Reserve Emotional Quotes

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

After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.
Jasper Fforde (The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3))
I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.
Adolf Hitler
I am an extremely sincere individual. I am sincere, to a fault. One of the many things that I have come to realize, to learn, is that sincerity must be reserved and given only to those who deserve it. And one must save one's emotions, channeling them only to the people who are worthy of it. One must not throw one's pearls to the pigs.
C. JoyBell C.
YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.
Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
Worry is a waste of emotional reserve".
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.
Pete Walker
Do you believe that the God of Jesus loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity—that he loves you in the morning sun and in the evening rain—that he loves you when your intellect denies it, your emotions refuse it, your whole being rejects it. Do you believe that God loves without condition or reservation and loves you this moment as you are and not as you should be.
Brennan Manning (All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir)
Abruptly, Blay's blue stare found his. And what Qhuinn saw in it caused him to falter: Love shone out of that face, unadulterated love untempered by the shyness that was very much part of his reserve. Blay didn't look away. And for the first time ... neither did Qhuinn. He didn't know whether the emotion was for his cousin—it probably was-but he'd take it: He stared right back at Blaylock and let everything he had in his heart show in his face. He just let that shit fly. Because there was a lesson in this Fade ceremony tonight: You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye-and he was willing to bet when it happened, you weren't thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together.
J.R. Ward (Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #10))
Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.
Diane Ackerman (An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain)
A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.
Roland Barthes (Mythologies)
I cannot control my feelings of disappointment, rage, or sadness. When I am confused, I look confused. I’d be a hopeless spy. The other side of the coin is that when I’m happy I laugh my head off, I smile at strangers; when I’m content I radiate calmness. There is a third side of the coin: my brick-wall face. That is reserved only for when heady emotions are turned my way. I don’t like that at all.
Carrie Adams (The Godmother)
ABUSIVE MEN COME in every personality type, arise from good childhoods and bad ones, are macho men or gentle, “liberated” 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 everybody—his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives—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.
Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
We are a stoic, reserved bunch who hide our emotions well - except when reading a terribly sad or poignant story, of course. I have been known to sob aloud at a tragic ending.
Lynn Austin (Wonderland Creek)
To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn’t an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. ‘A rich emotional life,’ she’d written, ‘is a privilege reserved only for the daring few’.
Ryū Murakami (Audition)
Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.
Michel Houellebecq (The Possibility of an Island)
[W]e conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without 'sky'. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas.
Arthur Miller (The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts)
It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times. All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.
Jodi Picoult (Lone Wolf)
The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.
Pema Chödrön (Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change)
To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and feel at home with the unknown.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
The Cowboy Way Being a Cowboy is doing the right thing; common wisdom born of simple virtues and strong ideals. Above all, it is a strict adherence to honesty even when it is not in our best interests. It is having an inherent sense of justice in a world where the cards are often stacked against us. We try to hold enough common sense to recognize the value of a lost cause and the cost of lost values. Generally speaking, we are quietly reserved in all things except freedom, fresh air and Saturday night. We have a keen eye for a good horse, a good gun,and a good Cowgirl. Constant to friends, we are more so when friends need us, less so when they don't. Familiar with hard work we also know hard knocks and hard roads. Often given to tears when lesser individuals would display indifference; we are as well given to joy in a few places others would only find disdain. We enjoy plain living, not because we relish doing without, but because we have discovered the treasures within. And, finally, we have that elusive emotion called courage which is, at worst, a badly directed sense of conceit and, at best, it is the stuff of which dreams are made. . . .
Charly Gullett
If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you’ll get my meaning anyway. You won’t make me “an offender for a word.” When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
We do not rest because our work is done; we rest because God commanded it and created us to have a need for it."-
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
People who are drawn to journalism are usually people who, because of their cynicism or emotional detachment or reserve or whatever, are incapable of being anything but witnesses to events. Something prevents them from becoming involved, committed, and allows them to remain separate.
Nora Ephron
These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through that darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.
Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)
All people have within their grasp much to be thankful for. Gratitude fills. Grumbling drains. The choice is ours.
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
Children, even the most shy and tongue-tied, spill all their vibrancy out into the world. There are no reserves, no deep wells where emotion sinks and is buried.
Katy Simpson Smith (The Story of Land and Sea)
Am I not allowed to have my pride? Or is that an emotion reserved for the elite?
Julia Quinn (How to Marry a Marquis (Agents of the Crown, #2))
It's like he has emotional amnesia... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin." Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now.
Emma Forrest (Your Voice in My Head)
Most of Arbus's work lies within the Warhol aesthetic, that is, defines itself in relation to the twin poles of boringness and freakishness; but it doesn't have the Warhol style. Arbus had neither Warhol's narcissism and genius for publicity nor the self-protective blandness with which he insulates himself from the freaky nor his sentimentality. It is unlikey that Warhol, who comes from a working-class family, ever felt any ambivalence toward success which afflicted the children of the Jewish upper middle classes in the 1960s. To someone raised as a Catholic, like Warhol (and virtually everyone in his gang), a fascination with evil comes much more genuinely than it does to someone from a Jewish background. Compared with Warhol, Arbus seems strikingly vulnerable, innocent--and certainly more pessimistic. Her Dantesque vision of the city (and the suburbs) has no reserves of irony. Although much of Arbus's material is the same as that depicted in, say, Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966)...For Arbus, both freaks and Middle America were equally exotic: a boy marching in a pro-war parade and a Levittown housewife were as alien as a dwarf or a transvestite; lower-middle-class suburbia was as remote as Times Square, lunatic asylums, and gay bars. Arbus's work expressed her turn against what was public (as she experienced it), conventional, safe, reassuring--and boring--in favor of what was private, hidden, ugly, dangerous, and fascinating. These contrasts, now, seem almost quaint. What is safe no long monopolizes public imagery. The freakish is no longer a private zone, difficult of access. People who are bizarre, in sexual disgrace, emotionally vacant are seen daily on the newsstands, on TV, in the subways. Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair.
Susan Sontag (On Photography)
In my early work, I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions. This was partly due to my feelings about myself and party due to my feelings about painting at the time. I sort of stuck to my guns for a while but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally one must simply drop the reserve.
Jasper Johns
Tell me something. Do you believe in God?' Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?' 'It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?' 'What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...' 'No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.' Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks: 'There was Manicheanism...' 'Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...' Snow pondered for a while: 'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.' I kept on: 'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...' 'We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.' 'If you're going to take what I say literally...' ...Snow asked abruptly: 'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?' 'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.
