Injury Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Injury. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
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Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
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Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
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Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.
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Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1))
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If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
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NiccolΓ² Machiavelli (The Prince)
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
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Thomas Jefferson
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Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
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Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
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And quit baring your fangs at me. It's making me nervous." "Good," Simon said. "if you want to know why, it's because you smell like blood." "It's my cologne. Eau de Recent Injury." Jace raised his left hand.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
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These are the few ways we can practice humility: To speak as little as possible of one's self. To mind one's own business. Not to want to manage other people's affairs. To avoid curiosity. To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully. To pass over the mistakes of others. To accept insults and injuries. To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked. To be kind and gentle even under provocation. Never to stand on one's dignity. To choose always the hardest.
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Mother Teresa (The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living (Compass))
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Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebodyβ€”really want himβ€”it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
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We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.
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BrenΓ© Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection)
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Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.
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China MiΓ©ville (The Scar (New Crobuzon, #2))
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Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
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Francis of Assisi
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A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
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John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
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If a person seems wicked, do not cast him away. Awaken him with your words, elevate him with your deeds, repay his injury with your kindness. Do not cast him away; cast away his wickedness.
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Lao Tzu
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It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
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Confucius
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Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure
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Tacitus
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The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
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Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
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No man or woman alive, magical or not, has ever escaped some form of injury, whether physical, mental, or emotional. To hurt is as human as to breathe.
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J.K. Rowling (The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Hogwarts Library, #3))
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
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Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White)
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There will be no yelling at people who are bleeding themselves to unconsciousness.
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Kristin Cashore (Fire (Graceling Realm, #2))
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Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.
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Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)
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There are some kinds of wounds you can get, internal injuries. You don't know what's wrong with you, but you're bleeding to death slowly inside.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
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Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
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Seneca
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You're a Shadowhunter," he said. "You know how to deal with injuries." He slid his stele across the table toward her. "Use it." "No," Clary said, and pushed the stele back across the table at him. Jace slammed his hand down on the stele. "Claryβ€”" "She said she doesn't want it," said Simon. "Ha-ha." "Ha-ha?" Jace looked incredulous. "That's your comeback?" Alec, folding his phone, approached the table with a puzzled look. "What's going on?" "We seem to be trapped in an episode of One Life to Waste," Magnus observed. "It's all very dull.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
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I can feel the hurt. There's something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering.
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Albert Borris (Crash Into Me)
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Oh, I'm burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free... and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed?
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Emily BrontΓ«
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I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive.
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Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors)
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You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole.
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Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
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The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potentβ€”strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.
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Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy)
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I stopped. She was bleeding after all. Perfect lines crossed her wrists, not near any crucial veins, but enough to leave wet red tracks across her skin. She hadn;t hit her veins when she did this; death hadn't been her goal.
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Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, #1))
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If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower.
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Graham Greene
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Some injuries heal more quickly if you keep moving.
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Nick Vujicic (Life Without Limits)
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Forgiveness is not something you do for someone else; it's something you do for yourself. To forgive is not to condone, it is to refuse to continue feeling bad about an injury.
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Jim Beaver (Life's That Way)
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C’mon,” he said. β€œOne foot in front of the other. You know how it’s done” β€œYou’re interfering with my plan.” β€œOh really?” β€œYes. Faint, get trampled, grievous injuries all around.” β€œThat sounds like a brilliant plan.” β€œAh, but if I’m horribly maimed, I won’t be able to cross the Fold.” Mal nodded slowly. β€œI see. I can shove you under a cart if that would help.
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Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1))
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Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.
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NiccolΓ² Machiavelli (The Prince)
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Love assumes expectation and hope. All actors of the hazardous pursuit of love eagerly look forward to passing a significant cape without injuries or aching scratches: "the Cape of good Hope". ( " Those journeys of love" )
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Erik Pevernagie
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The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.
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Albert Schweitzer
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At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.
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Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure)
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It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.
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Alfred Adler (What Life Should Mean To You Hardcover)
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The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.
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Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation)
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The truth is only dangerous if it can inflict injury.
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Morgan Rhodes (Falling Kingdoms (Falling Kingdoms, #1))
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There are much more terrible things than physical injury.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
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The pain of an injury is over in seconds. Everything that comes after is the pain of getting well." He gave her a heartfelt look, full of apology. "I'd forgotten that you see. Coming back to life ... It hurts.
