Quotes & Sayings About Provoked

The severity of punishments ought to be relative to the state of the nation itself. Stronger and more easily felt impressions have to be made on a people only just out of the savage state. A lightning strike is needed to stop a fierce lion who is provoked by a gunshot. — Cesare Beccaria

I felt that in me fear could not put down roots, and even the lava, the fiery stream of melting matter that I imagined inside the earthly globe, and the fear it provoked in me, settled in my mind in orderly sentences, in harmonious images, became a pavement of black stones like the streets of Naples, a pavement where I was always and no matter what the center. — Elena Ferrante

The servants of God ... whether provoked by word or work, by keeping themselves tranquil and peaceful, evince a perfect nobleness of soul. — Thomas Aquinas

General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked. — Edmund Burke

I saw my friends in medical school seeming to be more engaged with the real world. That provoked a sort of jealousy, and I decided to go to medical school after all. — Harold E. Varmus

But we don't have to react. That's what I'm saying. A police force, like a government, should be above that. Just because we're provoked doesn't mean we have to act.
Still Life — Louise Penny

My driver Kellie Frost and I would race these fellows home and they were always faster on the highway. We did the same with Daniel and his driver, and thus began a long series of jokes and competitions to alleviate the impossible hours and tensions this film provoked. — Madeleine Stowe

1 Corinthians 13:4-7,13 states:
Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, and does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Now, however, there remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. — Anonymous

Miracles are like stones: they are everywhere, offering up their beauty, but hardly anyone concedes value to them. We live in a reality where prodigies abound but are seen only by those who have developed their perception of them. Without this perception everything is banal, marvelous events are seen as chance, and one progresses through life without possessing the key that is gratitude. When something extraordinary happens it is seen as a natural phenomenon that we can exploit like parasites, without giving anything in return. But miracles require an exchange; I must make that which is given to me bear fruit for others. If one is not united with oneself, the wonder cannot be captured. Miracles are never performed or provoked: they are discovered. If someone who believes himself to be blind takes off his dark glasses, he will see the light. That darkness is the prison of the rational. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Certainly, envy is no monopoly of the poor; it makes itself felt in all sections of society; it haunts the court, the library, the barrack-room, even the sanctuary; it is provoked in some unhappy souls by the near neighbourhood of any superior rank or excellence whatever. — Henry Parry Liddon

Telling Ukrainians they provoked Putin by rejecting him and moving toward Europe is like telling a harassed woman she should wear longer skirts. Do not lose sight of who is the offender and who is the victim! — Garry Kasparov

You see," I proceeded, "by the time he was eleven or twelve, this was all too late. The no-gun rules, the computer codes ... Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive, it's a vanity. We want to be able to tell ourselves what good parents we are, that we're doing our best. If I had it all to do over again, I'd have let Kevin play with whatever he wanted; he liked little enough. And I'd have ditched the TV rules, the G-rated videos. They only made us look foolish. They underscored our powerlessness, and they provoked his contempt. — Lionel Shriver

It had taunted, provoked, brushed its big, hard body against hers at every opportunity, and in general lounged about looking like the epically horny fairy it was reputed to be.

~Gabby's thoughts on Adam — Karen Marie Moning

I notice his socks are unmatched -- one black, the other a dark navy -- and suddenly I am provoked by his gall. Who is he to tell me I'm angry, I think to myself, when he can't even match his own socks? — Kathy Hatfield

All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them. — W. Somerset Maugham

The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered from the pulpit of St. Sophia against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding or even marking the character of any individual. — Edward Gibbon

In 1843, after annexing the Indian province of Sind, British General Sir Charles Napier sent home a one word telegram, "Peccavi" implying "I have Sind..."