Stanisław Lem (Solaris)
We have more 'things per person' than any other nation in history. Closets are full, storage space is used up, and cars can't fit into garages. Having first imprisoned us with debt. Possessions then take over our houses and occupy our time. This begins to sound like an invasion. Everything I own owns me. Why would I want more?
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.” “Yes,” said Harriet, “but I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel.” “I don’t think that matters, provided one doesn’t try to persuade one’s self into appropriate feelings.
Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12))
Practicing mindfulness is something like observing the Milky Way. It demands that we see our thoughts and emotions as separate from us, and yet, simultaneously apart of us. Also the brain can do some pretty weird things, some of which are embarrassing, thus the importance of being without judgement. Reserving judgement is important to the practice of mindfulness because as soon as we start condemning what our brain is doing, eww, why would I be thinking about that, I'm a loser, I'm a freak - We stop being able to observe. Staying in the observer position is essential to getting to know our brains and ourselves in a new way.
Anna Lembke (Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence)
I rubbed my hand over my face before glancing at Echo. A hint of her cleavage peeked from her shirt. Damn, she was sexy as hell. I wanted her, badly. Would one night be enough, even if she gave it to me? Echo already felt like a heavy drug. The kind I avoided on purpose—crack, heroin, meth. The ones that screwed with your mind, crept into your blood and left you powerless, helpless. If she gave her body to me, would i be able to let go or would i be sucked into that black veil, hooks embedded into my skin, sentenced to death by the emotion i reserved for my brothers-love?
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
The kiss he gave her was fierce and passionate, relaying so much more than lust and desire. She clung to him, soaking up the flood of emotion from a man known for his reserve and austerity. This was why she could blossom for him, why she felt fearless and audacious. They were so much alike in that way, their still waters running deeper than most.
Sylvia Day (The Promise of Love (Includes: Fast Track, #4.5; Shadow Stalkers, #1))
Extroverts usually don't understand introverts and try to push them into situations where they simply don't wish to be.
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
I reserve my emotional energy exclusively for people. Things can be fixed. Things can be replaced. People cannot.
Alan C. Fox (People Tools: 54 Strategies for Building Relationships, Creating Joy, and Embracing Prosperity)
First responders are notorious for being reserved about their emotions and emotional wellbeing.
Asa Don Brown
What is the one emotion that you would like to feel for the rest of your life?
Alice Steinbach (Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman)
Marginless is the disease of the new millennium; margin is its cure.
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
He felt strangely detached from the action, as if all his emotional reserve had been depleted by his brief outburst in the shower.
Suzanne Collins (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0))
By imputing to human love features properly reserved for divine love, such as the unconditional and the eternal, we falsify the nature of this most conditional and time-bound and earthy emotion, and force it to labour under intolerable expectations. This divinisation of human love is the latest chapter in humanity’s impulsive quest to steal the powers of its gods, and the longest-running such attempt to reach beyond our humanity. Like the others it must fail; for the moral of these stories is that the limits of the human can be ignored only at terrible cost.
Simon May (Love: A History)
To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and learn to feel at home with the unknown. Unfortunately, teaching kids to embrace the unknown while maintaining their mental balance is far more difficult than teaching them an equation in physics or the causes of the First World War. You cannot learn resilience by reading a book or listening to a lecture. Teachers themselves usually lack the mental flexibility that the twenty-first century demands, since they themselves are the product of the old educational system.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
Apostrophes, however, I love with all my heart. I support the correctly used apostrophe with that kind of fierce emotional investment in an irrelevance that most people reserve for football.
David Mitchell (Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life)
No, I’m no patriot, nor was I ever allowed to be. And yet, the country of my childhood lives within me with a primacy that is a form of love. It lives within me despite my knowledge of our marginality, and its primitive, unpretty emotions. Is it blind and self-deceptive of me to hold on to its memory? I think it would be blind and self-deceptive not to. All it has given me is the world, but that is enough. It has fed me language, percep- tions, sounds, the human kind .... no geometry of landscape, no haze in the air, will live in us as intensely as the landscapes that we saw as the fi rst, and to which we gave ourselves wholly, without reservation.
Eva Hoffman (Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language)
The old 'qualities' of masculinity - a narrow focus on life, domestic incompetence signalling a mind on higher things, emotional reserve and acts of endurance - have become absurdities, signs more of incompetence, insensitivity, lack of intelligence than of strength.
Rosalind Coward (Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium?)
It was terror, I realised, the kind reserved for nightmares, when your mind has no defence against the dark. It was the most primitive, most powerful emotion of all, and I had never, ever felt it like this. This wasn´t just a fear of losing my life, but a fear of losing my soul.
Alexander Gordon Smith (Execution (Escape from Furnace, #5))
What's going on between us?" I don't know. I rubbed my hand over my face before glancing at Echo. A hint of her cleavage peeked from her shirt. Damn, she was sexy as hell. I wanted her, badly. Would one night be enough, even if she gave it to me? Echo already felt like a heavy drug. The kind I avoided on purpose—crack, heroin, meth. The ones that screwed with your mind, crept into your blood and left you powerless, helpless. If she gave her body to me, would i be able to let go or would i be sucked into that black veil, hooks embedded into my skin, sentenced to death by the emotion i reserved for my brothers-love? "I want you." "Do you? Really? Because these scars are sexy." How did she see her self? "I don't give a fuck about your scars." She stalked toward me, hips swaying side to side, eyes hardened with anger. Echo pushed her body agaist mine, parts of her fitting perfectly into parts of me. I swore under my breath, fighting for control over my body. "How are you going to react when we 're this close and you take off my shirt? Are you still going to want me when you see red and white lines? Are you going to flinch each time you accidentally touch my arms and feel the raised skin? How about when i touch you?" She pulled away from me, leaving my body cold after experiencing her warmth. "Or will you forbid that? Will you tell me how to dress or what i'm allowed to take off?" Her anger only fed mine. "For the last time I don't give a fuck about your scars." "Liar. Because the only way anyone will ever be okay with me is if they love me. Really love me enough to not care that I’m damaged. You don't love people. You have sex with them. So how could you want to be with me?" She'd summed me up perfectly. I didn't love people-only my brothers. Echo deserved more. Better than me. One shot. Take it or go home. Kiss her and risk an attachment or leave her and watch some other guy enjoy what could have been mine.
