Being Hysterical Quotes & Sayings

I am the son of poor peasants who came at a very young age to live in Algeria. I only recently saw the place where they were born, near the city of Marrakech. — Ahmed Ben Bella

Love & Marriage are about work & Compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being disappointed and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition. — Ayelet Waldman

Adult males in modern society who feel fulfilled in giving concern and tuition to boys and youths are portrayed as being interested only in boys' bodies (though this may be a small part of the attraction) and are spurned and traduced as sexual monsters. I believe we reap the harvest of ours hysterical and homophobia today in juvenile crime, drug use and delinquency. Consider the ethical training which boys and youths gained through shudo in Japan or in the system in Classical Greece, the tuition in manners, customs and humanity, the degree of civilised values imparted to them, the ideas of loyalty, honour and truthfulness; this highly personalised education with love and sensuality at its centre must be far more effective than any other. We in the West are bigoted fools to dismiss it with such horror. — Colin Spencer

To be just without being mad (and the madder you get the madder you get), to be peaceful without being stupid, to be interested without being compulsive, to be happy without being hysterical ... smoke grass. — Ken Kesey

You must not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to hate. Not because your tormentors have not earned it. But if you allow hatred to take root, it would flourish and spread during your years in the camps, driving out everything else, and ultimately corrode and warp your soul. You will no longer be yourself, your identity will be destroyed, all that will remain will be a hysterical, maddened and bedevilled husk of the human being that once was. — Irina Ratushinskaya

The main problem with the 'histronic behaviour' hypothesis, like the alternatives, is that it is unitary and simplistic, while the phenomena are complex and heterogeneous. When advanced as a sole and complete explanation, 'hysteria' is a vague and inadequate construct. ... "secondary gain and hysteria can occur as reactions to real events, real sociological problems, and real biomedical diseases, so the presence of these elements does not necessarily weigh in favour of Satanic ritual abuse's being entirely unreal. Ritual abuse cases need to be managed in such a way that hysteria, regression, grandiosity, and secondary gain are discouraged rather than fostered. However, it must be remembered that 'hysteria' and 'attention seeking' explanations generally function as justifications for not thinking about the complexities of the clinical problem. — Colin A. Ross

People were hysterical about Communism the way people today are hysterical about flag burning. I'm really against these people who try to show that they're great patriots, because they're not thinking, they're just being hysterical. — Julia Child

I remembered from movies and TV that a human being striking a window could cause it to shatter, but the glass was too strong or I was too weak. My body didn't do much anymore when I put it to things. I didn't even make much noise pounding my fist against the glass: the ones that turned to look dismissed me almost before they had swiveled their heads. I might have been a painting of a hysterical female, paused in motion and screaming decoratively. But my throat was going raw, and my hands hurt dully. — Alexandra Kleeman

The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men's theories of women, as they alwayshave done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it's because she doesn't quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man's picture of woman to live up to. — D.H. Lawrence

Sometimes I just want to go in a room and break things and scream. Like, it's so much pressure all the time and if you get upset or angry, people say, 'Are you on the rag of something?' And it's like I want to say, 'No. I'm just pissed off right now. Can't I just be pissed off? How come that's not okay for me?' Like my dad will say, 'I can't talk to you when you're hysterical.' And I'm totally not being hysterical! I'm just mad. And he's the one losing it. But then I feel embarrassed anyway. So I slap on that smile and pretend everything's okay even though it's not. — Libba Bray

There can be no relation more strange, more critical, than that between two beings who know each other only with their eyes, who meet daily, yes, even hourly, eye each other with a fixed regard, and yet by some whim or freak of convention feel constrained to act like strangers. Uneasiness rules between them, unslaked curiosity, a hysterical desire to give rein to their suppressed impulse to recognize and address each other; even, actually, a sort of strained but mutual regard. For one human being instinctively feels respect and love for another human being so long as he does not know him well enough to judge him; and that he does not, the craving he feels is evidence. — Thomas Mann

The trouble is that, for women, being "nice" often translates into putting up with things we should never put up with. How many times has some creep sat uncomfortably close to me on the bus and stared me down, yet I'm too afraid to just get up and move, lest I offend him?
We smile when we're harassed on the street or hit on by jerks. We laugh at sexist jokes. We learn that when we have strong opinions, we'll be called bitches and that if we get angry, we'll be called hysterical. When we say what we want, we're called pushy or aggressive.
Part of learning "ladylike" behavior is about learning to smile politely when someone is being crude. Femininity has long been attached to passivity and to being docile. Men fight, women giggle and fume silently. — Unknown

It was easy to laugh at Fascism when we imagined that it was based on hysterical nationalism, because it seemed obvious that the Fascist states, each regarding itself as the chosen people and patriotic contra mundum, would clash with one another. But nothing of the kind is happening. Fascism is now an international movement, which means not only that the Fascist nations can combine for purposes of loot, but that they are groping, perhaps only half consciously as yet, towards a world-system. For the vision of the totalitarian state there is being substituted the vision of the totalitarian world. — George Orwell