(Napier was under explicit instructions that:
1. He was not to attack Hyderabad.
2. If provoked to fighting, he was under no conditions take Hyderabad's
capital -- Sind.
He then (according to the story) send the one word message Peccavi to London and of course all the recipients understood that he had violated his order and taken the city - the old British boy school Latin training... — Charles Napier

Population trends have always provoked doom-fraught oracles, because their popular interpreters suppose that every new series will be infinitely sustained; yet, beyond the short term, expectations based on them are never fulfilled. — Thomas Malthus

Merely accepting that we are lazy, distracted, petty, easily provoked to anger, and inclined to waste our time in ways that we will later regret is not a path to happiness. — Sam Harris

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He followed it down, in full flight now, the trees beginning to close him in, malign and baleful shapes that reared like enormous androids provoked at the alien insubstantiality of this flesh colliding among them. — Cormac McCarthy

Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily - weak people, in other words ... — J.K. Rowling

Where and when have riots and anarchy been provoked by wise measures? If the government had acted wisely, and if their measures had met the needs of the poor peasants, would there have been unrest among the peasant masses? — Vladimir Lenin

I am sometimes accused of being a dictator because I provoked the extraordinary elections by nominating the interim government. Can you imagine any dictator who provokes free elections in his own country? — Milos Zeman

She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive. — Gustave Flaubert

Marcie looked like her father but she acted like her mother. Sweet. Shy. Smart. Quiet. Loyal. Unconsciously funny. And clueless to just how beautiful she was and how much love she provoked. — Kristen Ashley

Everyone recognized she was without malice and therefore she provoked none. — John Christopher

Researchers could probably explain how the combination of thick black hair, riveting green eyes, and a slow, confident smile provoked some cascade of estrogen designed to fool the female mind into confusing a simple kiss with a merging of souls. — Samanthe Beck

I have to admit it that the large quantity of US money poured into Vietnam provoked ii ... a lot of bad habits. — Bui Diem

Faeries can be quite mean if they are provoked. — Elizabeth Rudnick

Righteous anger could be a valuable tool, but it needed to be rational anger. Anger against evil. Anger against wrongs. It had to be wielded the same way any weapon was wielded. It needed to be wielded with reasoned wisdom tempered with maturity. It had to be respected for the damage it could do not only to evil, but also to the innocent. He knew that sometimes ability grew faster than the sense to know when not to use it, like a young man who grew muscles before growing wise enough not to be easily provoked into using them. — Terry Goodkind

I could only reply that I think---I theorise--that something--something else--happens to the memory over time. For years you survive with the same loops, the same facts and the same emotions...The events reconfirm the emotions--resentment, a sense of injustice, relief--and vice versa. There seems no way of accessing anything else; the case is closed. But what if, even at a late stage, your emotions relating to those long-ago events and people change? That ugly letter of mine provoked remorse in me...I felt a new sympathy for them--and her. Then, not long afterwards, I began remembering forgotten things. — Julian Barnes

This sounds really cheesy and weird, but the pitbull is a sweet animal that just wants love until it's provoked - that's kind of how I've lived my life, too. — Crystal Bowersox

Faced with the blazing magnificence of the everyday, the artist is both humbled and provoked. There are photographs now of events on an unimaginable scale [ ... ] When we look at these images, there is, yes, legitimate wonderment at our own lengthening reach and grasp. But it would be vain indeed to praise our puny handiwork
the mastery of the Hubble wielders, the computer enhancers, the colorizers, all the true-life-fantasist counterparts of Hollywood's techno-wizards and imagineers
when the universe is putting on so utterly unanswerable a show. Before the majesty of being, what is there to do but hang our heads? — Salman Rushdie

You have a certain objectivity, as a member of the audience, and you can come away maybe being provoked into a certain discourse or a certain arena of questioning, regarding how you would deal with things that your character has to deal with. Whereas when you're doing a film, once you start asking, "What would I do?," you're getting the distance greater between yourself and the character, or you're bringing the character to you, which I think is self-serving, in the wrong way. The idea is to bring yourself to the character. — Colin Farrell

I find my wife hath something in her gizzard, that only waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up; but I will not, for my content-sake, give it. — Samuel Pepys

Voldemort is playing a very clever game. Declaring himself might have provoked open rebellion. Remaining masked has created confusion, uncertainty, and fear. — J.K. Rowling

People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked. — Marcel Proust

Melancholy is a sensual pleasure that is deliberately provoked. How many people shut themselves away to make themselves sadder, or to weep beside a stream, or choose a sentimental book! We are constantly building and unbuilding ourselves. — Gustave Flaubert

Why should our rulers, normally phlegmatic men, react with sudden hysteria to the pinpricks of terrorism when for decades they were able to go about their everyday business unruffled, in full awareness that in a deep bunker somewhere in the Urals an enemy watched and waited with a finger on a button, ready if provoked to wipe them and their cities from the face of the earth? — J.M. Coetzee