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
Lafayette showed a courtier’s love of compliments, was a master of flattery, and liked to hug people in the French manner. Perhaps Washington doted on the young man because he dared to express emotions that he himself stifled, thawing his frosty reserve and opening an outlet for his suppressed emotions.
Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life)
In a society that dreads old age and death, aging holds a special terror for those who fear dependence and whose' self-esteem requires the admiration usually reserved for youth, beauty, celebrity, or charm. The usual defenses against the ravages of age—identification with ethical or artistic values beyond one's immediate interests, intellectual curiosity, the consoling emotional warmth derived from happy relationships in the past—can do nothing for the narcissist. Unable to derive whatever com-fort comes from identification with historical continuity, he finds it impossible, on the contrary, "to accept the fact that a younger generation now possesses many of the previously cherished gratifications of beauty, wealth, power and, particularly, creativity. To be able to enjoy life in a process involving a growing identification with other people's happiness and achievements is tragically beyond the capacity of narcissistic personalities.
Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
It's like we're all going up a flight of stairs together and at a certain point I say 'this is as far as I go'. And on that step, higher up, they're all happy and I watch them from below. Had he always been like that? It wasn't shyness or reserve or adolescence, as other people thought. He wasn't going to get over it. He could dance when he was alone, he could get emotional in his room with a book, but when the party started he disconnected, the others turned into a movie that he could watch but not participate in. So he acted like he was invisible, which wasn't hard when everyone was drunk. And he withdrew into his room, where he felt the purest kind of relief.
Mariana Enríquez (Nuestra parte de noche)
We must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has the time to listen, let alone love. Our children lay wounded on the ground, run over by our high-speed good intentions. Is God now pro-exhaustion? Doesn’t He lead people beside the still waters anymore? Who plundered those wide-open spaces of the past, and how can we get them back? There are no fallow lands for our emotions to lie down and rest in.
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
Although many successful givers start from the default of trusting others’ intentions, they’re also careful to scan their environments to screen for potential takers, always ready to shift from feeling a taker’s emotions to analyzing a taker’s thoughts, and flex from giving unconditionally to a more measured approach of generous tit for tat. And when they feel inclined to back down, successful givers are prepared to draw reserves of assertiveness from their commitments to the people who matter to them.
Adam M. Grant (Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success)
You know, sleeping outdoors isn’t all bad. You get to stare up at the stars and cool breezes ruffle your fur after a hot day. The grass smells sweet and,” he made eye contact with me, “so does your hair.” I blushed and grumbled, “Well, I’m glad someone enjoyed it.” He smiled smugly and said, “I did.” I had a quick flash of him as a man snuggled up next to me in the forest, imagined him resting his head on my lap while I stroked his hair, and decided to focus on the matter at hand. “Well, listen, Ren, you’re changing the subject. I don’t appreciate the way you manipulated me into being here. Mr. Kadam should’ve told me at the circus.” He shook his head. “We didn’t think you’d believe his story. He made up the trip to the tiger reserve to get you to India. We figured once you were here, I could change into a man and clarify everything.” I admitted, “You’re probably right. If you had changed to a man there, I don’t think I would have come” “Why did you come?” “I wanted to spend more time with…you. You know, the tiger. I would have missed him. I mean you.” I blushed. He grinned lopsidedly. “I would have missed you too.” I wrung the hem of my shirt between my hands. Misreading my thoughts, he said, “Kelsey. I’m truly sorry for the deception. If there’d been any other way-“ I looked up. He hung his head in a way that reminded me of the tiger. The frustration and awkwardness I felt about him dissipated. My instincts told me that I should believe him and help him. The strong emotional connection that drew me to the tiger tugged at my heart even more powerfully with the man. I felt pity for him and his situation. Softly, I asked, “When will you change into a tiger?” “Soon.” “Does it hurt?” “Not as much as it used to.” “Do you understand me when you are a tiger? Can I still speak to you?” “Yes, I’ll still be able to hear and understand you.” I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll stay here with you until the shaman comes back. I still have a lot of questions for you though.” “I know. I’ll try to answer them as best I can, but you’ll have to save them for tomorrow when I’ll be able to speak with you again. We can stay here for the night. The shaman should be back around dusk.” “Ren?” “Yes?” “The jungle frightens me, and this situation frightens me.” He let go of the apron string and looked into my eyes. “I know.” “Ren?” “Yes?” “Don’t…leave me, okay?” His face softened into a tender expression, and his mouth turned up in a sincere smile. “Asambhava. I won’t.” I felt myself responding to his smile with one of my own when a shadow fell across his face. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw. I saw a tremor pass through his body, and the chair fell forward as he collapsed to the ground on his hands and knees. I stood to reach out to him and was amazed to see his body morph back into the tiger form I knew so well. Ren the tiger shook himself, then approached my outstretched hand and rubbed his head against it.
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
Emotions are reserved for juries and, in that case, a good lawyer can really lay them on when the time is right, better than the best Academy Award winning actor
Kenneth Eade (Predatory Kill (Brent Marks Legal Thrillers #2))
Italians love emotional people. If you're reserved you either have something to hide or you're just plain stupid.
Joe Novella (Pepe & Poppy: tarantella vs zorba)
Love is the only medicine I know of which, when used according to directions, heals completely yet takes one's life away.
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
Now wasn't the time for emotional outbursts, but when they were safe--and they would be because she believed him without reservation--then she'd tell him what she thought about the man he was. The man she wanted. And if he walked away, she'd never have any regrets. Love was a gift, but it was up to the recipient to accept and cherish or to reject the offering. All she could do was give unreservedly. And for the first time since her assault, she realized that she could give something she'd never thought to give again. Her trust and her love.
Maya Banks (Hidden Away (KGI, #3))
If progress is so wonderful, why do we drink and drug to forget our problems? Why are we divorcing and suing at such rates? Why are people killing themselves-and others-in such numbers?
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
I’ve found that the quietest, most reserved people often make the best portrait subjects because the exercise doesn’t require them to speak; it requires them to feel. Those who bottle up their emotions every day feel the strongest and love the hardest; the best photographers are the ones who can capture each drop of emotion as it spills out and mold it into something visceral, relatable. Universal.
