Recoiling Quotes & Sayings

The most foolish description of the young is that they are rebellious. The truth is that they are a fellowship of cowards. — Manu Joseph

The vast majority of abortions are performed between the seventh and tenth week when the baby is already sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound. All his organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidneys are cleaning fluids, and there is a fingerprint. His genetic code is uniquely and unquestionably human. And, if we are willing, he can be seen by ultrasound. — John Piper

A crystalline moment shatters, and the world is a different place. Where there was confinement, now there is release. Recoiling from my sudden liberation, my left arm flings downcanyon, opening my shoulders to the south, and I fall back against the northern wall of the canyon, my mind is surfing on euphoria. As I stare at the wall where not twelve hours ago I etched "RIP OCT 75 ARON APR 03," a voice shouts in my head:
I AM FREE! — Aron Ralston

She cursed under her breath. Eddie watched the EBs react, the younger ones recoiling with silent gasps.
"Better watch your language. There are children present. I think you're freaking them out."
"Sure, I'm the one freaking them out. — Hunter Shea

What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?" Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.
That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him.
"Well, I'm partial to whores."
Her head whipped toward him like a weather-vane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or ... or ...
"Whor ... whores ... ?" She choked out the word as if she'd just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke.
He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly.
"I ... I beg your pardon - Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea," he stammered. "I do wonder what you think of me if that's what you heard. — Julie Anne Long

reproaches himself for recoiling from the stench of the poor and the sick, — Barbara W. Tuchman

I never desired to really go to Hollywood and make films, and purely because I want my entire control, which I'm used to having. — Nicolas Winding Refn

The realisation of where he was suddenly dawned on the youth in chains, who stopped abruptly, recoiling like a fugitive at the edge of a cliff, and swallowed noisily in the obscure silence. — Stanley Goldyn

She just shook her head and pulled out a small bottle of some random pop star's signature perfume, spritzing me with the sickly-sweet smell.
"Oh, come on Ash, that smells like a unicorn fart," I cried, recoiling at the overpowering, candylike smell. — Cara Lynn Shultz

It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It's not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different.11 But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. But we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth - overlooking it, fleeing it, repudiating it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain - and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running. — Sam Harris

People like you end up dead. One day they are roaming about in their underpants pretending to be Superman and the next day they are killed because they jump off their roof thinking that they can fly! — Abhik Chatterjee

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987) — Anatole Broyard

It was a hateful memory, the sort of memory he would sometimes skirt the edges of by accident as he was falling asleep, his thoughts rolling close to it and then recoiling, burned. — Maggie Stiefvater

First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling. — Nicholas Meyer

Of course, to hear weev tell the story, it was clear that he also did it for the lulz. He would giggle whenever Goatse Security was mentioned in news reports about the incident. He imagined millions of people Googling the strange name of the security group, and then recoiling in horror at the sight of a vile "anal supernova" beaming off their screen.4 Goatse is a notoriously grotesque Internet image of a man hunched over and pulling apart his butt cheeks wider than you might think is humanly possible. Those who view it are forever unable to unsee what they have just seen - unable to forget even the smallest detail, their minds seared by the image as if the gaping maw, adorned with a ring, were a red-hot cattle brand. The — Gabriella Coleman

There is a quality of murky grandeur we give ourselves in having our own feelings, recoiling, separate from other things ... To feel that we can care for ourselves without seeing our feelings as objects, and liking them as objects, is to be wrong about our care for ourselves. — Eli Siegel

A snake bites your ankle.
Recoiling, you scream.
Fearing poison, your mind slips into a dream ...
... where a man bites your ankle.
Expecting no guile,
'Again' softly falls from your lips with a smile.
Yet the man and the snake are the same.
Your perception is only to blame. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Eden was just a pretty prison when you got down to it. — Pepper Winters

For the animals in nature, everywhere is their houses! When we touch anywhere in nature, we must know that we knock their doors! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He promised all those things men promise when they are far away and can feel the phone lines stretching too tight, the wires and cables rapidly unraveling from their braids, snapping, recoiling, collapsing the poles along the way. — Salvador Plascencia

