Reflex Quotes & Sayings

Tip: if you ever feel a puke coming on, do not, do not put your hand over your mouth to try to catch it. It's reflex but it doesn't work at all. Vomit kind of sprays everywhere. — David Wong

I mean that certain fictions, chiefly Conan Doyle, Stevenson, but many others also, laid out a template that was more powerful than any local documentary account - the presences that they created, or "figures" if you prefer it, like Rabbi Loew's Golem, became too much and too fast to be contained within the conventional limits of that fiction. They got out into the stream of time, the ether; they escaped into the labyrinth. They achieved an independent existence.
The writers were mediums; they articulated, they gave a shape to some pattern of energy that was already present. They got in on the curve of time, so that by writing, by holding off the inhibiting reflex of the rational mind, they were able to propose a text that was prophetic. — Iain Sinclair

Son, quite aside from my own conditioned reflex against munching a roast haunch of - well, you, for example - quite aside from that trained-in emotional prejudice, for coldly practical reasons I regard our taboo against cannibalism as an excellent idea . . . because we are not civilized." "Huh?" "Obvious. If we didn't have a tribal taboo about the matter so strong that you honestly believed it was an instinct, I can think of a long list of people I wouldn't trust with my back turned, not with the price of beef what it is today. Eh? — Robert A. Heinlein

An old Gordita reflex, dating back to shortly after the Second World War, when a black family had actually tried to move into town and the citizens, with helpful advice from the Ku Klux Klan, had burned the place to the ground and then, as if some ancient curse had come into effect, refused to allow another house ever to be built on the site. The lot stood empty until the town finally confiscated it and turned it into a park, where the youth of Gordita Beach, by the laws of karmic adjustment, were soon gathering at night to drink, dope, and fuck, depressing their parents, though not property values particularly. — Thomas Pynchon

A bird maintains itself in the air by imperceptible balancing, when near to the mountains or lofty ocean crags; it does this by means of the curves of the winds which as they strike against these projections, being forced to preserve their first impetus bend their straight course towards the sky with divers revolutions, at the beginning of which the birds come to a stop with their wings open, receiving underneath themselves the continual buffetings of the reflex courses of the winds. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Which is to say that culture is not a reflex of political economy, but
that society is now a reflex of key shifts in music theory and practice ...
[Sampladelia is] the sound made by those early-twentieth-century discoveries
in particle physics and relativiity theory, the projection of the minds of
Einstein, Heisenbery, and Bohr, their fateful explorations of liquid time,
curving space, uncertainty fields and relativity theorems, into densely
configured and fully ambivalent android music tracks — Arthur Kroker

Damen's grip tightened in helpless reflex, his forehead bent to Laurent's neck as the heat of that admission pulsed through him. He wanted Laurent fully against him. He wanted to feel every cooperative muscle, every encouraging movement, so that every time he looked at Laurent he would remember that he had been like this. His arm slid around Laurent's chest, thigh fit against thigh. Damen's grip, still oiled, was wrapped around the hottest, most honest part of Laurent. Laurent's body responded, moving, finding its own pleasure. They were moving together. It — C.S. Pacat

I've considered buying a gun. The idea keeps coming to mind even though I know guns are useless for my problem. Some intrinsic American reflex, I guess. I'd probably just shoot the pizza guy by mistake. I still have my katana, but unfortunately I can't take it grocery shopping. — Kera Emory

The great educational value of the war against Christendom lies in the absolute truthlessness of the priest. Such purity is rare enough. The 'man of God' is entirely incapable of honesty, and only arises at the point where truth is defaced beyond all legibility. Lies are his entire metabolism, the air he breathes, his bread and his wine. He cannot comment upon the weather without a secret agenda of deceit. No word, gesture, or perception is slight enough to escape his extravagant reflex of falsification, and of the lies in circulation he will instinctively seize on the grossest, the most obscene and oppressive travesty. Any proposition passing the lips of a priest is necessarily totally false, excepting only insidiouses whose message is momentarily misunderstood. It is impossible to deny him without discovering some buried fragment or reality. — Nick Land

Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex. — Norman Vincent Peale

a county with a unique history of people starving and mortifying themselves for higher causes and principles, a political reflex that has twitched steadily down the years and seems rooted in some aggravated sense of sinfulness because, like no other county it is blistered with shrines and grottoes and prayer houses and hermitages just as it is crossed with pilgrim paths and penitential ways — Mike McCormack