The laws of nature are not intelligent,' I replied. 'The force of gravity is not intelligent. Electricity is not intelligent. A savage looking at a television might assume that it's a sapient being, but we - '
'A sapient being? Looking at a television these days, the only possible assumption is that it's a loud-mouthed, hysterical madman suffering from progressive mental debility,' Anna Tikhonovna said derisively. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Are you super strong? Can you be hurt?"
"Of course I can," replied Dimitri. "I'm strong, but all sorts of things can still hurt me."
And then being Rose Hathaway, I said something I really shouldn't have to the boy. "You should go punch him and find out."
Jonathan's mother screamed again, but he was a fast little bastard, eluding her grasp. He ran up to Dimitri before anyone could stop him-well, I could have-and pounded his tiny fist against Dimitri's knee.
Then, which the same reflexes that allowed him to dodge enemy attacks, Dimitri immediately feinted falling backward, as though Jonathan had knocked him over. Clutching his knee, Dimitri groaned as though he were in terrible pain.
Several people laughed, and by then, one of the other guardians had caught hold of Jonathan and returned him to his near-hysterical mother. As he was being dragged away, Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at Dimitri. "He doesn't seem very strong to me. I don't think he's a Strigoi. — Richelle Mead

It shouldn't be very difficult for anyone to resist the temptation to force himself into the pattern of the structured man. One needs only to remember that a groove may be safe--but that, as one wears away at it, the groove becomes first a rut and finally a grave. — J. Paul Getty

If it is the devil that tempts the young to enjoy themselves, is it not the same personage that persuades the old to condemn their enjoyment? And is not condemnation perhaps merely a form of excitement appropriate to old age? — Bertrand Russell

It almost takes people by surprise when I'm not a big talker. Because I'm known as being sort of a loud mouth. I have a lot to say. But I try to be more thoughtful with my comments or reactions, unless it's something witty or hysterical that I just can't keep myself from blurting or tweeting! — Natalie Maines

There you two are. Dessert is being served. Are you coming?" Roxanne, her cheeks hot and her lips bruised from Maverick's kisses, just about died when he whispered naughtily in her ear, "I think we already came." Roxanne could do nothing to control the giggles that erupted, a hysterical laughter that had her mother eyeing her strangely. — Eve Langlais

Sexists refer to every female political opinion as "hysterical," just like they refer to every word a woman says when she opens her mouth as "shouting," and for the same reasons - not because the women are actually being loud or unreasonable, but because women are not supposed to have opinions or voices at all. — Sady Doyle

To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences - and unique to the United States. You don't hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood. — Gore Vidal

There has to be something wrong when spurning reproduction doesn't make Gabriella and me the "mavericks" we'd both have prided ourselves as in our younger days but standard issue for our era. Surely the contemporary absorption with our own lives as the be-all and end-all ultimately hails from an insidious misanthropy - a lack of faith in the whole human enterprise. In its darkest form, the growing cohort of childless couples determined to throw all their money at Being Here Now - to take that step aerobics class, visit Tanzania, put an addition on the house while making no effort to ensure there's someone around to inherit the place when the party is over - has the quality of the mad, slightly hysterical scenes of gleeful abandon that fiction — Lionel Shriver

She tore herself away, and went out. And I went away. I cannot describe the emotion with which I went away. I should not wish it ever to come again; but I should think myself unfortunate had I never experienced such an emotion. — Ivan Turgenev

In all societies, women are in double jeopardy; on the one hand we are expected to conform to certain emotional standards in our relationships with others at the penalty of being declared insane; on the other, our political perceptions are labeled "irrational" and "hysterical. — Adrienne Rich

Love and marriage are about work and compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being dissapointed , and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition'. 'That's not what I want. Disspointment and comfort is not what I want'. 'Why not? Because you expect it to be magical and mystical? Because you don't want to work?' 'Why can't it be magical? Why can't it be mystical?' 'Because if you count on magic and mysticism, then as soon as shit happens, as soon as life interferes, as soon as your stepson treats you badly, or your husband's ex-wife has a fit about something, or your baby dies, as soon as life happens, the magic will disappear and you'll be left with nothing. You can't count on magic. Trust me, I know. Sweetheart, little girl, you can't count on magic'. — Ayelet Waldman

What we call 'normal' is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical 'mechanisms.' There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically 'normal' forms of alienation. The 'normally' alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those that are labeled by the 'formal' majority as bad or mad. — R.D. Laing

Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Always feel obligated to help people and carter for more needs of people so as to be more relevant to the world — Sunday Adelaja

But my biggest joy and best education and proudest achievement has been being able to show up for work and life and not cause too much trouble a day at a time in spite of my hysterical, somewhat dramatic, nature. — Mark Vonnegut

It's interesting with my blog, because it feels to me less like a blog and more like a forum, because my readers are so funny and leave hysterical comments. And I'm not being humble when I say that very often, the comments are so much better than the post originally was. — Jenny Lawson

Few people repent at leisure after taking the high road. — Walter Spence

Gabby," Jenna cried. "It's so horrible. I can't believe this happened."
"Jenna," I said in a soothing voice, "I'm alive and okay. No worries."
She sniffled into the phone. "No, it's not that."
I waited a beat. "What?"
"The bridesmaid dresses are all wrong!" she wailed.
"Wait a second," I said. "You aren't upset over my being dead for four days?"
"I knew you'd be fine," she explained, brushing off the subject. "But these dresses? I don't know what to do. They're the wrong color, and they're hideous!" She went into a hysterical fit of tears. — Laura Kreitzer