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Tessa Dare (Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club, #2))
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This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury.
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Tina Fey (Bossypants)
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Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
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Thomas Szasz
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It's my cologne. Eau de Recent Injury." (Jace)
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
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My mind... It's who I am. I think I'd rather suffer any other injury in the world than have my mind tampered with.
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Richelle Mead (The Golden Lily (Bloodlines, #2))
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There is a hard law. When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.
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Alan Paton
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Whatever had happened to him [Newt] out there β€” maybe even related to his lingering ankle injury β€” had been truly awful.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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A negative outlook is more of a handicap than any physical injury.
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Christopher Paolini (Eldest (The Inheritance Cycle, #2))
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The injury of words. Yes, the brutality of words.
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Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
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In my experience, this is the hardest lesson of them all. After a certain age, we are all walking around this world in bodies made of secrets and shame and sorrow and old, unhealed injuries. Our hearts grow sore and misshapen around all this pain - yet somehow, still, we carry on.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (City of Girls)
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If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember
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Kahlil Gibran
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The situation is like this: they hired our parents to destroy this world, and now they'd like to put us to work rebuilding it, and -- to add insult to injury -- at a profit.
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The Invisible Committee (The Coming Insurrection)
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You don't feel like you're hurting yourself when you're cutting. You feel like this is the only way to take care of yourself.
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Marilee Strong (A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain)
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We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. {Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}
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Thomas Jefferson (Letters of Thomas Jefferson)
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You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.
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Michael Connelly (The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #1))
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What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.
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Hermann Hesse
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You're my sister," he said finally. "My sister, my blood, my family. I should want to protect you"β€”he laughed soundlessly without any humorβ€”"to protect you from the sort of boys who want to do with you exactly what I want to do." Clary's breath caught. "You said you just wanted to be my brother from now on." "I lied," he said. "Demons lie, Clary. You know, there are some kinds of wounds you can get when you're a Shadowhunterβ€”internal injuries from demon poison. You don't even know what's wrong with you, but you're bleeding to death slowly inside. That's what it's like, just being your brother." "But Alineβ€”" "I had to try. And I did." His voice was lifeless. "But God knows, I don't want anyone but you. I don't even want to want anyone but you." He reached out, trailed his fingers lightly through her hair, fingertips brushing her cheek. "Now at least I know why." Clary's voice had sunk to a whisper. "I don't want anyone but you, either.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
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I don't have a reason to lie to you. Not now.' Jace's gaze remained steady. 'And quit baring your fangs at me. It's making me nervous.' 'Good,' Simon said. 'If you want to know why it's because you smell like blood.' 'It's my cologne. Eau de Recent Injury.' Jace raised his left hand. It was a glove of white bandages, stained across the knucles where blood had seeped through.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
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One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.
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Socrates
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Researchers from Britain's Keele University have found that swearing after an injury may help alleviate pain. Evidently, the pain that you feel is inversely proportional to the number of middle names you give Jesus.
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Stephen Colbert
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Salt. Wound. Together at last.
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Maureen Johnson (13 Little Blue Envelopes (Little Blue Envelope, #1))
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Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simply that you were happy, not necessarily the individual moments that brought about your joy. But the memory of something painful does just the opposite. It retains its original shape, all bony fingers and pointy elbows. Every time it returns, you get a quick poke in the eye or jab in the stomach. The memory of being unhappy has the power to hurt us long after the fact. We feel the injury anew each and every time we think of it.
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Cameron Dokey (Belle)
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On a scale from one to ten, how much of a pain was I after my injury? And please be honest. Do you think I would hold back on you? Unfortunately, no. On a scale from one to ten? Thirteen. Fair enough. Now I have a question for you. On a scale from one to ten, how annoyed were you that I was going to the dance with someone else? Infinity.
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Elizabeth Eulberg (Better Off Friends)
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The nuns taught us there are two ways through life, the way of Nature and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.
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Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life)
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I left the clinic in a daze that had nothing to do with my head injury. Clear up in a week or so? How could Dr. Olendzki speak so lightly about this? I was going to look like a mutant for Christmas and most of the ski trip. I had a black eye. A freaking black eye. And my mother had given it to me.
