogate it: Do you sound nuts? Does this make you look bad? Are you holding his interest? Are you being considerate? Fair? Sweet? Because stifling trauma is just good manners. Because when others serially talk down to you, assume authority over you, try to talk you out of your own feelings and tell you who you are; when you’re not taken seriously or listened to in countless daily interactions—then you may learn to accept it, to expect it, to agree with the critics and the haters and the beloveds, and to sign off on it with total silence. Because they’re coming from a good place. Because everywhere from late-night TV talk shows to thought-leading periodicals to Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Congress and the current administration, women are drastically underrepresented or absent, missing from the popular imagination and public heart. Because although I questioned myself, I didn’t question who controls the narrative, the show, the engineering, or the fantasy, nor to whom it’s catered. Because to mention certain things, like “patriarchy,” is to be dubbed a “feminazi,” which discourages its mention, and whatever goes unmentioned gets a pass, a pass that condones what it isn’t nice to mention, lest we come off as reactionary or shrill.
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
Adults have this neurotic relationship with death, it gets blown out of all proportion, they make a huge deal out of it when in fact it’s really the most banal thing there is.
Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
The whole dam breaks after that. The FBI drops the Federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. All of a sudden they don’t seem very interested in the case, despite the salt in J. Edgar Hoover’s wounds and the rest of it. Then back in San Francisco, and Kesey is standing in front of the judge in a faded sport shirt, work pants and boots. The judge has a terrific speech ready, saying this case has been blown up out of proportions in the press and it is only a common dope case as far as he is concerned, and Kesey is no dragon, just an ordinary jackass … and Kesey is starting to say something and Hallinan and Rohan are crouched for the garrote, but again it’s over and Kesey is out on bail in San Francisco, too. It’s unbelievable. He’s out after only five days.
Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)
Transcending emotions doesn’t mean you have no feelings. You have them. But you recognize them for what they are and respond appropriately without letting them develop into what we call emotions, which are really just feelings that have been blown way out of proportion. A
Brad Warner (Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between)
Dr. Chanter, in his brilliant History of Human Thought in the Twentieth Century, has made the suggestion that only a very small proportion of people are capable of acquiring new ideas of political or social behaviour after they are twenty-five years old. On the other hand, few people become directive in these matters until they are between forty and fifty. Then they prevail for twenty years or more. The conduct of public affairs therefore is necessarily twenty years or more behind the living thought of the times. This is what Dr. Chanter calls the "delayed realisation of ideas". In the less hurried past this had not been of any great importance, but in the violent crises of the Revolutionary Period it became a primary fact. It is evident now that whatever the emergency, however obvious the new problem before our species in the nineteen-twenties, it was necessary for the whole generation that had learned nothing and could learn nothing from the Great War and its sequelae, to die out before any rational handling of world affairs could even begin. The cream of the youth of the war years had been killed; a stratum of men already middle-aged remained in control, whose ideas had already set before the Great War. It was, says Chanter, an inescapable phase. The world of the Frightened Thirties and the Brigand Forties was under the dominion of a generation of unteachable, obstinately obstructive men, blinded men, miseducating, misleading the baffled younger people for completely superseded ends. If they could have had their way, they would have blinded the whole world for ever. But the blinding was inadequate, and by the Fifties all this generation and its teachings and traditions were passing away, like a smoke-screen blown aside. Before a few years had passed it was already incredible that in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century the whole political life of the world was still running upon the idea of competitive sovereign empires and states. Men of quite outstanding intelligence were still planning and scheming for the "hegemony" of Britain or France or Germany or Japan; they were still moving their armies and navies and air forces and making their combinations and alliances upon the dissolving chess-board of terrestrial reality. Nothing happened as they had planned it; nothing worked out as they desired; but still with a stupefying inertia they persisted. They launched armies, they starved and massacred populations. They were like a veterinary surgeon who suddenly finds he is operating upon a human being, and with a sort of blind helplessness cuts and slashes more and more desperately, according to the best equestrian rules. The history of European diplomacy between 1914 and 1944 seems now so consistent a record of incredible insincerity that it stuns the modern mind. At the time it seemed rational behaviour. It did not seem insincere. The biographical material of the period -- and these governing-class people kept themselves in countenance very largely by writing and reading each other's biographies -- the collected letters, the collected speeches, the sapient observations of the leading figures make tedious reading, but they enable the intelligent student to realise the persistence of small-society values in that swiftly expanding scene. Those values had to die out. There was no other way of escaping from them, and so, slowly and horribly, that phase of the moribund sovereign states concluded.
