Being Paralyzed Quotes & Sayings

Look at you. You're young. You're scared. Why are you so scared? Stop being paralyzed. Stop swallowing your words. Stop caring what other people think. Wear what you want. Say what you want. Listen to the music you want to listen to. Play it loud as fuck and dance to it. Go out for a drive at midnight and forget you have work the next day. Stop waiting for Friday. Live now. Do it now. Take risks. This life is yours. — Anonymous

There is something I have learned since being paralyzed, and that is that in the absence of sensory information, the imagination always tends to the grotesque. — Patrick McGrath

When you have to manage the world, please everyone, earn more than you did last year, and work off five pounds, you will be driven. If not, you run the risk of being un-American or even un-Christian because our economy and churches rely on such people. Even when paralyzed by circumstances, a stressed person is a driven person. — Edward T. Welch

President Obama's election has taught us to stop being paralyzed by excuses and given us a floodgate of hope. I'm more daring and going after things that I once thought were not possible. — Tasha Smith

For shit's sake, it wasn't like there was a twelve-step for being the Scribe Virgin's kid:
Hi, I'm Vishous. I'm her son and I've been her son for three hundred years.
HI, VISHOUS.
She's done a head job on me again, and I'm trying not to go to the Other Side and scream bloody murder at her.
WE UNDERSTAND, VISHOUS.
And on the bloody note, I'd like to dig up my father and kill him all over again, but I can't. So I'm just going to try to keep my sister alive even though she's paralyzed, and attempt to fight the urge to find some pain so I can deal with this Payne.
YOU'RE A STRAIGHT-UP PUSSY, VISHOUS, BUT WE SUPPORT YOUR SORRY ASS. — J.R. Ward

I guess you're happy if you have some kind of balance in you. I'm a human being. I have days when I feel paralyzed, days when I feel like a slug. Then I have days when I have good energy, I've read the newspaper and I've done different things. — Frances Conroy

The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have more self-doubt than any writer I've ever known ... The positive aspect of self-doubt - if you can channel it into useful activity instead of being paralyzed by it - is that by the time you reach the end of a novel, you know precisely why you made every decision in the narrative, the multiple purposes of every metaphor and image. — Dean Koontz

I can understand where he's coming from ... I too was once secretly in love with you, and I could do nothing but watch from afar. Being close to you while pretending that we're nothing more than friends. The first time I touched you with sexual intention, it was like an electrical current flowing through my fingertips and it paralyzed me. I wanted to make your senses go numb with pleasure. Not only physical pleasure, but desire too, deep inside. — Yonezou Nekota

You said how Michelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist. (...) You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifida that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O'Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.

"According to Thomas Mann," Peter said, "'Great artists are great invalids. — Chuck Palahniuk

I tried to utter, but could not. The tongue had got all tangled up with the uvula, and the brain seemed paralyzed. I was feeling the same stunned feeling which, I imagine, Chichester Clam must have felt as the door of the potting shed slammed and he heard Boko starting to yodel without
a nightmare sensation of being but a helpless pawn in the hands of Fate. — P.G. Wodehouse

I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders. — Marian Wright Edelman

Look for small victories and build on that. Each small victory, even if it is just getting up five minutes earlier, gives you confidence. You realize that these little victories make you feel great, and you keep going. You realize that being paralyzed by fear of failure is worse than failure. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like. — Robert Bly

The Jew is contrary to our being ... He desecrated our people, spit on our ideals, paralyzed the strength of the nation, made our customs rotten, and polluted the morale. — Joseph Goebbels

Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you're paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn't matter. You don't have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. — Shonda Rhimes

I was paralyzed with fear. It was unbearable to be among other kids who were just standing around being fine. It was one of the many inconveniences of this paradox I lived with -the more people I was surrounded by, the more frighteningly alone I felt. — Sarah Silverman

Maybe she'd been scared of being paralyzed by fear again. — John Green

Normality may lie in being a selectively deaf self-righteous victim of your own cognitive dissonance...but then again...who wants to be an open minded but self-doubting fence-sitter paralyzed by internal conflict? life eh? — Tweedy Peanut

