Discomfiting Quotes & Sayings

Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hardest, most discomfiting discovery is that each of us must emancipate himself. — Daniel J. Boorstin

It's a strange truth that no matter how persuaded we might be of our own correctness, the discomfiting realization that others disagree with us causes a paralyzing inability to argue the case convincingly. — Brittney Ryan

The process of being filmed was, I found, peculiar but not discomfiting. At 13, you are malleable, adaptable, better able to take the unusual in your stride. — James Lovegrove

The resulting fractious, at times even dysfunctional, relationship between the top brass and civilian political leaders is one of Washington's dirty little secrets - recognized by all of the inside players, concealed from an electorate that might ask discomfiting questions about who is actually in charge. — Andrew J. Bacevich

Like her friend and admirer Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst was a passionate explorer of the sacred and the profane, the pure and the obscene, and shows, in this discomfiting, hypnotic work, just how rarely those categories are what they seem. The translation is excellent - what a rare relief. — Benjamin Moser

For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed. — Susan Abulhawa

We are fond of saying that the Bible has all the answers. And that is certainly correct. The text of the Bible sets us in a reality that is congruent with who we are as created beings in God's image and what we are destined for in the purposes of Christ. But the Bible also has all the questions, many of them that we would just as soon were never asked of us, and some of which we will spend the rest of our lives doing our best to dodge. The Bible is a most comforting book; it is also a most discomfiting book. — Eugene H. Peterson

Everybody wants to identify things about a poet or about a playwright. They want to codify something or put it in terms that can be understood. We want to understand something, because that's how our minds work. We like to understand things, and it's discomfiting if we don't understand things. — Anthony Zerbe

Bonhoeffer's permanent legacy as a theologian has been to show that in the modern world, as in Josiah's and Huldah's Jerusalem, fostering the discomfiting yet life-giving practice of reading the Bible against ourselves is a major public responsibility of the Christian teacher and theologian. — Ellen F. Davis

Writing is an often-painful task that can feel like the death of one's past. Equally discomfiting is seeing one's present commitments to truths crumble once one begins to tap away at the keyboard or scar the page with ink. Writing demands a different sort of apprenticeship to ideas than does speaking. It beckons one to revisit over an extended, or at least delayed, period the same material and to revise what one thinks. Revision is reading again and again what one writes so that one can think again and again about what one wants to say and in turn determine if better and deeper things can be said. — Michael Eric Dyson

I so adored her when she let her warrior queen armor fall, and came, silly and giggling, into my arms. — Christopher Moore

This was what it meant to live in Botswana; when the rest of the world might work itself into a frenzy of activity, one might still sit, in the space before a house with ochre walls, a mug of bush tea in one's hand, and talk about very small things: headmen in wells, goats and jealousy. — Alexander McCall Smith

I was looking for inspiration. I found it in California. The weather was always great, and the majority of San Diego seemed to be youth-and if you weren't 21 and couldn't get into the clubs, you'd go to a coffeehouse and hang out. — Jason Mraz

Before moving on, I want to pause to point out that a lot of what search candidates call "illegal" questions may not technically be illegal. But they are absolutely inappropriate, and may well be ambiguous enough that they could lead to lawsuits alleging discrimination, and often do in hiring contexts that are more litigious than the academy. Not every grossly inappropriate and discomfiting question necessarily falls into the illegality. I am no lawyer and no expert, so beyond this I direct you to investigate further with human resources at your institution. In the meantime, master the art of redirection, as with toddlers. — Karen Kelsky

As discomfiting as it is to both market optimists and policy activists, a certain amount of instability is inherent to the economy. — Virginia Postrel

I never thought I'd be an expert at sword fighting, I never thought I'd be an expert in protein powders - I'm close to being an expert in both. It's great! — Liam McIntyre

There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you're determined to dislike for no good reason. — Gregory David Roberts

Every now and then, I'll meet an escapee, someone who has broken free of self-centeredness and lit out for the territory of compassion. You've met them, too, those people who seem to emit a steady stream of, for want of a better word, love-vibes. As soon as you come within range, you feel embraced, accepted for who you are. For those of us who suspect that you rarely get something for nothing, such geniality can be discomfiting. Yet it feels so good to be around them. They stand there, radiating photons of goodwill, and despite yourself you beam back, and the world, in a twinkling, changes. — Marc Ian Barasch

The vision of an entire world becoming just like us is at least as discomfiting as the thought that most of it won't. — Eva Hoffman

A good president does with executive power what Pablo Picasso did with paint. He takes bills into new and slightly discomfiting territory. He puts extra eyes on policies. He moves the mouth of the Supreme Court from where it should be to where it must be. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Honesty is seldom ingratiating and often discomfiting. — Tom Stoppard

It's a discomfiting thing to have the person you love more than anything in the world toss a knife at your friend's head and walk away. — Cecily White

Now in my middle fifties, an irrelevant codger, I find it discomfiting to see this generation dancing to the music of apocalypse and carrying their psychic burdens in front of them like infants in arms. — Julie Schumacher

It was better to be angry than to be hurt; maybe even better than being loved and held by him, because maybe anger was what she'd been feeling toward him all along, anger disguised as wanting. — Jonathan Franzen

Mr. D, wearing his leopard-skin jogging suit and rummaging through the refrigerator.
He looked up lazily. "Do you mind?"
Where's Chiron!" I shouted.
How rude." Mr. D took a swig from a jug of grape juice. "Is that how you say hello?"
Hello," I amended. "We're about to die! Where's Chiron? — Rick Riordan

Edan Lepucki sets her debut novel, 'California,' somewhere in the 2060s. The nearness of this era helps make her vision both more discomfiting and more credible. — Amity Gaige