H.G. Wells (The Holy Terror)
I love analogies! Let’s have one. Imagine that you dearly love, absolutely crave, a particular kind of food. There are some places in town that do this particular cuisine just amazingly. Lots of people who are into this kind of food hold these restaurants in high regard. But let’s say, at every single one of these places, every now and then throughout the meal, at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn’t punching them in the face, and the non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-guys who love this cuisine keep coming back so it can’t be that bad, can it? Hell, half the time the white straight cis guys don’t even see it, because it’s always been like that and it just seems like part of the dining experience. Granted, some white straight cis guys have noticed and will talk about how they don’t like it and they wish it would stop. Every now and then, you go through a meal without the waiter punching you in the face–they just give you a small slap, or come over and sort of make a feint and then tell you they could have messed you up bad. Which, you know, that’s better, right? Kind of? Now. Somebody gets the idea to open a restaurant where everything is exactly as delicious as the other places–but the waiters won’t punch you in the face. Not even once, not even a little bit. Women and POC and LGBT and various combinations thereof flock to this place, and praise it to the skies. And then some white, straight, cis dude–one of the ones who’s on record as publicly disapproving of punching diners in the face, who has expressed the wish that it would stop (maybe even been very indignant on this topic in a blog post or two) says, “Sure, but it’s not anything really important or significant. It’s getting all blown out of proportion. The food is exactly the same! In fact, some of it is awfully retro. You’re just all relieved cause you’re not getting punched in the face, but it’s not really a significant development in this city’s culinary scene. Why couldn’t they have actually advanced the state of food preparation? Huh? Now that would have been worth getting excited about.” Think about that. Seriously, think. Let me tell you, being able to enjoy my delicious supper without being punched in the face is a pretty serious advancement. And only the folks who don’t get routinely assaulted when they try to eat could think otherwise.
Ann Leckie
I have come to believe that our culture’s popular understanding of these difficult doctrines is often a caricature of what the Bible actually teaches and what mature Christian theology has historically proclaimed. To Laugh At, To Live By What do I mean by a caricature? A caricature is a cartoonlike drawing of a real person, place, or thing. You’ve probably seen them at street fairs, drawings of popular figures like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Caricatures exaggerate some features, distort some features, and oversimplify some features. The result is a humorous cartoon. In one sense, a caricature bears a striking resemblance to the real thing. That picture really does look like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Features unique to the real person are included and even emphasized, so you can tell it’s a cartoon of that person and not someone else. But in another sense, the caricature looks nothing like the real thing. Salient features have been distorted, oversimplified, or blown way out of proportion. President Obama’s ears are way too big. Aunt Cindy’s grin is way too wide. And Marilyn Monroe . . . well, you get the picture. A caricature would never pass for a photograph. If you were to take your driver’s license, remove the photo, and replace it with a caricature, the police officer pulling you over would either laugh . . . or arrest you. Placed next to a photograph, a caricature looks like a humorous, or even hideous, distortion of the real thing. Similarly, our popular caricatures of these tough doctrines do include features of the original. One doesn’t have to look too far in the biblical story to find that hell has flames, holy war has fighting, and judgment brings us face-to-face with God. But in the caricatures, these features are severely exaggerated, distorted, and oversimplified, resulting in a not-so-humorous cartoon that looks nothing like the original. All we have to do is start asking questions: Where do the flames come from, and what are they doing? Who is doing the fighting, and how are they winning? Why does God judge the world, and what basis does he use for judgment? Questions like these help us quickly realize that our popular caricatures of tough biblical doctrines are like cartoons: good for us to laugh at, but not to live by. But the caricature does help us with something important: it draws our attention to parts of God’s story where our understanding is off. If the caricature makes God look like a sadistic torturer, a coldhearted judge, or a greedy génocidaire, it probably means there are details we need to take a closer look at. The caricatures can alert us to parts of the picture where our vision is distorted.
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
We will not admit it in the course of our Emmy acceptance speeches, but we reporters know that our work has a corrosive effect, amplifying anxiety in the suburban kitchen. It reinforces stereotypes of a violent black city, which may have its truths, but the extent of the violence is blown wildly out of proportion.
Charlie LeDuff (Sh*tshow!: The Country's Collapsing . . . and the Ratings Are Great)
That the past was like the surface of a crazy mirror. When you spoke certain things aloud, when they left your mouth, they changed. The words became either oddly magnified—blown out of proportion—or squeezed down to nothing. Right could appear wrong, good could look like evil, depending on the spin. No one talked about their past without things getting distorted—and without consequences. There were always consequences.
