Blunted Quotes & Sayings

The sadness of our existence should not leave us blunted, on the contrary
how to remain thin-skinned, vulnerable and stay alive? — Montgomery Clift

I left my Phillie at home, Do you have another? I wanna get blunted, my brother. — Daryl Barnes

Even the best Mindset will become contaminated and eventually blunted in a toxic organisational culture. — Tony Dovale

There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you- a train, say, or the future- has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a somber sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. — Wallace Stegner

But the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions did not avert his eyes any more. By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched unmoved. — Viktor E. Frankl

It is one thing to train in the yard with a blunted sword in hand, and another to drive a foot of sharpened steel into a man's gut and see light go out of his eyes. — George R R Martin

But now, our daily monkeyshines are such, our preoccupations are so low, our language has be come so debased, the words so blunted and damaged, we've said such stupid and dull things, the the higher beings hear only babbling and grunting and TV commercials - the dog-food level of things. This says nothing to them. What pleasure can these higher beings take in this kind of materialism, devoid of higher thought or poetry? As a result, all that we can hear in sleep is matter creaking and hissing and washing, the rustling of plants, and air conditioning. So we are incomprehensible to the higher beings. They can't influence us and they themselves suffer a corresponding privation. — Saul Bellow

The fine point of seldom pleasure has been blunted — Aldous Huxley

If this is long delayed, weapons are blunted and morale depressed. — Sun Tzu

The imagination of our children is blunted on television, and their thinking is done for them. — Stanley R. Jaffe

Don't try to justify yourself on the ground that somebody must do this kind of work. Let "somebody," not yourself, take the responsibility ... Many a man has dwarfed his manhood, cramped his intellect, crushed his aspiration, blunted his finer sensibilities, in some mean, narrow occupation because there was money in it. — Orison Swett Marden

Two dozen
and yet you killed all but one?" The provost arched a brow and set her quill down again as if unwilling to record a falsehood.
"Dear lady, I killed them from youngest child to oldest woman, and when I was done I blunted three axes dismembering their corpses. I am Jorg of Ancrath
I burned ten thousand in Gelleth and didn't think it too many. — Mark Lawrence

Everyone in the full enjoyment of all the blessings of his life, in his normal condition, feels some individual responsibility forthe poverty of others. When the sympathies are not blunted by any false philosophy, one feels reproached by one's own abundance. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The darts of love are blunted by maiden modesty. — Miguel De Cervantes

By being seldom seen, I could not stir,
But, like a comet, I was wondered at ...
He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded
seen, but with such eyes,
As, sick and blunted with community,
Afford no extraordinary gaze. — William Shakespeare

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival. — Yann Martel

You're wrong, I want to say. I'm exactly like you. But I can't. The fact is, alcoholics have programs, steps to take so they can fit into society and function. Crazies like Alison
all they have are padded cells and blunted utensils. That's their normal.
Our normal. — A.G. Howard

The years of imprisonment hardened me ... Perhaps if you have been given a moment to hold back and wait for the next blow, your emotions wouldn't be blunted as they have been in my case. When it happens every day of your life, when that pain becomes a way of life, I no longer have the emotion of fear.there is no longer anything I can fear. There is nothing the government has not done to me. There isn't any pain I haven't known. — Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Blunted unto goodness is the heart which anger never stirreth, but that which hatred swelleth, is keen to carve out evil. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

As we grow into maturity in Christ our distinctiveness is accentuated, not blunted. General directions, useful as they are, don't take into account the details that face us as holiness takes root in the particular social and personal place we are planted. — Eugene H. Peterson

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

It is necessary to go through life a little blunted, a little cloaked, how else to bear even a single day? The horror and the glory would overwhelm me. Papa used to talk about the story of the burning bush when God appears to Moses as a roar of fire. Moses asks to see God face to face and God tells him that to do so, even partially, even for a second, would kill him with its beauty and its power. 'Who shall look on God and live?' To Papa this was the central paradox of his religion, for there is no life without God and yet to approach God means death. — Jeanette Winterson

What are we doing when we brainwash children in schools to cut open their fellow animals? Are we dangerously desensitizing them? Some of the most warped and blunted people I know are those who have gone through training of this sorts. — Richard D. Ryder

Here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction. — Arthur Conan Doyle

These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity. — Herbert Read

More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood. Armour encumbers, restricts the body and soul within it. But it also protects. Blows are blunted. Feelings lose their edge, leaving us to suffer naught but a plague of bruises, and, after a time, bruises fade. — Steven Erikson

Any time someone gives you drugs, the purpose is to subdue. Always. Whether it is from a dealer, a friend, your mother/brother/sister/son, or your government
especially your government
the intention is to subdue, and always to feed another motive. Why?
Because in getting high, your power and your intellect are blunted. Can the motive ever be in your best interests? Governments notoriously use sex, drink, and drugs to subdue their people. Notoriously. And we're falling for it. — Northern Adams