He curled up, twitching and spasming, the pain stormtrooping through his entire body in agonizing, dizzying, pounding waves. He vomited, but it wasn't the contents of his stomach. It was his stomach, hanging inside-out from a slimy loop of esophagus, spilling out the precious blood he'd been digesting.
Even with everything going on, the smell of blood activated his biting reflex, and he chomped down on his own regurgitated organs, screaming as he chewed. — Blake Crouch

It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people then to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind. — Alex Karras

By the early-afternoon hours, if your brain is normal, it's running strictly on inertia and reflex. All you can do during those hours are the things that are exactly like other things you've done in similar situations. Creativity is out of the question. You might argue that you don't notice any difference in your thinking during the afternoon. That's because you're too dazed to notice anything during those hours. I'm sure it's true for me; I believe you could set my eyebrows on fire during the afternoon and I wouldn't notice until sometime the next morning. — Scott Adams

Your generation is so cynical. You should try to help every individual person you meet, Ari, as a reflex, without thinking." Ari put his head on the steering wheel. "Here we find a fundamental weakness of the Christ doctrine," the Minister declared, making that wise and relatable face that had always been such a success in his television lectures. "It troubles itself too much with conscience, rationale, and so on. Now, I myself am a student of human nature. I observe all faiths, and draw my own conclusions. For example, a Christian sees a tramp in the street, he begins agonizing. Should I give him the money in my pocket? What if he uses it for drink? What if he wastes it? What if there's someone else who needs it more? What if I need it more? And so on. The Jews, the Muslims - they see a tramp, they give him money, they walk on. The action is its own justification. — Zadie Smith

Generally speaking, we call neurotic any life style that begins to constrict too much, that prevents free forward momentum, new choices, and growth that a person may want and need. For example, a person who is trying to find his salvation only in a love relationship but who is being defeated by this too narrow focus is neurotic. He can become overly passive and dependent, fearful of venturing out on his own, of making his life without his partner, no matter how that partner treats him. The object has become his "All," his whole world; and he is reduced to the status of a simple reflex of another human being. — Ernest Becker

If he failed the first time he took his driver's licence test, it was mainly because he started an argument with the examiner in an ill-timed effort to prove that nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled. He was more circumspect the next time, and passed ... — Vladimir Nabokov

In contrast to the Kantian, the categorical imperative of the culture industry no longer has anything in common with freedom. It proclaims: you shall conform, without instruction as to what; conform to that which exists anyway as a reflex of its power and omnipresence. The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness. — Theodor W. Adorno

To ask who we are represents a primary reflex in human consciousness. Every person seeks to understand him or herself and reach a verifiable and cohesive image of his or her own identity. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It's a false premise to say that most monogamous people have chosen monogamy. Most people belong to the religion they were raised in ... because that's what's familiar. That's the milieu they grew up in, and, for better or worse, they're just continuing the pattern. Until this traditionalist mindset is shaken loose, you would likely try from reflex to impose notions onto nonmonogamy that are not only untenable in the new context but spel sudden and messy doom even in situations that otherwise could be worked out. — Anthony D. Ravenscroft

grabbing his massive throbbing cock with both hands. I licked around the head and down the shaft of his cock as if I were savoring a lollypop. He grabbed a handful of my long, blonde hair and used it as leverage to fuck my mouth. I took his cock so far down my throat, I nearly choked. I didn't care. It was what I had been wanting. I took his cock with my mouth until my gag reflex begged me to stop, but I didn't. I just let him fuck my mouth like it would be the last time any of us would ever fuck — Lilith Fox

A lively retrospect summons back to us once more our youth, with vivid reflex of its early joys and unstained pleasures. — Alfred De Musset

The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis. — Samuel Alexander

It's human nature to quit when it hurts. But it's that reflex that creates scarcity. — Seth Godin

Sometimes are responses are entirely misdirected, misallocated and misapplied; in other words it's all reflex and nothing of reflection. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Ideally, our muscles should obey our will. Reasonably, our will should not be dominated by the reflex actions of our muscles. — Joseph Pilates

A fantastic analogy for the power of focus is racing cars. When your car begins to skid, the natural reflex is to look at the wall in an attempt to avoid it. But if you keep focusing on what you fear, that's exactly where you'll end up. Professional racers know that we unconsciously steer in the direction of our focus, so with their lives on the line, they turn their focus away from the wall and towards the open track. — Tony Robbins

At least you had your back to it," he offered finally.
"Reflex," Zane answered. "I actually had my side to it." He lifted his hand to his mouth as a trickle of blood seeped from the abused skin just under the curve of his chin.
"Eh. Ass, face, same difference," Ty muttered with a shrug. — Abigail Roux