Ana Huang (Twisted Love (Twisted, #1))
The actor, like the modern man of reason, must have his place determined and his lines memorized before he goes on stage. (...) The public itself has been soothed to such an extent by scripted debates imbued with theoretically "right" answers that it no longer seems to respond positively to arguments which create doubt. Real doubt creates real fear. (...) De Gaulle found a sensible compromise, given the times. He reserved his public thinking for the printed page and on those pages he allowed himself to ask fundamental questions. But when he spoke, it was either with reason or with emotion - that is to say, with answers or with mythology. He divided himself between the man of letters, who knows how to live with doubt, and the man of state, who is the epitome of certainty. the brilliance of this approach could be seen in the frustration and sometimes fury of the opposing elites. The truism today is that mythological figures and men of power should not think in public. They should limit themselves to affirming truths. Stars, after all, are rarely equipped to engage in public debate. They would abhor the idea that the proper way to deal with confusion in society is to increase that confusion by asking uncomfortable questions until the source of the difficulties is exposed.
John Ralston Saul (Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West)
The thing you have to remember about artists...is never to trust their immediate response. Whatever the news, their reaction will be self-protective. The mask goes on, and you see only what they let you see. These creatures carry their emotions around in a violin-case, reserving their only honest expression for the public stage. In private, they turn emotion on and off at will. Never believe an artist when he weeps or declares love. It's all a grand performance. Treat their upsets as you would a child's tantrums. Console, then instruct. Show compassion when it's called for, firmness when it runs out. Give them an illusion of your love for them - but never love itself, or they will devour you.
Norman Lebrecht (The Song of Names)
Know how to wait. It shows a great heart with deep reserves of patience. Never hurry and never give way to your emotions. Master yourself and you will master others. Stroll through the open spaces of time to the center of opportunity. Wise hesitation ripens success and brings secrets to maturity. The crutch of Time can do more than the steely club of Hercules. (...) A wonderful saying: “Time and I can take on any two.” Fortune gives larger rewards to those who wait.
Baltasar Gracián (The Art of Worldly Wisdom (The Oracle) & The Critick (Timeless Wisdom Collection))
It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all my favorite in different ways. Bu ask any parent who's been through some kind of a crisis surrounding a child - a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem - and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium - when one child needs you more than the others - that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.
Jodi Picoult (Lone Wolf)
There is a paradox at the heart of contemporary Girl Land, and this paradox makes the emotional experience of female adolescence more intense and difficult than ever. On the one hand, never in history have girls had so many opportunities, or shared so fully in the kind of power that was only recently reserved for boys. Girls now outperform boys on the SAT; women outnumber men in college, and we are nearing a point at which women will outnumber men in the country’s law and medical schools.
Caitlin Flanagan (Girl Land)
Shame Resilience 101 Here are the first three things that you need to know about shame: We all have it. Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. The only people who don’t experience shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection. We’re all afraid to talk about shame. The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives. Shame is basically the fear of being unlovable—it’s the total opposite of owning our story and feeling worthy. In fact, the definition of shame that I developed from my research is: Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.1 Shame keeps worthiness away by convincing us that owning our stories will lead to people thinking less of us. Shame is all about fear. We’re afraid that people won’t like us if they know the truth about who we are, where we come from, what we believe, how much we’re struggling, or, believe it or not, how wonderful we are when soaring (sometimes it’s just as hard to own our strengths as our struggles). People often want to believe that shame is reserved for the folks who have survived terrible traumas, but this is not true. Shame is something we all experience. And while it feels as if shame hides in our darkest corners, it actually tends to lurk in all of the familiar places, including appearance and body image, family, parenting, money and work, health, addiction, sex, aging, and religion. To feel shame is to be human.
Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are)
Worry is a waste of emotional reserves. Very foolish. Unworthy of an enlightened person. Since we are merely the creatures of our chemical metabolism and of the economic factors of our background, there’s not a damn thing we can do about anything whatever.
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
Together the two walked under the trees through the streets of the town and talked of what they would do with their lives. Alice was then a very pretty girl and Ned Currie took her into his arms and kissed her. He became excited and said things he did not intend to say and Alice, betrayed by her desire to have something beautiful come into her rather narrow life, also grew excited. She also talked. The outer crust of her life, all of her natural diffidence and reserve, was torn away and she gave herself over to the emotions of love.
Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio; a group of tales of Ohio small town life)
Yes, it was a "beautiful" sermon, tugging the emotions and conjuring up pictures of greatness and peace. But were they talking about the decent peppery ordinary old man he knew, or had the subject strayed to the story of some saint of the past? Or were there perhaps two men being buried under the same name? One perhaps had shown himself to Ross, while the other had been reserved for the view of men like William-Alfred. Ross tried to remember Charles before he was ill, Charles with his love of cockfighting and his hearty appetite, with his perpetual flatulence and passion for gin, with his occasional generosities and meannesses and faults and virtues, like most men. There was some mistake somewhere. Oh well, this was a special occasion...But Charles himself would surely have been amused. Or would he have shed a tear with the rest for the manner of man who had passed away?
Winston Graham (Ross Poldark (Poldark, #1))
I felt that, if we could avoid seeing each other for long enough, any questions of sentiment—so often deprecated by Barbara herself—could be allowed quietly to subside, and take their place in those niches of memory especially reserved for abortive emotional entanglements of that particular kind.
Anthony Powell (A Buyer's Market (A Dance to the Music of Time, #2))
While Molly stood off to the side laughing, both dogs bounding around her, Priss snuggled up against Matt and got twirled right off her feet. She put her head back and laughed aloud. Her hands clung to Matt’s shoulders. Her pelvis flattened against his. Long ropes of hair wrapped in silver foil stuck out around her head. She wore a cape and she had cotton wrapped in and around her toes. For a woman set on murdering her father, she looked mighty happy. Liger was the only one to notice Trace’s entrance. The big cat jumped down from the windowsill and started his way. Chris and Dare crowded in behind Trace. And still Trace stood there in the open doorway, frozen with some anomalous, churning emotion. Yeah, Matt was more than able to handle Priss. The son-of-a-bitch had just picked her up off her feet. Again. And again, Priss held on to him. Near his ear, Chris said, “Yeah, uh, this might be a good time to remind you that Matt is gay.” “Somehow,” Trace told him, “that’s not mattering to me much right now.” Dare said, “You never know when to quit, do you, Chris?” As Matt twirled her around, Priss laughed without reserve, and Trace wanted her so damn bad that he couldn’t see straight.
Lori Foster (Trace of Fever (Men Who Walk the Edge of Honor, #2))
If your deepest feelings are reserved for something other than Almighty God, then that something other is an emotional idol... if you get more excited about material things than the simple yet profound fact that your sin was nailed to the cross by the sinless Son of God, then you're bowing down to Tammuz.