Emily Carpenter (Every Single Secret)
Without perspective, everything gets blown out of proportion. We catastrophize. The loss of privilege becomes harsh persecution. Opposition becomes hatred. And every legal or electoral setback becomes cause for anguish and despair. In short, we evaluate and extrapolate without putting God into the equation.
Larry Osborne (Thriving in Babylon: Why Hope, Humility, and Wisdom Matter in a Godless Culture)
As the repressed dark material rises, the practitioner is likely to experience frightening visions, feelings of terror, rage, uncontrollable ego reactions, and countless other usually minor but annoying and embarrassing manifestations. These reactions must be expected and properly dealt with: they should neither be blown out of proportion nor minimized and avoided. Instead, it should be recognized that these eruptions of the dark side can be of great benefit for one's self-development. Ultimately, transforming these frightening visions into usable psychic energy is the only way to deal with them, and the nuances of this process of "turning lead into gold" will require every bit of skillful means that the practitioner possesses.
William Carl Eichman
The pressure this generation has because of Social Media, cell phones and the Internet, everything they do is being recorded. They think they are not allowed to make mistakes because their mistakes are exaggerated and blown out of proportion. Their good deeds or work are not recognized, gas-lightened, suppressed and thrown under the carpet. That is why most have anxiety and depression.
D.J. Kyos
Can I help?” “Hold this.” She handed him the wreath as she climbed the ladder. It wobbled on the hardwood floor. “I guess the floor’s not level.” “Part of the old house charm.” At the top she stretched high, reaching for the bottom of the picture hanging on the wall, then handed it down to him. The ladder wobbled as they swapped pieces. She grabbed onto the sides, but it wobbled again. When she looked down at Murphy, he wore a roguish smile, and his eyes held a mischievous sparkle. “Stop that,” she said. “What?” “It was you.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She spared him a look and climbed to the highest safe rung, hoping he had the good sense not to fool with the ladder anymore. The wreath wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward. She tried to hook it on the nail that had held the picture. Missed. She rose on her toes. Just out of reach. She breathed a laugh. “Sheesh.” After another try, she lowered her arms for a rest. The ladder moved. “Stop it.” She steadied herself, then realized the ladder wasn’t wobbling. It was vibrating as Murphy climbed up behind her. “What are you doing?” “Helping.” She tightened her grip. “Get down. It isn’t safe.” “This is the heaviest-duty ladder I sell. Since neither of us weighs three hundred pounds, it’ll be fine.” He stopped behind her, the ladder stilling. The warmth of his chest pressed against her back. The clean, musky scent of his soap teased her nose. Her throat went dry. Her heart flittered around her chest like flurries in a snowstorm. He took the wreath, leaning closer, reaching higher. His thighs pressed against hers. His breath stirred the hairs at her temple. A shiver skated down her spine. Her legs trembled, and she braced a hand against the wall. This is Murphy, Layla. Remember? The guy who practically threw Jessica at Jack? The guy who didn’t bother mentioning that your fiancé was hooking up with your cousin? Even as the thought surfaced, Beckett’s words came back to her. Had she blown Murphy’s role out of proportion? Her thoughts tangled into a snarly knot. Murphy settled the wreath against the wall and leaned back infinitesimally. “That where you want it?” His lips were inches from her ear. If she turned her head just a bit— What the heck, Layla? She gave the wreath a cursory glance. “Yeah.” She didn’t care if it was upside down, backward, and flourishing with a moldy infestation. “Can you get down already?” “You seem a little tense.” His tone teased. Did he know the effect he was having on her? “You’re shaking the ladder, and your weight is straining the capacity.” Her fingers pressed against the wall, going white against the oak paneling. “Have it your way.” He leaned in, his lips close enough to brush her hair. “Let me know if you need any more help.
Denise Hunter (A December Bride (A Year of Weddings #1))
Blacks have the most to gain from Stand Your Ground laws, and there is no evidence that the laws are applied in any way that discriminates against blacks. My research even suggests just the opposite. But this conversation about discrimination should not be blown out of proportion. The most important thing is that Stand Your Ground saves lives.