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Richelle Mead (Frostbite (Vampire Academy, #2))
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Punishments include such things as flashbacks, flooding of unbearable emotions, painful body memories, flooding of memories in which the survivor perpetrated against others, self-harm, and suicide attempts.
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Alison Miller (Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
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Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.
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Salman Rushdie (Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991)
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Dan gestured past Neil toward the changing room. "What happened?" Neil counted it off on his fingers. "Kevin told them Coach is his father, said he's never going back to Edgar Allan, and called the Ravens out as two-faced assholes. Oh," he said, looking up from his hand, "and he said his injury wasn't an accident. Not in so many words, but it won't take them long to figure out what he meant." Dan gaped. "He what?" "Great," Wymack said. "He's turning into another you. That's just what I needed.
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Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
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The violence of the Left is symbolic, the injuries are not intended. The violence of the Right is real - directed at people, designed to cause injuries. Vietnam, nuclear weapons, police out of control are intentional forms of violence. The violence from the Right is aimed directly at people and the violence from the Left is aimed at institutions and symbols.
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George Carlin
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They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?
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C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)
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Just picked up a black pair of scissors thinking they were my glasses. That definitely would't have enhanced my eyesight.
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Phil Lester
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If you've treated your girlfriend without respect, taken advantage of her, or cheated on her, your actions have taught her that she has no value. Needless to say, this is a serious, serious injury. If you don't try to make it right, she might start to believe the lie you've told her and spend the rest of her life thinking she deserves poor treatment.
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Josh Shipp (The Teen's Guide to World Domination: Advice on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Awesomeness)
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I've come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit, too, has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows when the harm is too much to bare. If it deems the injury too great, the spirit cocoons the wound, in the same fashion that the body forms a cyst around infection, until the time comes that it can deal with it. For some people, that time never comes. Some stay fractured, forever broken. You see them on the street, pushing carts. You see them in the faces of the regulars at the bar.
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Karen Marie Moning (Dreamfever (Fever, #4))
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Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.
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NiccolΓ² Machiavelli (The Prince)
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Disappointment Can do a couple things. It can drop you into a giant sucking sinkhole of depression, a place you have to fight to climb out of. Or it can trigger an epic mania to overcome the odds and transform failure into success. Say you swing as high as the chains will take you because you seek the thrill of flight, and on the up- kick, you lose your seat. Injury is likely. But if you worry about falling down, and never chance "up," the sky will remain forever out of reach.
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Ellen Hopkins
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I often wished that more people understood the invisible side of things. Even the people who seemed to understand, didn't really.
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Jennifer Starzec (Determination (5k, Ballet, #2))
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There was nothing to tempt me from the choice of desserts, so I opted instead for a coffee, which was bitter and lukewarm. Naturally, I had been about to pour it all over myself but, just in time, had read the warning printed on the paper cup, alerting me to the fact that hot liquids can cause injury. A lucky escape, Eleanor! I said to myself, laughing quietly. I began to suspect that Mr. McDonald was a very foolish man indeed, although, judging from the undiminished queue, a wealthy one.
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Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; when there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand, to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying [to ourselves] that we are born to eternal life.
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Francis of Assisi
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When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.
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Bessel van der Kolk
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When Ava turned away, Jules leaned in and whispered, β€œHe’s totally whipped. Watch.” She raised her voice to a panicked level. β€œOh my God! Ava, are you bleeding?” Alex’s head snapped up. Less than five seconds later, he ended his call and crossed the room to a confused-looking Ava, whose hand froze halfway to the scones on the table. β€œI’m fine,” Ava said as Alex searched her for injuries. She glared at Jules. β€œWhat did I just say?” β€œI can’t help it.” Jules’s eyes sparkled with mischief. β€œIt’s so much fun. It’s like playing with a windup toy.” β€œUntil the toy comes alive and kills you,” Stella murmured loud enough for everyone to hear. Alex stared at Jules with displeasure scrawled all over his face. His features were so perfect it was a little unnerving, like seeing a carefully sculpted statue come to life. Some people were into that, but I preferred men with a little more grit. Give me scars and a nose that was slightly crooked from being broken too many times over perfection. β€œPray you and Ava stay friends forever,” Alex said, icy enough to elicit a rash of goosebumps on my arms.