Mark Batterson (All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life)
Becoming a woman is an act partly of nature and partly of self-invention; Girl Land is the place and time in which all of this is worked out…there is a paradox at the heart of contemporary Girl Land, and this paradox makes the emotional experience of female adolescence more intense and difficult than ever. On the one hand, never in history have girls had so many opportunities, or shared so fully in the kind of power that was only recently reserved for boys. Girls now outperform boys on the SAT; women outnumber men in college, and we are nearing a point at which women will outnumber men in the country’s law and medical schools.
Caitlin Flanagan
After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer—perhaps more.
Jasper Fforde (The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3))
The passage that he had found in the book had been riddled with ambiguities and contradictions only reserved for those most valiant in overriding their legalistic forbearance into a necessary frenzy that would allow them to suitably work up a case for one side or the other on how the Law, without the possibility of misinterpretation, states If ABC, then DEF—or for the sake of acknowledging the counterargument first as a courtroom tactic, the case might also be made that the Law states the antithesis of the aforementioned If ABC, then DEF, but gives allowance within reasonable parameters for a provisional XYZ to be granted in exceptional cases. And thus, it was a matter not so much of making one’s case in a clear and logical sense, but one for the lawyers to battle out in the arena of pathos, as it was clearly the emotional pleas that could evoke a sense of sympathy in the courtroom and overturn otherwise painstaking endeavors at using the tools at hand to make pleas based upon incontrovertible facts.
Ashim Shanker (Don't Forget to Breathe (Migrations, Volume I))
After three-quarters of an hour of standing around, he became suddenly involved in a human contact. It was just the sort of thing that was likely to happen to him when he was in the mood of not wanting to see any one. So rigidly did he sometimes guard his exposed self-consciousness that frequently he defeated his own purposes; as an actor who underplays a part sets up a craning forward, a stimulated emotional attention in an audience, and seems to create in others an ability to bridge the gap he has left open. Similarly we are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity — we reserve this for those who, by other means, make us exercise the abstract function of pity.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night)
This is how ignition works. Where deep practice is a cool, conscious act, ignition is a hot, mysterious burst, an awakening. Where deep practice is an incremental wrapping, ignition works through lightning flashes of image and emotion, evolution-built neural programs that tap into the mind's vast reserves of energy and attention. Where deep practice is all about staggering-baby steps, ignition is about the set of signals and subconscious forces that create our identity; the moments that lead us to say that is who I want to be. We usually think of passion as an inner quality. But the more I visited hotbeds, the more I saw it as something that came first from the outside world. In the hotbeds the right butterfly wingflap was causing talent hurricanes.
Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else)
Whenever I’m away from him I get this terrible ache in my chest, always in the same spot. It’s true. There’s a place in my heart reserved just for him. But at the same time I have this strong urge inside me to try something else, to come into contact with all kinds of people. Call it curiosity, a thirst to know more. More possibilities. It’s a natural emotion and I can’t suppress it, no matter how much I try.
Haruki Murakami (Men Without Women)
The Sabbath rest is a rest He calls us to, but the surrendered rest He offers to us. The Sabbath rest we enter out of obedience; the surrendered rest we enter out of our need. The Sabbath rest arises from the good and perfect law of God; the surrendered rest arises from the good and perfect grace of God. The Sabbath rest is remembrance; the surrendered rest is meekness. Both provide soothing, God-ordained healing.
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
The collar of Lars of Tassla fell away and clattered onto the tiles. katriana felt unable to breathe. Her neck, so long encased with the symbol of Lars’ ownership of her, seemed paradoxically to be suddenly constricted. She felt naked. Naked and abandoned. Her head sank down to lie across the hardness of the anvil. Her entire body shook uncontrollably as she felt all security evaporate from her world. How many minutes she lay there she could not with any certainty say. Yet, eventually she became aware of one tiny point in the cruel world surrounding her. It was a scent. His scent. It entered her. It stroked inside her. It pulsed against her pain until she acknowledged its presence. Her eyes flicked open. And then she saw him there, sitting quietly beside her, watching her with all the intentness that she loved so much in him. His face was still set in the neutrality he reserved for formal times but his eyes were flashing with…with some emotion kept hidden behind his Master’s mask. katriana struggled to read the look flowing from deep inside his eyes. She awkwardly rose to kneel before her former Master. Her body and her breasts were offered. She could not do otherwise whether or not she wore his collar. (A Master's Dilemma, eXtasy)
Khul Waters
Some narcissistic leaders are models of icy reserve while others have the emotional self-control of a two-year-old. … the essential narcissistic defect is not something people generally outgrow. In fact, narcissism may become more entrenched with age and expanding power. To the extent that power becomes more secure, the moody Narcissist may have more insulation from the shame that is the principal regulator of bad behavior. The more powerful you are, the more you can get away with. . . . Such people never developed the ability to calm themselves, and their unrealistic expectations and need to control what is often uncontrollable can keep them in a constant state of agitation. If you and others feel you must walk on eggshells to avoid setting off a landmine, suspect underlying narcissism and tailor your responses accordingly.
Sandy Hotchkiss (Why Is It Always About You? : The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism)
Since McDougall contrasts the behaviour of a highly organised group with what has just been described, we shall be particularly interested to learn in what this organisation consists, and by what factors it is produced. The author enumerates five principal conditions ' for raising collective mental life to a higher level. The first and fundamental condition is that there should be some degree of continuity of existence in the group. This may be either material or formal: the former, if the same individuals persist in the group for some time; and the latter, if there is developed within the group a system of fixed positions which are occupied by a succession of individuals. The second condition is that in the individual member of the group some definite idea should be formed of the nature, composition, functions and capacities of the group, so that from this he may develop an emotional relation to the group as a whole. The third is that the group should be brought into interaction (perhaps in the form of rivalry) with other groups similar to it but differing from it in many respects. The fourth is that the group should possess traditions, customs and habits, and especially such as determine the relations of its members to one another. The fifth is that the group should have a definite structure, expressed in the specialisation and differentiation of the functions of its constituents. According to McDougall, if these conditions are fulfilled, the psychological disadvantages of the group formation are removed. The collective lowering of intellectual ability is avoided by withdrawing the performance of intellectual tasks from the group and reserving them for individual members of it.
Sigmund Freud (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego)
But while it’s true that helping other people makes us happier, and that people feel a distinct “helper’s high,” it’s also true that when people are unhappy, they often find it tough to help others. If they did, they’d likely feel happier, but unhappy people often feel preoccupied with their own problems and don’t have the emotional reserves to turn outward. By contrast, happy people volunteer more, give away more money, and naturally take an interest in others.
