Most Hurtful Quotes & Sayings

You're too sensitive' victims of sexual abuse are told over and over by those whose reality depends on being insensitive. Most adults who have been in the victim role cringe when anyone tells them they are sensitive. In fact, sensitivity is a lovely trait and one to be cherished in any human being. — Renee Fredrickson

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful. This is how philosophy evolved in the symposium, before philosophy was written down. And poetry began with the voice as its only player and the ear as its only recorder. — Christopher Hitchens

Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them. — Plutarch

Time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. Nowadays — Julian Barnes

When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called "cathexis". I his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting with loving." We all know how often individuals of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting of neglecting them. Since their feiling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.
When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. — Bell Hooks

Then one of the most hurtful memories came up. It was one night about a year ago. I was 16 and my mom brought a man home. She was high and passed out in her bed. The man staggered into my room and grabbed me. He tied my mouth shut and he rapped me. Right in the same bed with my mother high and passed out. All I could do was cry and I couldn't even yell loud enough to wake her up. — Anthony London

When I look closely at dairy, I see the hurtful exploitation of specifically female bodies so that some people can enjoy sensual pleasures of consumption while others enjoy the psychological pleasure of collecting profits from the exertions of somebody else's body. Cows are forcibly impregnated, dispossessed of their children, and then painfully robbed of the milk produced by their bodies for those children. No wonder I didn't want to see my complicity! Most women don't consciously perceive the everyday violence against girls and women that permeates and structures our society. How much harder it is, then, to see the gendered violence against nonhuman animals behind the everyday items on the grocery store shelf. When we, as women, partake of that violence, we participate in sexism even as we enjoy the illusory benefits of speciesism. No wonder a glimpse of the sexist violence behind my breakfast cereal left me dizzy. — Pattrice Jones

The most harmful lies and the most hurtful, always contain a grain of truth," he said. "But nevertheless, lies they do remain. — Robin Jarvis

Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart. — Stephen King

I have learned to accept the things I don't approve and those I cannot change and I have learned to release and to love those who did the most hurtful things in my life. I must admit, it is the most difficult lesson to contain but it's worth it. — Euginia Herlihy

. . . so many fond mothers spoil their children, and has made it questionable whether negligence or indulgence be most hurtful: but I am inclined to think, that the latter has done most harm. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights - the right to swear and curse at your fate! — Ivan Turgenev

If children conform to the standards set by their peers, in the seventies and eighties the peer pressure for black children to keep with their own was intense. Before desegregation, "acting white" was a phrase no one had ever heard with regard to school involvement or academics. Yet in the wake of busing, it rose to become one of the most hurtful insults one black student could level at another. Talking white, dressing white, being enthusiastic about anything "white" was forsaking one's own. For the thirty-eight black students at Vestavia, there was the black cafeteria table and there were the other cafeteria tables, and it was one or the other. There was no going back and forth. — Tanner Colby

We need to regularly stop and take stock; to sit down and determine within ourselves which things are worth valuing and which things are not; which risks are worth the cost and which are not. Even the most confusing or hurtful aspects of life can be made more tolerable by clear seeing and by choice. — Epictetus

In their marriage, partners never quite feel secure; there is always the fear of an imminent disaster, most likely of the mate's leaving the relationship. Needing to see the addict in a positive light, the partner tends to make excuses for the addict's hurtful behavior and tries to remember only the good times. For as long as possible, partners deny any evidence of the mate's affairs, and if confrontation can no longer be avoided, they believe the mate's promise to change. Whenever what the addict says disagrees with the objective evidence, partners are likely to believe what the addict says. They keep hoping that things will be better in the future, and usually have an apparently plausible explanation for why things are not that good at the moment. — Jennifer Schneider

I felt a combination of happiness and humility [ to People Magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People ]. At the same time there's a lot of pressure, because people can approach you whose intentions aren't in the best place, and they can say things that are very hurtful. And on one of those days when you wake up and you just go and get your coffee without worrying about looking your best, you make yourself vulnerable to someone who'd say something like, "You look awful for being on the Top 100 list." — Zoe Saldana

