Afflicts Quotes & Sayings

He did not affirm the revolting conception of original sin, nor did he feel inclined to argue that it is a beneficent God who protects the worthless and wicked, rains misfortunes on children, stultifies the aged and afflicts the innocent. He did not exalt the virtues of a Providence which has invented that useless, incomprehensible, unjust and senseless abomination, physical suffering. Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Now this is a mystery to a carnal heart. They can see no such thing; perhaps they think God loves them when he prospers them and makes them rich, but they think God loves them not when he afflicts them. That is a mystery, but grace instructs men in that mystery, grace enables men to see love in the very frown of God's face, and so come to receive contentment. — Jeremiah Burroughs

Old politicians, like old actors, revive in the limelight. The vacancy which afflicts them in private momentarily lifts when, oncemore, they feel the eyes of an audience upon them. Their old passion for holding the centre of the stage guides their uncertain footsteps to where the footlights shine, and summons up a wintry smile when the curtain rises. — Malcolm Muggeridge

God afflicts us because he loves us; and it is very pleasing to him, when in our afflictions he sees us abandon ourselves to his paternal care. — Benedict Joseph Labre

The scarcity that afflicts the world is not the fault of either science or nature. The cause is defective economic institutions which abort technology's affluence producing potential. — Louis O. Kelso

The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. — Frederick Douglass

Pain anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him ... Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded in other words the weak suffer more where the trial is the same than the strong. — Alexandre Dumas

It is the cruelest of all ironies that moderns imagine themselves to be (abstractly understood) "individuals," because in actuality moderns are "types," abstracted and self-abstractive victims of a process of stereotyping that afflicts even would-be rebels and anarchists. — Kenny Smith

Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing, primal anxiety that often afflicts women. — Camille Paglia

We would not have our country's vigour exhausted or her moral force abated, by everlasting meddling and muddling in every quarrel, great and small, which afflicts the world. — Henry Cabot Lodge

One of the illnesses that often afflicts leaders is myopia. We begin to think that the story we are living and writing is the story. We become laser focused on our own goals, accomplishments, and responsibilities. But a habit of faith takes the pressure off. It reminds you that there is a bigger story of which yours is only one part. It allows us to stop worrying about what others are saying about us and instead consider what God might be saying to us. — Brad Lomenick

The Duke would not pay for the works. He says that the Castle can never be taken. That is called hubris, Giacomo, the belief that you are never wrong. Believing you are never wrong is an error that afflicts great men. I have learned that to be right you must first be wrong many times. Without making errors
and learning from them
a man cannot find the truth. — Christopher Peter Grey

A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. — Theodore Kaczynski

To be polite to everybody except the people they love most is a nervous affectation that afflicts many families ... when they come home, they take off their smiles and soft words, and sit about, spiritually in their underwear. This isn't pretty. — Margaret Fishback

Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward. — Finley Peter Dunne

Of the seven deadly sins, surely it is pride that most afflicts the gardener. — Michael Pollan

I think of the difficulties which, in various countries, today afflicts the world of work and business; I think of how many, and not just young people, are unemployed, many times due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks selfish profit, beyond the parameters of social justice. — Pope Francis

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence. — Agnes Repplier

Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something ugly. His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride - they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there. — Alice Walker

Sexism is not confined by border, race, class, sexuality or gender and, to my mind (and Margo Kingston's in Chapter 6), it is inextricably bound up with a mindset of entitlement that also afflicts our relationship with the planet. — Samantha Trenoweth

He will experience that prickle, that shiver of disgust that afflicts him in both his happiest and most wretched moments, the one that asks him who he thinks he is to inconvenience so many people, to think he has the right to keep going when even his own body tells him he should stop. — Hanya Yanagihara

This may be the time to address a problem that afflicts even experienced researchers and at some point will probably afflict you. As you shuffle through hundreds of notes and a dozen lines of thought, you start feeling that you're not just spinning your wheels but spiraling down into a black hole of confusion, paralyzed by what seems to be an increasingly complex and ultimately unmanageable task. The bad news is that there's no sure way to avoid such moments. The good news is that most of us have them and they usually pass. Yours will too if you keep moving along, following your plan, taking on small and manageable tasks instead of trying to confront the complexity of the whole project. It's another reason to start early, to break a big project into its smallest steps, and to set achievable deadlines, — Kate L. Turabian