Gretchen Rubin (Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life)
…) the passions, though restrained, are not always subdued, but often remain lurking in the breast with all their original fury. The man whose anger is restrained by fear, does not always lay aside his anger, but only reserves its gratification for a more safe opportunity. But the man who, in relating to some other person the injury which has been done to him, feels at once the fury of his passion cooled and becalmed by sympathy with the more moderate sentiments of his companion, who at once adopts those more moderate sentiments, and comes to view that injury, not in the black and atrocious colours in which he had originally beheld it, but in the much milder and fairer light in which his companion naturally views it; not only restrains, but in some measure subdues, his anger. The passion becomes really less than it was before, and less capable of exciting him to the violent and bloody revenge which at first, perhaps, he might have thought of inflicting.
Adam Smith (The Theory of Moral Sentiments)
The reserves of emotion pent up during those many months when for everybody the flame of life burned low were being recklessly squandered to celebrate this, the red-letter day of their survival. Tomorrow real life would begin again, with its restrictions. But for the moment people in very different walks of life were rubbing shoulders, fraternizing. The leveling-out that death’s imminence had failed in practice to accomplish was realized at last, for a few gay hours, in the rapture of escape.
Albert Camus (The Plague)
She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to do.
Mark Twain (50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die, vol 2)
THE WISDOM OF SURRENDER It is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that is the main determinant of what kind of future you will experience, so to surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change. Any action you take is secondary. No truly positive action can arise out of an unsurrendered state of consciousness. To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action. SURRENDER IS THE SIMPLE but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is. Inner resistance is to say “no” to what is, through mental judgment and emotional negativity. It becomes particularly pronounced when things “go wrong,” which means that there is a gap between the demands or rigid expectations of your mind and what is. That is the pain gap. If you have lived long enough, you will know that things “go wrong” quite often. It is precisely at those times that surrender needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind. Surrender is a purely inner phenomenon. It does not mean that on the outer level you cannot take action and change the situation. In fact, it is not the overall situation that you need to accept when you surrender, but just the tiny segment called the Now. For example, if you were stuck in the mud somewhere, you wouldn't say: “Okay, I resign myself to being stuck in the mud.” Resignation is not surrender. YOU DON'T NEED TO ACCEPT AN UNDESIRABLE OR UNPLEASANT LIFE SITUATION. Nor do you need to deceive yourself and say that there is nothing wrong with it. No. You recognize fully that you want to get out of it. You then narrow your attention down to the present moment without mentally labeling it in any way. This means that there is no judgment of the Now. Therefore, there is no resistance, no emotional negativity. You accept the “isness” of this moment. Then you take action and do all that you can to get out of the situation. Such action I call positive action. It is far more effective than negative action, which arises out of anger, despair, or frustration. Until you achieve the desired result, you continue to practice surrender by refraining from labeling the Now
Eckhart Tolle (Practicing the Power of Now)
But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.
Sue Johnson (Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships (The Dr. Sue Johnson Collection Book 2))
To the night version of her (mother) I owe free-floating anxiety. I am no longer a child in an unsafe home, but anxiety became habit. My brain is conditioned. I worry. I recheck everything obsessively. Is the seat belt fastened, are the reservations correct, is my passport in my purse? Have I done something wrong? Have I said something wrong? I'm sorry - whatever happened must be my fault. Is everyone all right, and if they aren't, how can I step in? That brilliant serenity prayer: God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. To all the children of alcoholics I want to say, Good luck with that. If I don't do it myself, it won't get done (this belief is often rewarded in this increasingly incompetent world). Also, I panic easily. I am not the person you want sitting in the exit row of an airplane. And distrust. Just in general, distrust. Irony. Irony, according to the dictionary, is the use of comedy to distance oneself from emotion. I developed it as a child lickety-split. Irony was armor, a way to stick it to Mom. You think you can get me? Come on, shoot me, aim that arrow straight at my heart. It can't make a dent because I'm wearing irony.
Delia Ephron (Sister Mother Husband Dog: Etc.)
John F. Kennedy "is, in reality, a deeply serious man, reflective in his mental habits, historically minded, and given to seeing men and nations and events in the sobering context that history provides. As a human being, he is often humorous, easily bored by total routine but open to all fresh experiences, careless of the superficialities of life, warmly loyal to his friends, and oddly detached about himself. His most curious trait, in fact, is his way of discussing his most vital affairs with the dry humor and cool analytical remoteness that most people reserve for the affairs of others. – Joseph Alsop
David Pietrusza (1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies)
Marjory Gengler (white American) to Mark Mathabane (black South African) in the late 1970s-- Marjory: Why don't blacks fight to change the system [apartheid] that so dehumanizes them? Mark's Response, from his memoirs: I told her [Marjory] about the sophistication of apartheid machinery, the battery of Draconian laws used to buttress it, the abject poverty in which a majority of blacks were sunk, leaving them with little energy and will to agitate for their rights. I told her about the indoctrination that took place in black schools under the guise of Bantu Education, the self-hatred that resulted from being constantly told that you are less than human and being treated that way. I told her of the anger and hatred pent-up inside millions of blacks, destroying their minds. I would have gone on to tell Marjory about the suffering of wives without husbands and children without fathers in impoverished tribal reserves, about the high infant mortality rate among blacks in a country that exported food, and which in 1987 gave the world its first heart transplant. I would have told them about the ragged black boys and girls of seven, eight and nine years who constantly left their homes because of hunger and a disintegrating family life and were making it on their own; by begging along the thoroughfares of Johannesburg; by sleeping in scrapped cars, gutters and in abandoned buildings; by bathing in the diseased Jukskei River; and by eating out of trash cans, sucking festering sores and stealing rotting produce from the Indian traders on First Avenue. I would have told her about how these orphans of the streets, some of them my friends--their physical, intellectual and emotional growth dwarfed and stunted--had grown up to become prostitutes, unwed mothers and tsotsis, littering the ghetto streets with illegitimate children and corpses. I would have told her all this, but I didn't; I feared she would not believe me; I feared upsetting her.