Watching someone you love go through difficult times is like being trapped in your own body but paralyzed. You want to yell at them, scream, help them, but your body won't move, and you know that no matter how hard you try, in the end, the path is theirs to choose, you can't choose for them. What a terrifying concept, especially considering we hardly see every option when we're stuck in our own self-defeat. — Rachel Van Dyken

If you are paralyzed by your past, if Satan is destroying your gifts and your calling by his incessant replaying of old tapes, you're actually being hit by a double whammy. The original damage in the past is one thing - but now you're letting yourself be hurt and sidetracked again by the memory of what happened ... We should not be ignorant of Satan's devices, and these ugly memories are one of the main weapons in his arsenal. — Jim Cymbala

If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good
which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward
this man, and he alone, is truly brave. — Josef Pieper

Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing. — Chuck Barris

Being a parent is a monumental thing. You shape reality for another person. You cannot be an illusion. You cannot be paralyzed by the fear that you are an illusion. If you have done a bad job, or no job at all, what remains of you is proof that the world is an unfeeling place. If you have done a good job, what remains is the part of you that was magical. — Steven Galloway

Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies. — Paulo Coelho

If the people who said they loved you abused or neglected you, it can feel terrifying to love again ... Commitment or love with a family feeling can be scarier still. The child in you still equates commitment with being locked into a situation where there's no escape. So as you get closer, you may become paralyzed by all your old defenses & memories. — Ellen Bass

You can't be afraid of the problem. Don't be afraid of failure; don't be afraid to make mistakes. Make sure you learn from each step; iterate, and stay as efficient as possible without being paralyzed by a difficult situation. — Jon Oringer

So she became impulsive, scared by her inaction into perpetual action. When the Eagle confronted her with the expulsion, maybe she blurted out Marya's name because it was the first that came to mind, because in that moment she didn't want to get expelled and she couldn't think past that moment. She was scared, sure. But more importantly, maybe she'd been scared of being paralyzed by fear again.

~Miles/Pudge on Alaska, pg 120-121 — John Green

A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It's like losing a finger. It's worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul. — Ken Follett

We don't have to experience shame to be paralyzed by it - the fear of being perceived as unworthy is enough to force us to silence our stories. — Brene Brown

The fear of making mistakes and not doing a particular ministry well has paralyzed many believers, and that is a tragedy. They fail to see that perfectionism is religion (form without power). Excellence is Kingdom. Saying yes to the King is the first step in discipleship. And being driven by love makes it impossible to remain stationary. — Bill Johnson

The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy. — Michael Bloomberg

The only faults considered grave are the following: not respecting the rights of one's neighbor, letting oneself be paralyzed by fear, feeling guilty, thinking one does not deserve the good and bad which occurs in life, and being a coward. — Paulo Coelho

I should run, but I'm paralyzed by the sight of him. Even moving slowly, Isaiah possesses the prowess of a panther. His muscles pronounced in the easy way he strides. The set, determined gaze on me as his prey. This only proves how weak I am. Like the animal on the verge of being devoured in the wild, I stand here stunned by his dangerous beauty. — Katie McGarry

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it. — Bertrand Russell

If the grain of wheat could know fear, it would be paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of being dropped in the ground, covered over, put out of sight, doomed to inactivity, yet what a glorious harvest awaits it! — Fred Rogers

My father died when I was 10; my sister got polio a couple of years later and was paralyzed. So there I was - my sister in a wheel chair, my father gone, and my mother a quiet little mouse. You see, it was the '30s in the South, so my mother was not prepared to cope. So I was scared to death. And being that scared, everything afterward became a struggle not to go down the drain. Struggling became a way of life for me. — Helen Gurley Brown

Often, when we are in trouble, or doubting, or struggling, we rely on others to carry us to God. Just as often we must do the carrying, to help friends who are struggling. This is one of the many benefits of organized religion, as we all need others to help us find God. Even though we may disagree with others and find life in a community occasionally annoying and sometimes scandalous, we need others, because the community is one way that we are carried to God, especially when we are too weak to walk to God on our own. But I wondered about the paralyzed man. He may have felt shame for his illness or for being unable to support himself. Maybe his friends carried him in spite of himself. Sometimes when we are too embarrassed to approach God, someone must bring us there - even drag us there. Many times when I am discouraged, demoralized, or angry at God, it is friends who remind me of God's great love and who carry me to God. We cannot come to God without others. — James Martin