Demons smell like ass - nasty ass that slithers down your throat, finds your gag reflex, and sits on it with authority. — Kevin Hearne

Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world. — Emma Goldman

In the past, we had objects to believe in - objects of belief. These have disappeared. But we also had objects not to believe in, which is just as vital a function. Transitional objects, ironic ones, so to speak, objects of our indifference, ... Ideologies played this role reasonably well. These, too, have disappeared. And we survive only by a reflex action of collective credulity, which consists not only in absorbing everything put about under the heading of news or information, but in believing in the principal and transcendence of information. — Jean Baudrillard

What human beings consciously wish is often quite at variance with the results their reflex patterns automatically create for them. — Timothy Leary

Death," said Akiva. His life was leaving him fast now that he no longer held his wound. His eyes just wanted to drift closed. "I'm ready."
"Well, I'm not. I hear it's dull, being dead."
She said it lightly, amused, and he peered up at her. Had she just made a joke? She smiled.
Smiled
He did, too. Amazed, he felt it happening, as if her smile had triggered a reflex in him. "Dull sounds nice," he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Maybe I can catch up on my reading. — Laini Taylor

We certainly noted that when given the opportunity, women handle money more efficiently. They have long term vision, they manage money more carefully. Men are more callous with money. Their first reflex is to blow it by getting drunk in a pub, or on prostitutes or gambling. Women, on the other hand, are endowed with a tremendous sense of self-sacrifice and try to get the best out of the money, for their children, but also for their husbands. — Muhammad Yunus

Loyalty," he stated, ineffably gentle. "A quality honoured by sages and fools, by which humankind finds the courage to trample the reflex for self-preservation. — Janny Wurts

At my shows, I want to be totally sharp and focused on every single song, on every single thing that I do, and plus, I have to because I'm, like, caking someone and have to run back and mix the next song ... and I have so much fast, quick reflex timing. — Steve Aoki

No, she can weather his disappointments if she has to, that isn't the problem, she can put up with anything as long as she feels he is solidly with her, but that is precisely what she doesn't feel anymore, and even if he seems content to glide along with her out of old habits, the reflex of old affections, she is becoming ever more certain, no, certain is probably too strong a word for it, she is becoming ever more willing to entertain the idea that he has stopped loving her. — Paul Auster

The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc. — Henry Miller

He did another experiment, the Startle Reflex Test, in which psychopaths and non-psychopaths were invited to look at grotesque images, like crime-scene photographs of blown-apart faces, and then when they least expected it, Bob would let off an incredibly loud noise in their ear. The non-psychopaths would leap with astonishment. The psychopaths would remain comparatively serene. Bob — Jon Ronson

I noticed how Brent twitched when I lifted the hem of my tank top to bare my stomach and ribs. The reflex was not an effort to shy away from seeing my body, but from something more carnal in nature. I deduced this from the subtle flicker of red in his blue eyes. Even this Reaper, the most powerful Stygian I had met, next to Head Reaper Marin, couldn't mask his desire. — Abigail Baker

But when he tried to pull the blanket from her shoulder, her hand shot out by reflex to close tightly around his wrist. At which Paris smiled and whispered, 'Don't fight me. Not tonight.'
Myrina slowly released his arm. 'It is only what you've taught me so well.'
He kissed her neck, right below the ear. 'Yes, but there is more.'
She closed her eyes, barely able to think. 'And what would you have me learn tonight?'
'The most important lesson of all.' He drew her tightly against him. 'To surrender with grace. — Anne Fortier

Too often our Washington reflex is to discover a problem and then throw money at it, hoping it will somehow go away. — Kenneth Keating

For me chivalry isn't dead; it's an involuntary reflex. — Jim Butcher

There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares. — Jim Butcher

The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable. — Damien Chazelle

Prayer is the practice of drawing on the grace of God. Don't say, "I will endure this until I can get away and pray." Pray now - draw on the grace of God in your moment of need. Prayer is the most normal and useful thing; it is not simply a reflex action of your devotion to God. We are very slow to learn to draw on God's grace through prayer. — Oswald Chambers

His dreams were the natural reflex of hope and redeemed curiosity. — Michael Eric Dyson

May never glorious sun reflex his beams Upon the country where you make abode: But darkness and the gloomy shade of death Environ you, till mischief and despair Drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves! — William Shakespeare