Mark Mathabane
Back from the funeral, we think we felt the grim reaper swing close; we feel him stalking us. We ward off anxiety before the imminent and inescapable annihilation awaiting us by establishing control over our life and field of operations, by projecting an advance representation of what each day brings, and by measuring our enterprises to our forces. We arrange our home and our situation and our workday in such a way that we retain, behind the forms of our performances, a reserve of force for the tasks that will recur the next day. We settle into an occupation that requires only those mental tasks for which we have already contracted the mental skills. We frame our pleasures and our angers, our affections and our vexations, in the patterns and confines of feelings we can repeat indefinitely. We avoid going to places utterly unlike any other, which would leave us wholly astonished, with an astonishment that could never recur. We seek out partners others might also fall in love with, and we love our partner as others love like partners, with a love that we could recycle for another partner should we lose this one. For we sense that were we to expend all our forces on an adventure, discharge all our mental powers on a problem, empty out all the love in our heart on a woman or a man unlike any other, we would be dying in that adventure, that problem, that love.
Alphonso Lingis (Dangerous Emotions)
There is always a component to denial that goes deeper than likes or dislikes. You’re not in denial about roses if you don’t like roses, but prefer tulips. Or about politics if you can’t stand a certain politician. Or if you want to switch off the radio each time pop artist Justin Bieber sings “Baby baby.” The concept of denial is reserved for those issues that are emotionally and morally disturbing and therefore—if not dealt with—generate an uncomfortable inner splitting. The term denial is appropriate when the full acknowledgment of what is denied would imply having to act upon it. The lifting of denial would result in an emotional shift, and would require both speaking and acting differently. And sometimes it would result in a substantial change of lifestyle, ethics, and identity.
Per Espen Stoknes (What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action)
The answer lies in meekness. In this passage, Christ calls Himself “gentle and humble”—meek. He came not to judge but to die. He came not to shout and defend the honor of the Father but to die. He came not to fight but to die. No persecution could disturb Him for He came to suffer. Yet all the time He was suffering, He knew He was winning. We, too, can suffer and win. We can live with love even when others hate—all the time knowing that love wins. We can respond with grace when others fight, knowing that grace wins. When we come to Him and surrender, accepting His yoke, we accept full vulnerability to the onslaught of the world. Yet, at the same time, we are assured that nothing can separate us from the victorious love of Christ. This rest is a self-weakening unto God-strength. It is a self-emptying unto God-fullness. It is the rest of full surrender.
Richard A. Swenson (Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives)
Terror is an artery. Running unfailing channels of bloodied thoroughfares by dint of the wilds beyond our knowing. Fluctuations and murmurs are audible within the splintered leeway of our preserve as a consequence of interstices modeled in such brutality. This appended artery offers no direction; idle and at times desultory. Bloodstained tracks and avenues guide casualties. Terror, like death, is not complicated, nor is it simple. It is but routine—natural. To call it otherwise is to parsimoniously say that birth is effortless, hurricanes are facile, and earthquakes are meek when they are a lot more. Myths, parables, and allegories lie in the construct of terror. Kings have fallen and succeeded in the yarns of terror. Simple men have been turned into heroes due to terror. Villains have been great orchestrators in the art of terror, allowing sole individuals and denizens to feel their makings. A soul never needed God to feel terror. The most nihilistic can undergo such a dreadful emotion. Animals are perfect examples of this. They are well-equipped creations to the world of terror and death, holding no cognizance to deity or creator. Terror is quite exclusive as it is a function of the mind, conducted by the intersections and throughways of nerves and bounded to that alone. Although it approaches with university, like hunger or sickness, it is selfish by fashion and segregating in nature. But death is quite opposite… death is all embracing. Disregarded and glossed over, it is never reserved or inaudible, especially if you listen hard enough. Death transmits a signal that can be discerned if you listen hard enough. Frail in birthing, the airing is not limited to the clairvoyant, though they are a standard audience. The most simple-minded can hear this. But they choose to ignore it for whatever grounds. Even in the obviousness of it when it comes in dream, awaking its public in night terrors and cold sweats, it should be heeded. In lurk of dark uncertainties the signal should be adhered in this societal horrific caprice. Death is a declaration waiting to broadcast the haunting awareness of our own deterrence. And within these pages is its proclamation.
J.C. Whitfield
Fathers and sons, probably one of the most emotionally deep, human relationships. Probably one of the most intense human equations. Words alone cannot describe what a father and son feel for each other, simply because there are such few words in this relationship. So much is left unsaid between the two of them. Communication, or rather a lack of it, always broadens the gap between the two of them. There’s always a gap between a father and son, always a gap between a name and a surname. I’ve always asked myself and today I address this question to all of you sons out there: Why did you stop hugging your father after a certain age? Why did you stop expressing, and being affectionate to your father after a certain age? Why is there this inexplicable awkwardness between a father and son? Why are all your emotions, your innermost thoughts, your tears, always reserved for your mother, your sister and then your wife? Why? Because you then become a father, and then you bottle up, just like your father did, and this vicious circle continues. Who is going to break this vicious circle? I realized, and I’m sure this applies to all of you as well, that, like everybody else, I too had issues, minor issues with my father, like every other son. You could call it a generation gap, you could call it a difference of opinion, you could call it anything. But what I also realized was that I was subconsciously being the man my father is. I was talking like him, feeling like him, loving like him—I was just being him. I then realized that a father not only gives his son his name, he also gives him his personality. So somewhere, if you have a problem with your father, you actually have a problem with yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve had this realization and this opportunity to express myself, and I wish with all my heart, that one day you do too. My father is my conscience, my father is my strength, my father is my support, my father is my hero. I don’t say it often enough to you, Dad, but what better than this global platform to say, I love you. I love you very, very, very much. And I wish I could love you as much as you love me, but I don’t think I’m capable of such unconditional love. I love you. You are my world. And then Amit uncle, who was there, said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I think whatever needed to be said about Mr Yash Johar, his son Karan has very ably done.