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Ana Huang (Twisted Games (Twisted, #2))
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There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life!
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Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
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The man walked past me and stopped, observing the blood running down my neck. "Your injury. Let us tend to it." He looked out through the open doorway and silently gestured to someone out there. "Our world," he said, "is far more advanced than yours. For reasons you'll understand shortly." A thin, bony, naked woman entered the room, carrying two small, white kittens. She sat one of the fluffy cats in my lap and stuffed the other down my shirt. She turned and left. "There," said the large man. "The kittens will make your sad go away.
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David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1))
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When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.
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Nicholas D. Kristof (Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide)
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Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?
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Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
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A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, β€œWhat is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon. Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, β€œA healed femur.” A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend. Mead explained that where the law of the jungleβ€”the survival of the fittestβ€”rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.
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Ira Byock
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Willow sees her before any of the others. A walking skeleton, the victim of some terrible wasting disease, like something out of the history books, a death camp survivor. It takes Willow a moment to realize that the girl is none of those things. She's just a girl, a girl like Willow, who's chosen to inflict terrible pain on herself. Only this girl's weapon isn't a razor, it's starvation.
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Julia Hoban (Willow)
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The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life--knowing that under certain conditions it is not worth while to live. He is of a disposition to do men service, though he is ashamed to have a service done to him. To confer a kindness is a mark of superiority; to receive one is a mark of subordination... He does not take part in public displays... He is open in his dislikes and preferences; he talks and acts frankly, because of his contempt for men and things... He is never fired with admiration, since there is nothing great in his eyes. He cannot live in complaisance with others, except it be a friend; complaisance is the characteristic of a slave... He never feels malice, and always forgets and passes over injuries... He is not fond of talking... It is no concern of his that he should be praised, or that others should be blamed. He does not speak evil of others, even of his enemies, unless it be to themselves. His carriage is sedate, his voice deep, his speech measured; he is not given to hurry, for he is concerned about only a few things; he is not prone to vehemence, for he thinks nothing very important. A shrill voice and hasty steps come to a man through care... He bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of his circumstances, like a skillful general who marshals his limited forces with the strategy of war... He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is afraid of solitude.
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Aristotle (Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics.)
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and afterward, after it was done, it was too much, and I felt like I was going to... I don't know.... explode, and it was just too much, I had to let it out you know? I had to- I interrupted her hysteria It's okay, I understand. That was a lie. I didn't get her cutting at all. She'd done it sporadically, ever since the accident and it scared me each time. She'd try to explain it to me, how she didn't want to die - she just needed to get it out somehow. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet - physical pain - was the only way to make her internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.
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Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, #1))
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Why", he asked. "Why did you save her?" She dragged a hand through her hair. A white bandage around her upper arm peeked through her shirt with the movement. He hadn't even been conscious for that wound. He stifled the urge to demand to see it, assess the injury himselfβ€”and tug her close against him. "Because that golden-haired witch, Asterin...," Aelin said. "She screamed Manon's name the way I screamed yours." Rowan stilled. His queen gazed at the floor, as if recalling the moment. "How can I take away somebody who means the world to someone else? Even if she's my enemy." A little shrug. "I thought you were dying. It seemed like bad luck to let her die out of spite. And..." she snorted. "Falling into a ravine seemed like a pretty shitty way to die for someone who fights that spectacularly." Rowan smiled, drinking in the sight of her: pale, grave face; the dirty clothes; the injuries. Yet her shoulders were back, chin high. "You make me proud to serve you." A jaunty slant to her lips, but silver lined her eyes. "I know.
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Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
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Oh God just look at me now... one night opens words and utters pain... I cannot begin to explain to you... this... I am not here. This is not happening. Oh wait, it is, isn't it? I am a ghost. I am not here, not really. You see skin and cuts and frailty...these are symptoms, you known, of a ghost. An unclear image with unclear thoughts whispering vague things... If I told you what was really in my head, you''d never let me leave this place. And I have no desire to spend time in hell while I'm still, in theory, alive.