John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
CONCLUSION It is a tragedy that blacks are much more likely to be victims of violent crime. But as police know all too well, they simply can’t be there all the time to save people. Blacks have to defend themselves more often than any other racial group. Since they so frequently act in self-defense, it is no wonder that their homicides are more likely to be judged as “justifiable.” Blacks have the most to gain from Stand Your Ground laws, and there is no evidence that the laws are applied in any way that discriminates against blacks. My research even suggests just the opposite. But this conversation about discrimination should not be blown out of proportion. The most important thing is that Stand Your Ground saves lives.
John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
Cities have been blown out of proportion, as though we were designing them for giants. What we were doing, of course, was designing for the scale of cars,’ she said. ‘Now we are returning cities to a human scale. We are returning the balance of life to neighbourhoods.
Charles Montgomery (Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design)
In a way, she wasn’t wrong, even if it felt blown out of proportion.
Anne Storm (The Regrettable Mistake (Cheating Hearts Series))
Perversely, it’s had the opposite effect. It’s reduced politics to a spectator sport, where meaningless minute-by-minute developments are blown out of proportion, turning the smallest stories into the biggest ones.
Lis Smith (Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story)
This was not the discovery of a new and unimagined thing, but rather only a new awareness, the acknowledgment of something that had risen while my back was turned, like a shadow cast upon the wall, its presence unsuspected, seen only when I turned to look at it—but there all the time. Oh, I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him, is more than I can see. And if I turned my back again, the shadow would not leave me. It was irrevocably attached to me, whether I chose to notice it or not, crouched always insubstantial, intangible but present, small to vanishing under my feet when the light of other preoccupations shone upon me, blown up to gigantic proportions in the glare of some sudden urge. Resident demon, or guardian angel? Or only the shadow of the beast, constant reminder of the inescapability of the body and its hungers?
Diana Gabaldon (The Fiery Cross / A Breath of Snow and Ashes / An Echo in the Bone / Written in My Own Heart's Blood (Outlander #5-8))
The better you can learn to tolerate the discomfort of anxiety and recognize it as temporary, the less it will disrupt your life. I’m not trying to tell you to surrender to your anxiety. Not by any means. You’re still here to kick this thing’s ass but fighting so hard against the anxiety head-on is not the best strategy because it fights back and then things start to snowball and get blown out of proportion.
Robert Duff (Hardcore Self Help: F**k Anxiety)
Events are often blown out of proportion, both the good and the bad.
Carl Icahn
Compassion in times and places of confusion is usually a good idea. Frequently, new dervishes will become upset by what they see happening in the apparent world. For example, if their tesbih (Sufi prayer beads) breaks, they take this as a sign that Allah is angry with them. There is no evil that their tesbih broke. What is important is how the dervish mends it or replaces it. Just as that in life, when other "things" break, what is important is our reaction and how we mend or replace them. In addition, assuming that Allah is angry with them, is typical for the new dervish in that new dervishes tend to react in extreme ways. Everything becomes a matter of blown out of proportion. As one matures on the Path, one develops a sense of proportion and perspective, and does not run off as a chicken with its head cut off, when an inconvenience occurs in life.
Laurence Galian
An upsurge in new cases, the highest number for one twenty-four-hour period yet, and an alarming rise in the contact curve. People who hadn’t been hit were getting bold. They were getting bored, going next door to talk to the neighbors, thinking things weren’t really that bad, gravitating back toward normalcy. Several shopkeepers opened their stores, defied the police to send them home, claiming the whole thing was blown out of proportion. They found out, soon enough, but by then other cases were breaking discipline. Another day, another big rise in new cases and a doubling of contacts.
Alan E. Nourse (The Fourth Horseman)
He who is false to himself is also the most likely to feel offended. After all, it is sometimes very gratifying to feel offended, is it not? A man may be perfectly well aware that no one has offended him, that he has imagined it all and put about a lie just for the sake of it, blown it out of all proportion so as to attract attention, deliberately picked on a word and made a mountain out of a molehill—he may very well realize all this, and yet be the very first to take offence, to the point of deriving enjoyment and pleasure from it, and so fall into a state of real animosity…
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Karamazov Brothers)
You’d rather them hear it through rumor mill, when it gets totally blown out of proportion and your mother breaks into your apartment, convinced you’re dying?” I countered
Honor Raconteur (Magic Outside the Box (The Case Files of Henri Davenforth, #3))
That’s . . . strange.” It sounds like something out of a fireside tale, believable only by the light of the flickering flames. “You’re sure the story hasn’t been blown out of proportion?
Intisar Khanani (The Theft of Sunlight (Dauntless Path, #2))