Karan Johar (Unsuitable Boy)
First experiences in life are very important. I never analyzed you, I always saw you. I never judged you, I always grasped you. When I left, I became lost. I was working, living, performing but you were missing, I don’t know why? I seriously don't understand why you are impacting so much on me? Can you clear in future if you have answer? We never talked too much but why this pain of departure is there? I have tried to forget you a lot, tried to delete the contact, tried to full concentrate on my life, sometime cried but there was not a single day when I didn't think about you. Am I really over thinker? I failed in your case, I failed. I have to accept the reality that to be good with you is the only solution which can make me happy & stable. Wherever I'll be in life, but this connectivity is necessary now. It is a part of life. I have so many questions for you. Have you ever missed me like I do? Everyday? I felt it, was that true? Do you really like to hear me? Or you are also in me? Or you are trying to suggest me some future planning? Are you shy? Less talker? You always tried to be open up with me? I always maintained safe distance? Was I too reserved? Was I egoistic? Yes, I was, but only in your case. Whatever you did for me that all was unsaid, pure, clear, fair. You were always nice to me? You never scold me, is this your part of nature? I heard so many cases of your temper? I never asked about you to people, they used to tell me about you by their own. Can I suggest you something? You are smart thinker but be careful from the people. Never be too kind to anyone, not all people have value of it. People never learn from the mistakes; they don’t want to create; they want to copy. I would say, don’t kind to me too, I have said so many things to you. I never seen so calm person. How? Do you have emotions? neutral? You never think on the things? Are you so productive? Are you innocent (in case of people)? Why can’t you understand that people makes show off in front of you only? Why are you giving so much importance to commerce people? Are they intelligent than engineers? Do you think so? Am I asking you so many questions? I really care for you & your selection of people. What are you actually see in the people? Obviously it’s your choice to answer it or not? At least I can ask my questions. Did I make a mistake according to you? For me, I was right, but I never asked you about you. As you said, I never gave you chance. For me, you are the chance giver & I am chance taker. I was scared by you. Did I hurt you? Hope I never made loss of you in any manner. I want to clear you one thing that apart from all my shit thinking, if you need any kind of assistance then please feel free to share. So what I have confess my love to you? It’s fine? Right? It’s natural, I had tried to control it a lot. Now I am more transparent, shameless & confident. I can face you in any condition. This change has changed my life.
Somi
Mandal vs Mandir The V.P. Singh government was the biggest casualty of this confrontation. Within the BJP and its mentor, the RSS, the debate on whether or not to oppose V.P. Singh and OBC reservations reached a high pitch. Inder Malhotra | 981 words It was a blunder on V.P. Singh’s part to announce his acceptance of the Mandal Commission’s report recommending 27 per cent reservations in government jobs for what are called Other Backward Classes but are, in fact, specified castes — economically well-off, politically powerful but socially and educationally backward — in such hot haste. He knew that the issue was highly controversial, deeply emotive and potentially explosive, which it proved to be instantly. But his top priority was to outsmart his former deputy and present adversary, Devi Lal. He even annoyed those whose support “from outside” was sustaining him in power. BJP leaders were peeved that they were informed of what was afoot practically at the last minute in a terse telephone call. What annoyed them even more was that the prime minister’s decision would divide Hindu society. The BJP’s ranks demanded that the plug be pulled on V.P. Singh but the top leadership advised restraint, because it was also important to keep the Congress out of power. The party leadership was aware of the electoral clout of the OBCs, who added up to 52 per cent of the population. As for Rajiv Gandhi, he was totally and vehemently opposed to the Mandal Commission and its report. He eloquently condemned V.P. Singh’s decision when it was eventually discussed in Parliament. This can be better understood in the perspective of the Mandal Commission’s history. Having acquired wealth during the Green Revolution and political power through elections, the OBCs realised that they had little share in the country’s administrative apparatus, especially in the higher rungs of the bureaucracy. So they started clamouring for reservations in government jobs. Throughout the Congress rule until 1977, this demand fell on deaf ears. It was the Janata government, headed by Morarji Desai, that appointed the Mandal Commission in 1978. Ironically, by the time the commission submitted its report, the Janata was history and Indira Gandhi was back in power. She quietly consigned the document to the deep freeze. In Rajiv’s time, one of his cabinet ministers, Shiv Shanker, once asked about the Mandal report.
Anonymous
Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge. Is Addie right to disobey her parents? Where does she get her courage? 2. Addie’s mother refuses to see Celia’s death as anything but an accident, and Addie comments that “whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.” Did Celia commit suicide? How might the guilt that Addie feels differ from the guilt her mother feels? 3. When Addie tries on pants for the first time, she feels emotionally as well as physically liberated, and confesses that she would like to go to college (page 108). How does the social significance of clothing and hairstyle differ for Addie, Gussie, and Filomena in the book? 4. Diamant fills her narrative with a number of historical events and figures, from the psychological effects of World War I and the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918 to child labor laws to the cultural impact of Betty Friedan. How do real-life people and events affect how we read Addie’s fictional story? 5. Gussie is one of the most forward-thinking characters in the novel; however, despite her law degree she has trouble finding a job as an attorney because “no one would hire a lady lawyer.” What other limitations do Addie and her friends face in the workforce? What limitations do women and minorities face today? 6. After distancing herself from Ernie when he suffers a nervous episode brought on by combat stress, Addie sees a community of war veterans come forward to assist him (page 155). What does the remorse that Addie later feels suggest about the challenges American soldiers face as they reintegrate into society? Do you think soldiers today face similar challenges? 7. Addie notices that the Rockport locals seem related to one another, and the cook Mrs. Morse confides in her sister that, although she is usually suspicious of immigrant boarders, “some of them are nicer than Americans.” How does tolerance of the immigrant population vary between city and town in the novel? For whom might Mrs. Morse reserve the term Americans? 8. Addie is initially drawn to Tessa Thorndike because she is a Boston Brahmin who isn’t afraid to poke fun at her own class on the women’s page of the newspaper. What strengths and weaknesses does Tessa’s character represent for educated women of the time? How does Addie’s description of Tessa bring her reliability into question? 9. Addie’s parents frequently admonish her for being ungrateful, but Addie feels she has earned her freedom to move into a boardinghouse when her parents move to Roxbury, in part because she contributed to the family income (page 185). How does the Baum family’s move to Roxbury show the ways Betty and Addie think differently from their parents about household roles? Why does their father take such offense at Herman Levine’s offer to house the family? 10. The last meaningful conversation between Addie and her mother turns out to be an apology her mother meant for Celia, and for a moment during her mother’s funeral Addie thinks, “She won’t be able to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me anymore.” Does Addie find any closure from her mother’s death? 11. Filomena draws a distinction between love and marriage when she spends time catching up with Addie before her wedding, but Addie disagrees with the assertion that “you only get one great love in a lifetime.” In what ways do the different romantic experiences of each woman inform the ideas each has about love? 12. Filomena and Addie share a deep friendship. Addie tells Ada that “sometimes friends grow apart. . . . But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there.” What qualities do you think friends must share in order to have that kind of connection? Discuss your relationship with a best friend. Enhance
Anita Diamant (The Boston Girl)