And let me tell you this: our higher senses are blunted. We are so drenched with material sin, that we should probably fail to recognize real wickedness if we encountered it — Arthur Machen

Having stumbled upon a tolerable career, for the first time in my life I was actually living above the poverty line. My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness. — Jon Krakauer

The parents sat round watching, and in their crass faces - faces not harsh or evil, only blunted by ignorance and mean virtues - you could see a solemn approval, a solemn pleasure in the spectacle of sin rebuked. — George Orwell

Alas. What have we done to our good, bawdy, Anglo-Saxon four-letter words? ... We have blunted them so with overuse that they no longer have any real meaning for us ... When will we be able to redeem our shock words? They have been turned to marshmallows ... We no longer have anything to cry in time of crisis. 'Help!' we bleat. And no one hears us. 'Help' is another of those four-letter words that don't mean anything any more. — Madeleine L'Engle

Come quickly with me.
Inhale the divine that swoops
from nostril to blunted throat
then sneaks past guarded doors
into the hallway of your heart
where the lamplight grows. — Merle Nudelman

Is senses blunted by a permanent awareness of loss — Toni Morrison

No one is adequate to comprehending the misery of my lot! Fate obliges me to be constantly in movement: I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight in the same place. I have no Friend in the world, and from the restlessness of my destiny I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the Grave: But Death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the Ocean; The Waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore: I rush into fire; The flames recoil at my approach: I oppose myself to the fury of Banditti; Their swords become blunted, and break against my breast: The hungry Tiger shudders at my approach, and the Alligator flies from a Monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his Creatures respect this fatal mark! — Matthew Gregory Lewis

It is tempting to conform: community life is a lot easier where everyone appears to agree with everyone else, and where dissent is blunted by the conventions of compromise. — Tony Judt

I wouldn't be a very good hunter without these glasses. I'm not a very good hunter with these glasses, but I'd be even worse without them, so that would put a crimp in how many kids I could have, so all of these medical advances have at least in some parts of the world blunted natural selection. — Carl Zimmer

Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted. — Miguel De Cervantes

Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character. — James Bridie

He felt as though his capacity for loving had been blunted, the nerve endings severed. He — Robert Galbraith

The most extraordinary thing about it all was how simple it was just to carry on. There were meals to be prepared and eaten; dishes to be washed; clothes to be laundered, ironed, and put on and taken off; beds to be slept in and made and unmade. The prosaic needs of day-to-day living blunted all impact of the miraculous; it demanded that the glorious be relegated. And she knew that even if she were able to convince everyone involved that she had witnessed something remarkable, had undergone a transcendental and miraculous experience, reached and returned from another world, it almost seemed like it would not ever, and could not ever, truly matter. — Graham Joyce

This was a family that consumed attractive, talented people. Its aim was to preserve beauty and genius through the centuries. For all eternity. To bottle the spark of magic that flares up in the soul of an artist, to preserve in wax the pain that is born in the heart of an actor, to dry and store the subtle, shifting images that hover above the head of a writer.

Madness. They didn't realize it was impossible. As the years pass by, feelings and emotions are blunted. And thousands of years of life kill all feelings. The soul becomes cold. It can't burn anymore. The farys took away from humans the one thing that I sought and valued in them most of all - their bright, vital feelings. — Lena Meydan

I work within the framework of a very concerted, purely driven Protestant Christian mindset. I had dark early circumstances. I went inward. I have a sturdy will. I have a big heart. I'm a decent guy. And I have a great gift. It's blunted me to the world in many ways. — James Ellroy

I merely declare my independence. I merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe; and I shall not admit that any of them are blunted merely because they have been used. — G.K. Chesterton

And if it be true that the loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own, the work of art which does not remain indifferent to the spurious artists, which is not contested by fools, and which is not satisfied with awakening the enthusiasm of the few, by this very fact becomes profaned, trite, almost repulsive to the initiate.
This promiscuity in admiration, furthermore, was one of the greatest sources of regret in his life. Incomprehensible successes had forever spoiled for him many pictures and books once cherished and dear. Approved by the mob, they began to reveal imperceptible defects to him, and he rejected them, wondering meanwhile if his perceptions were not growing blunted. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Where did you say you found that bird again?"
"In my head." Ronan's laugh was a sharp jackal cry.
"Dangerous place," commented Noah.
Ronan stumbled, all his edges blunted by alcohol, and the raven in his hands let out a feeble sound more percussive than vocal. He replied, "Not for Chainsaw."
Back out in the hard spring night, Gansey tipped his head back. Now that he knew that Ronan was all right, he could see that Henrietta after dark was a beautiful place, a patchwork town embroidered with black tree branches.
A raven, of all the birds for Ronan to turn up with.
Gansey didn't believe in coincidences. — Maggie Stiefvater