If you find yourself easily provoked,
then just change the channel. — Toba Beta

people are very early and earnest in seeking God to take off his hand, to remove judgments that were upon them, but not that God would cure them of those sins that provoked him to draw his sword, and to make it drunk with their blood; for, notwithstanding the sad slaughters that divine justice had made among them, they did but flatter and lie, and play the hypocrites with God; they would fain be rid of their sufferings, but did not care to be rid of their sins. Ah! but a gracious soul cries out, Lord, do but take away my sins, and it will satisfy me and cheer me, though thou shouldest never take off thy heavy hand. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

She had always dimly guessed him to be in touch with important people, involved in complicated relations - but she felt it all to be so far beyond her understanding that the whole subject hung like a luminous mist on the farthest verge of her thoughts. In the foreground, hiding all else, there was the glow of his presence, the light and shadow of his face, the way his short-sighted eyes, at her approach, widened and deepened as if to draw her down into them; and, above all, the flush of youth and tenderness in which his words enclosed her. Now she saw him detached from her, drawn back into the unknown, and whispering to another girl things that provoked the same smile of mischievous complicity he had so often called to her own lips. The feeling possessing her was not one of jealousy: she was too sure of his love. It was rather a terror of the unknown, of all the mysterious attractions that must even now be dragging him away from her, and of her own powerlessness to contend with them. — Edith Wharton

Research - and my own experience - suggests that the less we indulge in something, the less we want it. When we believe that a craving will remain unsatisfied, it may diminish; cravings are more provoked by possibility than by denial. — Gretchen Rubin

My view is that to get anywhere in life you have to be anti-social, otherwise you'll end up being devoured. I've never been particularly social, anyway, but if I've ever been rude, fifty per cent of it has usually been provoked by other people's attitudes. Though I do admit, like most Celts, I'm moody. It's fine until people try to cheer you up with gems like, 'snap out of it' or 'Come on, now'. — Sean Connery

Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements may seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives. There, too, we may find ourselves anchoring emotions of love on the way a person butters his or her bread, or recoiling at his or her taste in shoes. To condemn ourselves for these minute concerns is to ignore how rich in meaning details may be. — Alain De Botton

Nothing special has happened today; no one can say she was more provoked than usual. It is only that every day one grows a little, every day something is different, so that in the heaping up of days suddenly a thing that was impossible has become possible. This is how a girl becomes a grown woman. Step by step until it is done. — Naomi Alderman

No matter how much you're tempted or provoked to speak. Never speak where you don't need to. — Sarvesh Jain

Is art influential? It can be - 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' rallied abolitionists, and 'The Jungle' provoked the demand for a safer food industry. — Will Shetterly

As Paul wrote, a love that is patient, showing no jealousy or arrogance, keeping no record of wrong, not seeking its own and not provoked by another's behavior. These are the evidences of true love which flows from those who know the Father and His limitless love for them. — Ted Dekker

Charles Bernstein's pairs of jingles of 'public discourse' are 'simultaneous double narrative / the space between's the other narrative/as if they're opposite.' In the space between, outside representation but in the 'presence' of it, we are provoked to laugh. Bernstein alters our language to open a double range that's public and mind at once and inseparable, that is 'Poetry is patterned thought in search of unpatterned mind.' Girly Man is doing it. — Leslie Scalapino

Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths. — Criss Jami

President Roosevelt provoked the Japanese to attack us at Pearl Harbor. — Gore Vidal

His height forced her to stand on her toes. For a woman who'd been taller than most of the boys in her class in high school, that particular physical trait provoked a flurry of sensual images to flash through her mind. Sex against a wall. It was a possibility. And given the breadth of his shoulders, she imagined he'd hold her up just fine. Oh, glorious day. — Mia Sosa

Why would the disciples invent a God whose holiness was more terrifying than the forces of nature that provoked them to invent a god in the first place? — R.C. Sproul

But then one morning when I'd been on night shift, she miscarried suddenly and severely. The doctor said it seemed as though she had provoked it herself. I found that hard to believe, given how much she'd been looking forward to having the baby. At any rate, there were large blue bruises on her abdomen. But it's impossible to know about these things. There are a lot of mixed feelings involved when a woman faces raising an unplanned child on her own. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people. — John Adams

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question
such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?
not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. — C.P. Snow