I was spiritually bankrupt, and when that happens, it's like a spiritual cancer afflicts you. — Mel Gibson

Complacency often afflicts precisely those who have been the most successful. — Andrew S. Grove

Then you my goddess with your immortal lips smiling
Would ask what now afflicts me, why again
I am calling and what now I with my restive heart
Desired:
Whom now shall I beguile
To bring you to her love?
Who now injures you, Sappho?
For if she flees, soon shall she chase
And, rejecting gifts, soon shall she give.
If she does not love you, she shall do so soon
Whatsoever is her will.
Come to me now to end this consuming pain
Bringing what my heart desires to be brought:
Be yourself my ally in this fight. — Sappho

Foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society. — Adam Smith

Unfortunately, in the north and the south of Ireland, intolerant habits are part of the fabric of emotion, part of the identity crisis which afflicts the population of the country. — Tom Paulin

There is almost a touch of condescension in the act of hiring friends that secretly afflicts them. The injury will come out slowly: A little more honesty, flashes of resentment and envy here and there, and before you know it your friendship fades. The more favors and gifts you supply to revive the friendship, the less gratitude you receive. — Robert Greene

God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again. — Robert South

No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka bottle empty. — P.G. Wodehouse

Because lower-back pain afflicts more than three-quarters of all Americans at some point, the sit-up is fairly universally contraindicated. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us. — Blaise Pascal

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Life, despite the accompanying loneliness that afflicts human without umbilical attachments, was to be cherished for the sheer joy of nature. — Aporva Kala

There are moments when, faced with our lack of success, I wonder whether we are failures, proud but impotent. One thing reassures me as to our value: the boredom that afflicts us. It is the hall-mark of quality in modern men. — Jules De Goncourt

The things that the world fills time with are enough to turn the heart to stone, but the goodness of time itself is as untouched by them as the freshness of a spring morning is untouched by yelps from the scaffold. Time is good because the Holy One made it that way and then set the heavenly bodies wheeling through the sky so there would always be a way of marking its passage. Unfortunately, not even the most devout understand this for more than possibly a day or two out of the entire year when everything seems to be going their way. The rest of the year they go around like everybody else rolling their eyes and expecting terrible things to happen. When terrible things do happen, they fail to understand that for the most part they have brought them down on their own heads. They prefer to think that it is time itself that is terrible and that terrible things are only another method by which the Holy One afflicts them for their sins. — Frederick Buechner

God afflicts people for a reason — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The 12th System can protect you from the pain that afflicts your body, but it's helpless against the pain that crushes your soul. — Rick Yancey

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem. — Fred Saberhagen

The godly have some good in them, therefore the devil afflicts them; and some evil in them, therefore God afflicts them. — Thomas Watson

Don't let hatred control you, no matter what others do that causes [anger]. You would only become guilty of the same sin that afflicts them, and nothing would be solved. — Billy Graham

There is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. — Pope Francis

Any mental state that destroys calmness of mind and brings about mental misery, which upsets, afflicts, and torments the mind, is said to be a delusion. — Dalai Lama XIV

This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and memoirs I read
that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will; and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pass to the real life above. — Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Anger is one of the most common and destructive delusions, and it afflicts our mind almost every day. To solve the problem of anger, we first need to recognize the anger within our mind, acknowledge how it harms both ourself and others, and appreciate the benefits of being patient in the face of difficulties. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

Many curmudgeons believe that a malady afflicts many of today's twenty-somethings: their sense of entitlement. It is their impression that too many of you think doing routine office tasks is beneath you, and your supervisors are insufficiently sensitive to your needs. Curmudgeons are also likely to think that you have a higher opinion of your abilities than your performance warrants. — Charles Murray

Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people. — H.L. Mencken

God sometimes afflicts with infirmity of body. Sickness takes away the comfort of life, and makes one in deaths oft. — Thomas Watson

No marvel if the worldling escape earthly afflictions. God corrects him not. He is base born and begot. God will not do him the favour to whip him. The world afflicts him not, because it loves him: for each man is indulgent to his own. God uses not the rod where He means to use the Word. The pillory or scourge is for those malefactors that shall escape execution. — Joseph Hall

The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world. — Fay Weldon

If notwithstanding, a Rebellion of the same Kind now afflicts this Country, we should not infer that this Institution is useless, or should be laid aside; but just the Reverse. — Charles Inglis

LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women. — Lauren Willig

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere. — Stephen Vizinczey

They say tedium is a sickness that afflicts the inert, or only attacks those who have nothing to do. However, this affliction of the soul is subtles than that: it attacks those with a predisposition towards it and is less lenient on those who work or pretend to work (which comes to the same thing anyway) than on the truely inert. — Pessoa, Fernando

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. — H.L. Mencken

His was an illness that besets the intellectual: the indefatigable will to mastery. Chronic and incurable, it afflicts those who lust after a world that makes sense. — Siri Hustvedt

We may believe in the state's responsibility to alleviate the crushing poverty that afflicts 40 percent of Latin America's population, but most of us also affirm that there is no better cure for that poverty than a stronger, more globally integrated economy. — Oscar Arias

A very serious mental disorder is associated with creativity, a disorder that afflicts only the great souls, and its cure is not known, even to the great souls. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own. — Marcus Aurelius

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives. — Bertrand Russell

Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty. — P.G. Wodehouse

In a nutshell, individual selection favors what we call sin and group selection favors virtue. The result is the internal conflict of conscience that afflicts all but psychopaths, estimated fortunately to make up only 1 to 4 percent of the population. The products of the opposing two vectors in natural selection are hardwired in our emotions and reasoning, and cannot be erased. Internal conflict is not a personal irregularity but a timeless human quality. No such conflict exists or can exist in an eagle, fox, or spider, for example, whose traits were born solely of individual selection, or a worker ant, whose social traits were shaped entirely by group selection. — Edward O. Wilson

No one is immune from addiction; it afflicts people of all ages, races, classes, and professions. — Patrick J. Kennedy

Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives. Fear of being no good. Also fear of being overlooked. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear that one's efforts and striving will come to nothing. Fear of the step that leaves no trace. Fear of the forces of chance and nature that wipe away shallow prints. Fear of dining alone and unnoticed. Fear of going unrecognized. Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers. — Roberto Bolano

Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. — Viktor E. Frankl

There's no doubt having an autistic child represents tremendous challenges for both the children and their parents, but in my experience, it has brought me closer to my family and has given me an appreciation for how the human brain develops and the uniqueness of each child it afflicts. — Manny Alvarez

Given the slow pace of Washington's bureaucracy, policymakers are often busy solving yesterday's problems. This rearview mirror approach afflicts Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress. — Fred Upton

Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions. — Jack Vance

Unless biblical literalism is challenged overtly in the Christian church itself, it will, in my opinion, kill the Christian faith. It is not just a benign nuisance that afflicts Christianity at its edges; it is a mentality that renders the Christian faith unbelievable to an increasing number of the citizens of our world. The — John Shelby Spong

The urge to fight, to maul, to murder: it is the greatest cancer that afflicts mankind. It obliterates the body of the victim, and the spirit of the the one who strikes the blow. I have seen it... — Garth Ennis

So let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the worst afflictions with a brave and resolute staunchness. Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts. — Seneca.

Depression is a democratic sickness: it afflicts everyone. — Indro Montanelli

Selfishness so often is the basis of money problems, which are a very serious and real factor affecting the stability of family life. Selfishness is at the root of adultery, the breaking of solemn and sacred covenants to satisfy selfish lust. Selfishness is the antithesis of love. It is a cankering expression of greed. It destroys self-discipline. It obliterates loyalty. It tears up sacred covenants. It afflicts both men and women. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you. — Maya Angelou