Fifteen days after we are born, we begin to discriminate between colors. For the rest of our lives, barring blunted or blinded sight, we find ourselves face-to-face with all these phenomena at once, and we call the whole shimmering mess "color." You might even say that it is the business of the eye to make colored forms out of what is essentially shimmering. This is how we "get around" in the world. Some might also call it the source of our suffering. — Maggie Nelson

I feel differently immediately when I start to put weight on. I don't like that sluggish, blunted disposition that I have when that happens. — Mehmet Oz

Great Light, the Enemy's power is so fragile! The devils can use only what we ourselves will give them. Do you see? Give them nothing and their power fails; it falls like a spent arrow, like a blade broken and blunted. — Stephen R. Lawhead

The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender. — Dante Alighieri

The sword that has been forged against us - is already blunted; — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

What was unfolding in Mumbai was unfolding elsewhere, too. In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large. The gates of the rich, occasionally rattled, remained unbreached. The politicians held forth on the middle class. The poor took down one another, and the world's great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace. — Katherine Boo

When?' said the moon to the stars in the sky
Soon' said the wind that followed them all
Who?' said the cloud that started to cry
Me' said the rider as dry as a bone
How?' said the sun that melted the ground
and 'Why?' said the river that refused to run
and 'Where?' said the thunder without a sound
Here' said the rider and took up his gun
No' said the stars to the moon in the sky
No' said the trees that started to moan
No' said the dust that blunted its eyes
Yes' said the rider as white as a bone
No' said the moon that rose from his sleep
No' said the cry of the dying sun
No' said the planet as it started to weep
Yes' said the rider and laid down his gun — Nick Cave

Idiot. Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business. A moment later the couple went off
he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter
their first and last encounter
with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude? — Umberto Eco

The war on Christmas is waged of weakness and fed by vision blinded. It is a war of intellect blunted to stupidity and calling begging at the feet of cowardice. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude. — Joseph Heller

Some people's spirits, but some of them will never be dull not be blunted. — Mehmet Kececi

But the moment a bird was dead, no matter how beautiful it had been in life, the pleasure of possession became blunted for me. — John James Audubon

We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear, but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame, or struck dumb with terror, or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations ... — C.S. Lewis

The age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. — Katherine Boo

The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies. — Frances Wright

Truth is a point, the subtlest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn away, or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt those who touch it; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life blood, of those who press earnestly upon it. — Walter Savage Landor

His gaze, blunted
by the unnumbered procession
of iron bars, uncounted
as his softly padded steps.
Smooth motion of blood and sinew
turning in its own, small circle
prescribed by bars and walls
... and skin, confined.
Suddenly, without warning,
a flash of light and image
pierces the caged brain,
and passing through its beating heart
to stillness finds its way. — Rainer Maria Rilke

It creates anew the universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I was appalled at the amount of study necessary in order to qualify in medicine, and gradually my desire was blunted by a keener - and secret - wish to become an actor. — Conrad Veidt

The great danger in today's world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. — Pope Francis

He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was this? A catalogue of old books? What was his talent anyway? It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do. — Ernest Hemingway,

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead. — Barack Obama

The unwillingness of most leaders to set standards, to administer feedback when standards are not met, to praise clearly when standards are met, stands in the way of the development of excellence. The leader who makes no demands of his disciples cannot really lead them at all. The sense of new excitement and new challenge generated by the gospel will be blunted by leaders who shield followers from the full demands of fellowship. — Neal A. Maxwell

My features have blunted with the passage of time, my reflection only faintly resembles how I see myself. Gravity demands payback for the years my body has resisted it. — Rabih Alameddine

In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large. The gates of the rich, occasionally rattled, remained unbreached. — Katherine Boo

Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure- or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Whatever variety evolution brings forth ... Every new dimension of world-response ... means another modality for God's trying out his hidden essence and discovering himself through the surprises of world-adventure ... the heightening pitch and passion of life that go with the twin rise of perception and motility in animals. The ever more sharpened keenness of appetite and fear, pleasure and pain, triumph and anguish, love and even cruelty - their very edge is the deity's gain. Their countless, yet never blunted incidence - hence the necessity of death and new birth - supplies the tempered essence from which the Godhead reconstitutes itself. All this, evolution provides in the mere lavishness of its play and sternness of its spur. Its creatures, by merely fulfilling themselves in pursuit of their lives, vindicate the divine venture. Even their suffering deepens the fullness of the symphony. Thus, this side of good and evil, God cannot lose in the great evolutionary game. — Hans Jonas

Africa may yet prove to be the spiritual conservatory of the world ... When the civilised nations in consequence of their wonderful material development, shall have had their spiritual susceptibilities blunted through the agency of a captivating and absorbing materialism, it may be that they have to resort to Africa to recover some of the simple elements of faith. — Edward Wilmot Blyden