Cloning may be good and it may be bad. Probably it's a bit of both. The question must not be greeted with reflex hysteria but decided quietly, soberly and on its own merits. We need less emotion and more thought. — Richard Dawkins

You bite on reflex, and then your conscience bites you. — Scott Lynch

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else. — Noam Chomsky

But to Vasili, for a moment that would be imprinted on his memory forever, that sharp-edged outline held a completely different, and wholly impossible, scene. It was as if a window had suddenly been opened onto another universe.
The vision lasted for less that a second, before his involuntary blink reflex cut it off. He was looking into a field not of stars, but of suns, as if into the crowded heart of a galaxy, or the core of a globular cluster. In that moment, Vasili Orlov lost forever the skies of Earth. From now on they would seem intolerably empty; even mighty Orion and glorious Scorpio would be scarcely noticeable patterns of feeble sparks, not worthy of a second glance. — Arthur C. Clarke

Thought reflexes get conditioned very strongly, and they are very hard to change. And the also interfere. A reflex may connect to the endorphins and produce an impulse to hold that whole pattern forther. In other words, it produces a defensive reflex. Not merely is it stuck because it's chemically so well built up, but also there is a defensive reflex which defends against evidence which might weaken it. Thus it all happens, one reflex after another after another. It's just a vast system of reflexes. And they form a 'structure' as they get more rigid. — David Bohm

The religious world is but a reflex of the real world. — Karl Marx

People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. 'Reason,' Dr. Pritchett had told them, 'is the most naive of all superstitions.'
'The source of public opinion?' said Claude Slagenhop in a public radio speech. 'There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind. — Ayn Rand

Re-use is a necessity, but it should be a natural reflex, and find the right "tipping point. — Pearl Zhu

The excellence reflex is a natural reaction to fix something that isn't right, or to improve something that could be better.

The excellence reflex is rooted in instinct and upbringing, and then constantly honed through awareness, caring and practice.

The overarching concern to do the right thing well is something we can't train for. Either it's there or it isn't. — Danny Meyer

If this is something you'd truly like to work on, not out of a sense of guilt but because you would enjoy occasionally reciprocating, there are a wealth of resources out there for the enthusiastic amateur (you are far from the only would-be blow-jobber whose spirit is willing but gag reflex is weak). You have more options than "no blow jobs, ever" and "regular whole-hog sessions to completion that result in vomiting." — Mallory Ortberg

You know I find surprises vulgar," Lady Kent said, waving her hand dismissively and shifting her gaze to me. "You are acquainted with Miss Madeline Verinder, I presume?"

"Good evening, Miss Verinder," I said, exchanging curtsies with the sweetest, gentlest, most accomplished, and most amiable girl in all of London. At least that is what I had continually repeated to myself the past season, so I wouldn't slap her by sheer reflex whenever she entered my conversations with Mr. Kent and turned them into competitions for his attention. — Tarun Shanker

So much of what we imagine to be the testimony of reason or the clear and unequivocal evidence of our senses is really only an interpretive reflex, determined by mental habits impressed in us by an intellectual and cultural history. Even our notion of what might constitute a "rational" or "realistic" view of things is largely a product not of a dispassionate attention to facts, but of an ideological legacy. — David Bentley Hart

We choose to shelter ourselves from hurt and
Disappointment, when we reach out to the soul
Of one's mind, were translating our own needs
The need to be heard an understood , one, on
The level of deep and intriguing thinking Should
Not necessarily be reaching for the stars But a
Moment in time to touch intensely ,To love immensely, To hope for infinity. — Deeann Elizabeth Pavlick

[Felix Frankfurter] said courts are not representative bodies. They're not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society. Their judgment is best informed and, therefore, most dependable within narrow limits. — Sam Brownback

For several thousand years man has been in contact with animals whose character and habits have been deformed by domestication. He has ended by believing that he understands them. All he means by this is that he is able to rely on certain reflex actions which he himself has implanted in them. He will flatter himself at times on the grasp of animal psychology which has brought him the love of the dog and the purr of the cat; and on the strength of such assumptions he approaches the beasts of the jungle. The old tag about nature being an open book is just not true. What nature offers on a first examination may appear to be simple but it is never as simple as it appears. — Hans Brick

Acting is a reflex, a mechanism for development and survival ... It isn't 'second nature,' it is 'first nature.' — Declan Donnellan

Why demons, when man himself is a demon?' the Nobel Laureate Singer's 'last demon' asked from his attic in Tishevitz. To which Chamcha's sense of balance, his much-to-be-said-for-and-against reflex, wished to add: 'And why angels, when man is angelic too? — Salman Rushdie