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Emily Andrews (The Finer Points of Becoming Machine (Cutting Edge))
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In response to threat and injury, animals, including humans, execute biologically based, non-conscious action patterns that prepare them to meet the threat and defend themselves. The very structure of trauma, including activation, dissociation and freezing are based on the evolution of survival behaviors. When threatened or injured, all animals draw from a "library" of possible responses. We orient, dodge, duck, stiffen, brace, retract, fight, flee, freeze, collapse, etc. All of these coordinated responses are somatically based- they are things that the body does to protect and defend itself. It is when these orienting and defending responses are overwhelmed that we see trauma. The bodies of traumatized people portray "snapshots" of their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves in the face of threat and injury. Trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. For example, when we prepare to fight or to flee, muscles throughout our entire body are tensed in specific patterns of high energy readiness. When we are unable to complete the appropriate actions, we fail to discharge the tremendous energy generated by our survival preparations. This energy becomes fixed in specific patterns of neuromuscular readiness. The person then stays in a state of acute and then chronic arousal and dysfunction in the central nervous system. Traumatized people are not suffering from a disease in the normal sense of the word- they have become stuck in an aroused state. It is difficult if not impossible to function normally under these circumstances.
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Peter A. Levine
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It’s all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it’s the same with, if you’ve got a weight problem. It’s all about… finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you’ve got the discipline to do it, and knowing that other people maybe can’t do it. And it’s also, I think, really connected to the fact that you almost feel, like, silent, you have no voice, you’re mute, there’s just no, you’ve got no option. Even if you could express yourself nobody would listen anyway. Things that go on inside you, there’s no other way to get rid of them.
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Richey Edwards
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Wordlessly, she slipped off her shoes. Gently, she placed a palm on the floor, shifted to stand, but that was when Macey felt another hand pressing down on hers.Hard. Too Hard. "Just what do you think you're doing ?" Hale hissed in her ear. His fingers burned into her skin. And Macey knew if she was going to take out the gunman, she was first going to have to neutralize the boy beside her. "Why don't you let me go and I'll show you," she said with only a modicum of flirt in her voice. "Why don't you put your fancy shoes back on and sit there like a good little girl?" "First of all, I'm good at a lot of things. Taking orders from bored billionaires isn't one of them. Second of all, he's alone, and I can take him," Macey said. "No!" Hale said. "You don't know anything about this guy." "I know he's left handed and has an old injury to his right knee---probably a torn ACL at some point but the details don't matter. And the way he keeps his finger purposefully away from the safety of that gun means he's never fired it. And he doesn't want to." "You're kinda scary.
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Ally Carter (Double Crossed: A Spies and Thieves Story (Gallagher Girls, #5.5; Heist Society, #2.5))
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ABUSIVE MEN COME in every personality type, arise from good childhoods and bad ones, are macho men or gentle, β€œliberated” men. No psychological test can distinguish an abusive man from a respectful one. Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology. When someone challenges an abuser’s attitudes and beliefs, he tends to reveal the contemptuous and insulting personality that normally stays hidden, reserved for private attacks on his partner. An abuser tries to keep everybodyβ€”his partner, his therapist, his friends and relativesβ€”focused on how he feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination.
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Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
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The Taoists realized that no single concept or value could be considered absolute or superior. If being useful is beneficial, the being useless is also beneficial. The ease with which such opposites may change places is depicted in a Taoist story about a farmer whose horse ran away. His neighbor commiserated only to be told, "Who knows what's good or bad?" It was true. The next day the horse returned, bringing with it a drove of wild horses it had befriended in its wanderings. The neighbor came over again, this time to congratulate the farmer on his windfall. He was met with the same observation: "Who knows what is good or bad?" True this time too; the next day the farmer's son tried to mount one of the wild horses and fell off, breaking his leg. Back came the neighbor, this time with more commiserations, only to encounter for the third time the same response, "Who knows what is good or bad?" And once again the farmer's point was well taken, for the following day soldiers came by commandeering for the army and because of his injury, the son was not drafted. According to the Taoists, yang and yin, light and shadow, useful and useless are all different aspects of the whole, and the minute we choose one side and block out the other, we upset nature's balance. If we are to be whole and follow the way of nature, we must pursue the difficult process of embracing the opposites.
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Connie Zweig (Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature)
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With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.
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Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man)