I Repent of ever having recorded one single song, and ever having performed one concert, if my Music, and more importantly, my Life has not provoked you into Godly Jealousy or to SELL OUT MORE COMPLETELY TO JESUS! — Keith Green

I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country. — Bryce Courtenay

I was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportion to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture of the definitive, as if there were no more questions - only answers. I was drunk on a thousand unexpected discoveries, none of which I could make use of. ...
This is how I nearly reached the Supreme. But instead I went on with my walk. — Emil Cioran

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it. — Alvin Toffler

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Once more Mary Jo, Bobby, Kevin, Dennis, Raymond, Lucille, Frankie, Coddles, Lyle, John, Andy, Miss Ursula, Jim, Lonnie, Postmaster Jones, William, Travis, Todd, Tony, Dennis M. . . . On the ride home from Sheriff's office, everyone was again on porches or at windows. Daron didn't call out their names this time, and this time no one waved. Where do the black people live? In the front yards! It was funny. (I guess that's better than the back of the bus, Louis had later added. Daron had thought that funny, too.) Louis's absence was always noticeable. Though skinny, he'd filled space like a fat man on a crowded elevator, except a welcome addition, not someone who provoked strangers to regard each other with situational solidarity. He had, in fact, induced people to regard each other with suspicion, to question the known. — T. Geronimo Johnson

It is a pure tautology to say that crises are provoked by a lack of effective demand or effective consumption. The capitalist system does not recognize any forms of consumer other than those who can pay, if we exclude the consumption of paupers and swindlers. The fact that commodities are unsaleable means no more than that no effective buyers have been found for them, i.e. no consumers (no matter whether the commodities are ultimately sold to meet the needs of productive or individual consumption). — Karl Marx

The pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive the wicked: the flames do now rage and glow. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked ... He will trample them beneath His feet with inexpressible fierceness; He will crush their blood out, and will make it fly, so that it will sprinkle His garment and stain all His raiment. — Jonathan Edwards

Courtesy "Doth not behave itself unseemly." Unselfishness "Seeketh not its own." Good temper "Is not provoked." Guilelessness "Taketh not account of evil." Sincerity "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth. — Henry Drummond

I do not think you are in any danger of starving," Maximus said. "The surgeon said only two weeks ago that you are too fat."
"The devil!" Berkley said indignantly, sitting up; and Maximus snorted in amusement at having provoked him. — Naomi Novik

Love is patient, love is kind and not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered... — Adrian Del Valle

When I stepped into this world, I saw that we were all burdened by a certain kind of indifference to the plight of poor people. We were burdened by an insensitivity to a legacy of racial bias. We were tolerating unfairness and unreliability in a way that burdened me and provoked me. — Bryan Stevenson

If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. — Thomas Sowell

In what a delightful communion with God does that man live who habitually seeketh love! With the same mantle thrown over him from the cross - with the same act of amnesty, by which we hope to be saved - injuries the most provoked, and transgressions the most aggravated, are covered in eternal forgetfulness. — Elias Lyman Magoon

Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?" — Chuck Berry

I hope this story provokes you as much as it provoked me to write it. — Bill Myers

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And
though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could
remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to
be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money
suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not
itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things ... And now
abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these
is money.
I Corinthians xiii (adapted) — George Orwell

I love reading another reader's list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful. — T. S. Eliot

We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage. — Emil Cioran

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful enormous serpent is in ours. — Jonathan Edwards

It is difficult to describe in short the enthusiasm and devotion provoked by and given to my research. We lived almost in poverty. I used pencils, two for a nickel, and could not buy a fountain pen, when I lost mine. — Immanuel Velikovsky

He could understand one guy punching another if legitimately provoked, but a man didn't abuse an animal or ever hurt a woman. Those were pretty basic morals. — Melody Anne

The other New Testament word for anger I want you to notice is orge. This is "a more settled and long lasting attitude often continuing toward the goal of seeking revenge." The verb form of this word, with an added Greek prefix, means to be provoked to irritation, exasperation, or embitterment.3 The verb can be used in a positive sense, as in Ephesians 4:26. The noun form orge appears in Ephesians 4:31, where it is translated as anger, in Colossians 3:6, and in James 1:20 among many other places. — Jim Logan

As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's external body can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with the external or manifested Universe. — Helena Blavatsky