It amounts to a diseased attitude - a conditioned reflex that shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority. — Isaac Asimov

Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic. — Ernie Harwell

Hyacinth took out a bottle of rum, and Phaedra raised her eyebrows, a reflex she'd acquired upon seeing her father and mother under its influence, their eyes and mouths turned wilder, as if a cork at the edges of their personalities had come unscrewed. — Naomi Jackson

You always know more than you think you know without being aware of it. You always remember best what has hurt most.
Memory is a reflex of the pain. Knowledge is the memory of the pain combined with the unconsciousness which we 'rationalize' via dreams or by means of reading literature. It is impossible to learn from someone else's experience unless we don't assume this experience as our own's, which we can achieve only by living it anew and from scratch. We can not live our lives at someone else's expense. Only life fraught with dangers and risks and lived as your own's deserves its name. Only selfish people do not live their lives as if they do not belong entirely to them. Cowardice equals a life that you refuse to live at its fullest and at its most dangerous. — Martin Walser

Entering by a wide gateway, but without gates, into an inner court,
surrounded on all sides by great marble pillars supporting galleries
above, I saw a large fountain of porphyry in the middle, throwing
up a lofty column of water, which fell, with a noise as of the fusion
of all sweet sounds, into a basin beneath; overflowing which, it ran
into a single channel towards the interior of the building. Although
the moon was by this time so low in the west, that not a ray of her
light fell into the court, over the height of the surrounding buildings; yet was the court lighted by a second reflex from the sun of
other lands. For the top of the column of water, just as it spread to
fall, caught the moonbeams, and like a great pale lamp, hung high
in the night air, threw a dim memory of light (as it were) over the
court below. — George MacDonald

My answer came out at once. For me, chivalry isn't dead; it's an involuntary reflex. It could have been any woman asking for help, and I'd have said the same thing. It might have taken me a second or two longer, but I would have. For Elaine, there was no need to think about it for even that long. I'll help. — Jim Butcher

Repentance always brings a person to the point of saying, "I have sinned." The surest sign that God is at work in his life is when he says that and means it. Anything less is simply sorrow for having made foolish mistakes-a reflex action caused by self-disgust. — Oswald Chambers

It was the feel of it, the love of it, not the thought: it was instinct and reflex and knowing the wind, and Maris was the wind. — Lisa Tuttle

Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle. — James Surowiecki

[...]we are all as full of echoes as a rocky wood--echoes of the past, reflex echoes of the future, and echoes of the soil (these last reverberating through our filmiest dreams, like the sound of thunder in a blossoming orchard). — Mary Webb

No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself. — Thomas Carlyle

So all I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn't forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know. I resisted that reflex. That's my sole, solitary, lonely accomplishment. — Jane Smiley

I'm trying to create artwork that makes people, and myself, think about judgment as a reflex. This is something that must be changed. — EL Seed

It's a game of habit, or repetition. You can't play one way in practice and another way in a game. It's a reflex. The game is so quick you don't have time to think. — Bill Sharman

Go ahead, deny up and down that the delicate act of turning the doorknob, that act which may transform everything, is done with the indifferent vigor of a daily reflex. See you later, sweetheart. Have a good day.
Tighten your fingers around a teaspoon, feel its metal pulse, its mistrustful warning. How it hurts to refuse a spoon, to say no to a door, to deny everything that habit has licked to a suitable smoothness. How much simpler to accept the easy request of the spoon, to use it, to stir the coffee. — Julio Cortazar

I could take you out in a second," she threatens.
If he's concerned, he doesn't show it. "I know."
Somehow he also knows that she won't do it - that the first time was just a reflex. If she were to hurt him a second time, though, it would be a conscious act. It would be by choice. — Neal Shusterman

From the viewpoint of political power, culture is absolutely vital. So vital, indeed, that power cannot operate without it. It is culture, in the sense of the everyday habits and beliefs of a people, which beds power down, makes it appear natural and inevitable, turns it into spontaneous reflex and response. — Terry Eagleton

I'm not a reflex goalie. I try to make as many stops as possible with with my stomach. — Jean-Sebastien Giguere

Laughter would appear to be a physical reflex, although even if it is, this still leaves unanswered the question of why the human response to humor is a convulsive spasm of the respiratory mechanism rather than a crossing of the eyes or a waving of the arms. — Steve Allen