I specifically remember doing the musical 'Sweet Charity' at Stagedoor. I was playing Vittorio Vidal, which is a very funny part, and some other small roles. I couldn't really sing that well, but there were so many fun bits, and I just remember the tremendous adrenaline rush I felt from being onstage and hearing the audience enjoying it. — Sebastian Stan

Tender inner weaknesses, revolting at mild touches of censure, are like diseased parts of the body, recoiling before even delicate handling. — Sri Yukteswar Giri

She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling. — Miranda July

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

If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut short after the first few leaden sentences. — Walter Kirn

Remember that introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events. So don't mistake a child's caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others. He's recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact. Introverts are just as likely as the next kid to seek others' company, though often in smaller doses — Susan Cain

He lifted the slice of cake and bit into it and turned the page. The old musty album with its foxed and crumbling paper seemed to breathe a reek of the vault, turning up one by one these dead faces with their wan and loveless gaze out toward the spinning world, masks of incertitude before the cold glass eye of the camera or recoiling before this celluloid immortality or faces simply staggered into gaga by the sheer velocity of time. Old distaff kin coughed up out of the vortex, thin and cracked and macled and a bit redundant. The landscapes, old backdrops, redundant too, recurring unchanged as if they inhabited another medium than the dry pilgrims shored up on them. Blind moil in the earth's nap cast up in an eyeblink between becoming and done. I am, I am. An artifact of prior races. — Cormac McCarthy

There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion - a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. Mindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is appearing in one's mind or body - thoughts, sensations, moods - without grasping at the pleasant or recoiling from the unpleasant. — Sam Harris

A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall. Books perfume and give weight to a room. A bookcase is as good as a view, as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms, fogs, zephyrs.
I read about a family whose apartment consists of a series of spaces so strictly planned that they are obliged to give away their books as soon as they've read them. I think they have misunderstood the way books work.
Reading a book is only the first step in the relationship. After you've finished it, the book enters on its real career. It stand there as a badge, a blackmailer, a monument, a scar. It's both a flaw in the room, like a crack in the plaster, and a decoration. The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
- in "About books; recoiling, rereading, retelling", The New York Times, February 22, 1987 — Anatole Broyard

I practiced what the Dalai Lama calls 'inner disarmament.' Of course, I still had judgments, but I tried to accept even my judgments without judgment. At a glacial pace, I moved beyond repression and self-criticism to something more skillful. I discovered the difference between recoiling from feelings and opening to them. I trained myself to be more curious than fearful. Sometimes I even felt compassion for myself as I struggled. — Mary Pipher

We have known for many years that we need vitamin D to facilitate calcium absorption and promote bone mineralization. — Andrew Weil

I believe in life and in people. I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from rebellion would be a form of treason — Naguib Mahfouz

She pushed the hair away, then began uncoiling and recoiling the silky mass with an unconscious, natural grace. Against the crude background of the alley, she was startlingly feminine and delicate, and with every movement of her arms and hair, her scent wove around Cullen - flowers and freshness and the subtle earthy warmth of woman It sank into him and hardened him with a primitive fierceness he hadn't experienced since his early teens. — Fiona Brand

Marie's eyes slammed the furthest wall after a back-forth, back-forth swinging from horror to horror, from skull to skull, beating from rib to rib, staring with hypnotic fascination at paralyzed, loveless, fleshless loins, at men made into women by evaporation, of women made into dugged swine. the fearful ricochet of vision, growing, growing, taking impetus from swollen breast to raving mouth, wall to wall, again, again, like a ball hurled in a game, caught in the incredible teeth, spat in a scream across the corridor to be caught in the claws, lodged between thin teats, the whole standing chorus invisibly chanting the game on, on, the wild game of sight recoiling, rebounding, re-shuttling on down the inconceivable procession, through a montage of erected horrors that ended finally and for all time when vision crashed against the corridor ending with one last scream from all present. — Ray Bradbury