I really am prepared to push Sally for information. I'm dying to know what's put a huge smile on her face and provoked the introduction of scoop neck tops. 'What did you get up to at the weekend, Sal?' I ask casually as I dunk the biscuit tin. I catch her blushing again. I'm definitely onto something here. If she says she's done a cross-stitch and cleaned the windows, I'll hang myself. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Peace isn't the absence of wars provoked by a series of delinquents of all sort, but a dynamic process of cooperation between states and people ... — Ahmed Padia Binkatabana

Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life
and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion
to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. — Gretchen Rubin

Encircled and provoked, Russia is once again turning into a mighty monolithic defense wall. Its people are ready! They want peace, above anything else. But if they'd have to fight for their own survival, and for the survival of the world, they will. — Andre Vltchek

The bottle, with its impotent message, was gone out to sea, and the problem that it had provoked was reduced to a simple sum in addition - one and one make two, by the rule of arithmetic; one by the rule of romance. — O. Henry

Contradiction with this the majority of medical writers hardly admit that the dream is a psychical phenomenon at all. According to them dreams are provoked and initiated exclusively by stimuli proceeding from the senses or the body, which either reach the sleeper from without or are accidental disturbances of his internal organs. — Sigmund Freud

[Daemon] bent down and kissed her softly, persuasively. When he felt her yield, he murmured against her lips, "We'll have a quiet dinner. Then we'll play a couple of hands of 'cradle.' I'll even let you win." Her huff of laughter provoked another hunger. His kiss deepened as his hand caressed her breast. "I think I am hungry," Jaenelle said breathlessly when he finally gave her a chance to speak. After they had thoroughly satisfied one hunger, they finally sat down to dinner. — Anne Bishop

The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution. — Glenn Greenwald

Zachary's mother, Lucy, waylaid him on the third-floor landing and offered, unsolicited, her opinion that the Traumatics had been the kind of adolescently posturing, angst-mongering boy group that never interested her. Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence
the drama of being her
was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation. Katz had encountered, practically verbatim, the same provocation a hundred times before, which put him in the ridiculous position now of feeling bad for being unable to pretend to be provoked: of pitying Lucy's doughty little ego, its floatation on a sea of aging-female insecurity. He doubted he could get anywhere with her even if he felt like trying, but he knew that her pride would be hurt if he didn't make at least a token effort to be disagreeable. (p. 194) — Jonathan Franzen

Ladies ... any man that lusts after you will answer to God for his mental adultery ... but you will answer to God if you provoked him by the manner in which you are dressed. — Albert Martin

Victimhood gives us great moral superiority and entitles us to unquestioning sympathy while exempting us from examining any single one of our actions. A victim is utterly devoid of responsibility or blame. This of course leaves us vulnerable as we will carry on engaging in precisely the behaviour which provoked an unacceptable response. — Belinda Brown

Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!" said Snape savagely. "Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked so easily - weak people, in other words - they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter! — J.K. Rowling

When Charles Darwin was trying to decide whether he should propose to his cousin Emma Wedgwood, he got out a pencil and paper and weighed every possible consequence. In favor of marriage he listed children, companionship, and the 'charms of music and female chit-chat.' Against marriage he listed the 'terrible loss of time,' lack of freedom to go where he wished, the burden of visiting relatives, the expense and anxiety provoked by children, the concern that 'perhaps my wife won't like London,' and having less money to spend on books. Weighing one column against the other produced a narrow margin of victory, and at the bottom Darwin scrawled, 'Marry - Marry - Marry Q.E.D.' Quod erat demonstrandum, the mathematical sign-off that Darwin himself restated in English: 'It being proved necessary to Marry. — Brian Christian

Affirmative action is the most important modern anti-discrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination. No one who knows anything about the subject would say it hasn't worked. It has certainly done something, or else it wouldn't have provoked so much opposition. — Eleanor Holmes Norton

You're charging money to have people come watch you play; I want them to feel taken someplace good or provoked into thinking my way for an hour and a half or two hours. — Mark Lanegan

In 1992, teachers all over the country, by the thousands, were beginning to teach the Columbus story in new ways, to recognize that to Native Americans, Columbus and his men were not heroes, but marauders. The point being not just to revise our view of past events, but to be provoked to think about today. — Howard Zinn

I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general; one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers. — Lord Chesterfield