We also have this reflex of using specialists for everything, instead of having the person who is there every day with them, the teacher, talk about death and suicide. In the film, it's portrayed a little bit like a caricature, but it's the psychologist who comes in and Monsieur Lazhar does not think it's a good idea. He thinks he should be the one who should talk about that with the children. — Philippe Falardeau

the bottom line of assurance comes when you stop analyzing and you look to Christ and you look and you look and you look until Christ himself in his glory and his sufficiency by reflex, as it were, awakens a self-forgetful "Yes!" to him. — John Piper

A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the face of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom. — Jean Paul

You must feel a certain lack of excitement in these accouncements. No garish posters, no bright lights, none of the paraphernalia with which the entertainment industry whips up a jaded public. But in a day or so these simple notices will begin to take on all the excitement of the shimmering marquee. When there are no signs ten feet high, five feet will do. When there are none five feet high, one foot serves well enough. It isn't the color or brightness or size of a poster which makes it exciting. It's the experiences which have accompanied similar posters in the past. The excitement is a conditioned reflex. Our bulletin board is our Great White Way, and we're dazzled by it. — B.F. Skinner

Yeah! "I love you" is subject to the law of diminishing returns; like one or two other critical weekly elements of a relationship, it loses a bit of thrilling value every time you get it out.' ... That's what happens with "I love you", that same phrase that you once shouted Hollywood or Heathcliff-like in the lashing raining, now- now you are saying it dumbly at the end of every phone conversation, a follow-on from," I'll be back for dinner." Once it came out spontaneous rush, it forced itself out; now it's reflex. — David Baddiel

The Oscars Ceremony: a great workout for the gag reflex — Dean Cavanagh

During abusive conversations each remark after the first is only about the previous remark.
Verbal abuse is less complex than other forms of conversation! "Aware of their stateless, knee-jerk character, I recognize that the terse remark I want to blurt has far more to do with some kind of "reflex" to the very last sentence of the conversation than it does with either the actual issue at hand or the person I'm talking to ... I steer myself toward a more "stateful" response. — Brian Christian

I'm gonna do everything I can for you, because you're a good kid. Greg, you're a fucking great kid." I had never heard Mr. McCarthy use the F-word, so this at least was sort of exciting. Still, my Excessive Modesty reflex would not be denied. "I'm not that great of a kid." "You're an absolute beast," said Mr. McCarthy. "That's all there is to it. Get to class. Here's a note. We all think you're a total ... ferocious ... beast." The note said: "I had to meet with Greg Gaines for five minutes. Please excuse his absence. He is a beast. Mr. McCarthy. 11:12 am. — Jesse Andrews

Even their insistence on educating their children, the last reflex of any exploited group before it sank into submission, marked the end of their resistance. — J.G. Ballard

Jesus is not honored most by the exploration of various christologies, any more than your wife would be honored by your indecision concerning her character. Jesus is honored by our knowing and treasuring him for who he really is. He is a real person. A fact. A fixed, unchanging reality in the universe, independent of our feelings. Our feelings about him do not make him what he is. Our feelings about him reflect the value of what we think he has. And if our knowledge of him is wrong, to that degree our enjoyment of him will be no honor to the real Jesus. Our joy displays his glory when it's a reflex of seeing him for who he really is. — John Piper

As it usually happened after an engagement, a heavy sadness was coming down over his spirits. To some degree it was the prodigious contrastbetween two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting threr was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present. — Patrick O'Brian

(Propaganda) proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes - The two great routes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflex and the myth — Jacques Ellul

The reflex of fear was soon replaced with another, more useful emotion.
Rage. — Tara Moss

There is a tendency among many shallow thinkers of our day to teach that every human act is a reflex, over which we do not exercise human control. They would rate a generous deed as no more praiseworthy than a wink, a crime as no more voluntary than a sneeze ... Such a philosophy undercuts all human dignity ... All of us have the power of choice in action at every moment of our lives. — Fulton J. Sheen

Perhaps it was simple reflex, her own instinct for survival. Or perhaps it had been his
words, bringing back the horror of her mother's death. But when he reached for the
satchel, Adrianne ignored the knife and brought her foot up hard between his legs. The
knife clattered to the ground only seconds before he did.
"Bastard," she muttered as she sent the knife careening into the dark. "Now your pride's
as small as your brain and just as useless."
"Well put," Philip said as he came up behind her. — Nora Roberts

All that we see is but the reflex of a power that endures, untouched by the pain ... a transcendent anonymity regarding itself in all of the self-centered, battling egos that are born and die in time. — Joseph Campbell