He was looking for the most hurtful way to tell the truth, but of course I already knew the truth. — John Green

Sometimes the most hurtful thing is the silence of friends, not the words of enemies — Lisa Vanderpump

You can never be annoyed by anyone when you are just alone, insults comes from being too familiar even with the most respectful persons. — Michael Bassey Johnson

What Zayd had said to her was hurtful. The words speared across the most sensitive part of her heart like how a gardening spear cut along the leaves, leaving the top part of the bushes bare and lost. — Diyar Harraz

I think it was this: like most of us, he was carrying a misery in his soul. I don't say it to forgive what he done, [sic] only to say it as true as I can. He was a wrong-minded man, but inside- I swear this is true- he was always that little boy eating that fried-egg sandwich in that dark hallway while the steam pipe dripped water on his head. I don't ask you to excuse him, only to understand that there's people who don't have what others do, and sometimes they get hurtful in their hearts, and they puff themselves up and try all sorts of schemes to level the ground- to get the bricks and joints all plumb, Ray used to say. They take wrong turns, hit dead ends, and sometimes they never make their way back. ~Clare — Lee Martin

All power is of God; he ordains law. He originates the idea of civil compact. While, therefore, the principles of governments among men may be defective, and the administration wrong and hurtful, the great fact of government is a Divine fact. Good government is emphatically God's government--intended to suppress evil, to promote holiness and happiness. "The powers that be are ordained of God." "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." Despisers of government are enumerated by the Apostle as among the most flagitious of men. — E. E. Adams

Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged - that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful ... — Rumer Godden

The next day, when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. — Julian Barnes

But today I'm indifferent. And with this comes a glimmer of understanding: I can pick and choose what I absorb and what I deflect. This is how the color spectrum works: Some colors absorb light, while others deflect it, depending on where they are on the spectrum. Earlier in my life, when it came to hurtful words from my mother, I was more like an off-shade of brown, absorbing most of them. Now, with experience, wisdom, and a little more self-confidence, my spectrum is shifting. I'm making a choice to be less absorptive. And her comment... is one for which I choose to become pure white. — Katie Hafner

There are no secrets.' The thing smiled, showing a row of even, childlike teeth. 'None worth keeping. Only the ones you hide from yourself, which are the most damaging and hurtful of all. Truth is truth, and lie is lie. Tell yourself one's the other and all the world turns kilter. — David Hewson

The most powerful and courageous heroes I know are those who bite their tongues when justification, validation, temptation, or vengeance would have them strike with truthful, hurtful words. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Sentimental Humanitarianism: A Dangerous Temptation Gregg argues that sentimental humanitarianism: Reduces most debates to exchanges of feelings. Common responses to disagreements are "you can't say that" or "that's hurtful" or "that offends me." But in quoting British novelist Ian McEwan, Gregg says there is nothing virtuous about being offended. Is naive of human nature. It assumes everyone is of good will. Rather, Gregg says we have to acknowledge that there are some groups of people in which rational conversation is not possible. Doesn't take free choice seriously. It claims all evil emanates from bad education and unjust structures, but this is hardly the full story. Evil is a free choice of each individual, and Gregg says it's not something that can be explained away by the fact that someone is wealthier than — Anonymous

The most hurtful thing is not what comes from our adversaries, it's what comes from our friends. — Gloria Steinem

Maybe looking away is about privilege. I need to think harder and longer about my choices and recognize that choosing whom I see and whom I don't see is one of the most hurtful functions of privilege. — Brene Brown

The most hurtful thing I have ever heard come from a friend is ' i think its best we cut all ties' see for them it was just a friendship for me it was like having to cut out a piece of my heart and do with out it. But i would rather live without someone than to have them in my inner circle when they would rather rather not have anything to do with me — Miss Gath