Subjecting Quotes & Sayings

Subjecting other living things to pain, suffering, and death is the biggest fault in the human race — Zoe Rosenberg

Though why David was subjecting himself to this torment was — Grace Burrowes

I realized that I had granted my illness lordship over me. In viewing my depression as a despot subjecting me to its savage fancies, I was able to escape responsibility, to indulge fully my selfish desire to let my ego flourish unfettered, not obliged to anyone. But this wasn't freedom. It was a prison-a cell separating me from those who cared for me and for whom I might have cared. — Eric G. Wilson

...We are truly human when we live for a purpose far above ourselves; but most people prefer to identify with an entity for the sake of belonging; thereby subjecting themselves to the spirit of collective selfishness that is only found in groups... — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Giving birth without possessing,
animating without subjecting,
fostering without dominating. — Lao-Tzu

Don't mistake me. I want you. You are what they call a tease. I don't like that, and I intend to make you fully aware of my displeasure by fucking you senseless and subjecting you to all kinds of stimulation that will make your tender young body shiver and writhe for my touch, and mine alone. Sometimes it will be in pain, sometimes in pleasure, but always, always with passion. — Nenia Campbell

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time. — Alvin Toffler

The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When the people of God abandoned the covenant of love and fidelity, drawn as we are by the appeal of shallow, empty pleasures, God removed every possible obstruction to the covenant by being faithful for us, by becoming like us and subjecting Himself to the very worst within us, loving us all the way to the cross and all the way out of the grave. — Rachel Held Evans

Subjecting yourself to vigourous training is more for the sake of forging a resolute spirit that can vanquish the self than it is for developing a strong body. — Mas Oyama

Some books accrete things to themselves like a magnet. The writer risks sterility by subjecting the mysterious power of imagination to the devices of mere comprehension. — John Clellon Holmes

Do you suppose it's so much easier to make conversation with someone you already know well than with someone you don't know at all primarily because of all the previously exchanged information and shared experiences between two people who know each other well, or because maybe it's only with people we already know well and know know us well that we don't go through the awkward mental process of subjecting everything we think of saying or bringing up as a topic of light conversation to a self-conscious critical analysis and evaluation that manages to make anything we think of proposing to say the other person seem dull or stupid or banal or on the other hand maybe overly intimate or tension-producing? — David Foster Wallace

Charm's a very dangerous thing. Lucien, tell me," Stephen said thoughtfully. "This respect for shamans, this inviolability ... "
"Mmm?"
"Well, I don't know if you remember, but some three weeks ago, you tied me to your bedposts and spent two hours subjecting me to acts of unimaginable depravity. And considering you call me a shaman
"
"I take issue with 'unimaginable'," Crane interrupted, sudden heat and light rushing through him. "I imagine those acts in detail every night you're not there. In fact, I've imagined quite a few more that I have every intention of subjecting you to when I get a chance. — K.J. Charles

Lewis famously advocated a metaphysical methodology based on subjecting rival hypotheses to a cost-benefit analysis. Usually there are two kinds of cost associated with accepting a metaphysical thesis. The first is accepting some kind of entity into one's ontology, for example, abstracta, possibilia, or a relation of primitive resemblance. The second is relinquishing some intuitions, for example, the intuition that causes antedate their effects, that dispositions reduce to categorical bases, or that facts about identity over time supervene on facts about instants of time. It is taken for granted that abandoning intuitions should be regarded as a cost rather than a benefit. — James Ladyman

For what do we live, but to make sport by subjecting our neighbors to endless discretionary review for minor additions? — Jane Austen

frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair - it just won't behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward — E.L. James

The hideous revelations elicited a different reaction from the Most Moral President in the World, the usual one: great sympathy for Israelis, bitter condemnation of Hamas, and calls for moderation on both sides. In his August press conference, President Obama did express concern for Palestinians "caught in the crossfire" (where?) while again vigorously supporting the right of Israel to defend itself, like everyone. Not quite everyone - not, of course, Palestinians. They have no right to defend themselves, surely not when Israel is on good behavior, keeping to the norm of quiet for quiet: stealing their land, driving them out of their homes, subjecting them to a savage siege, and regularly attacking them with weapons provided by their protector. — Noam Chomsky

We have forgotten that children are designed by nature to learn through self-directed play and exploration, and so, more and more, we deprive them of freedom to learn, subjecting them instead to the tedious and painfully slow learning methods devised by those who run the schools. — Peter Gray

Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace. — Jon Krakauer

Prayer is not the cunning art of using God, subjecting Him to one's selfish ends in an effort to get out of Him what you want. — F. Huegel

For it is not true that some Christians believe in divine sovereignty while others hold an opposite view. What is true is that all Christians believe in divine sovereignty, but some are not aware that they do, and mistakenly imagine and insist that they reject it. What causes this odd state of affairs? The root cause is the same as in most cases of error in the church
the intruding of rationalistic speculations, the passion for systematic consistency, a reluctance to recognize the existence of mystery and to let God be wiser than men, and a consequent subjecting of Scripture to the supposed demands of human logic. — J.I. Packer

She's definitely a romance writer. I've primed her to be a romance writer, subjecting her to so many romantic dramas it would be a miracle if she didn't become a romance writer. — Samantha Young

Psychic disturbances are the consequences of the sexual chaos of society. For thousands of years, this chaos has had the function of psychically subjecting man to the prevailing conditions of existence, of internalizing the external mechanization of life. It has served to bring about the psychic anchoring of a mechanized and authoritarian civilization by making man incapable of functioning independently. — Wilhelm Reich

Writers know all the good reasons for subjecting their work to a sharp trim. Early drafts are notorious for repetition, indirection and overdevelopment of the trivial. — Pamela Erens

Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances. — Samuel Johnson

Loving consciously does not mean subjecting your relationship to endless analysis. It means something much simpler: paying attention. Noticing. This requires presence. — Nathaniel Branden

Bras are a ludicrous invention; but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another repression. — Germaine Greer

Experience, however, shows that neither a state nor a bank ever have [sic] had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power; in all states, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes either in gold coin or bullion. — David Ricardo

She still held back her tears, as if subjecting herself to some terrible endurance test. — Carsten Jensen

If the Russians have gone too far in subjecting the child and his peer group to conformity to a single set of values imposed by the adult society, perhaps we have reached the point of diminishing returns in allowing excessive autonomy and in failing to utilize the constructive potential of the peer group in developing social responsibility and consideration for others. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

What God did, however, was subject his written word to the same historical process as he did with his incarnate Word, Jesus. The Bible is both a divine and human entity: divine in its inspiration and preservation, human in the sense of God's subjecting it to the historical process and entrusting it to the church. In this way, writes George Eldon Ladd, "the Bible is the Word of God given in the words of men in history. — Arthur G. Patzia

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do). — Stephen Jay Gould

The lowest depth that a human being can reach is to perform or to receive torture. The goal of the torturer is to inflict horrific pain and dehumanize another being. The act not only destroys both parties' souls - the victim's and the perpetrator's - but also the very fabric of a society. By subjecting men or women to enforced violence, sexual violation, or worse, you transform them into something subhuman. How does someone return to the human race after having been so brutalized? — Janine Di Giovanni

When a newly acquired State has been accustomed, as I have said, to live under its own laws and in freedom, there are three methods whereby it may be held. The first is to destroy it; the second, to go and reside there in person; the third, to suffer it to live on under its own laws, subjecting it to a tribute, and entrusting its government to a few of the inhabitants who will keep the rest your friends. Such a Government, since it is the creature of the new Prince, will see that it cannot stand without his protection and support, and must therefore do all it can to maintain him; and a city accustomed to live in freedom, if it is to be preserved at all, is more easily controlled through its own citizens than in any other way. — Niccolo Machiavelli

America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. And it is so easy to look away, to live with the fruits of our history and to ignore the great evil done in all of our names. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk ... may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman. — Jon Krakauer

To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination. — Glenn Greenwald

We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not - nor will we ever - monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources. — Janet Napolitano

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing. — Markus Zusak

My relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times and I feel that it is my duty to protect her from influences that may offend her fragile nature.
She comes to me with the gift of song and in return I treat her with the respect I feel she deserves - in this case this means not subjecting her to the indignities of judgement and competition. — Nick Cave

I greatly enjoyed these studies. Geshe Rabten communicated the ideas clearly and succinctly, then had us divide into pairs to pick apart in debate the details of what he had just taught. This was an excellent intellectual discipline. It made me aware of how much of my thinking was muddled. Without subjecting one's ideas to such scrutiny, it is easy and reassuring to cherish opinions that, in the end, are found to rest on the sloppiest of unexamined assumptions. This — Stephen Batchelor

The most sure method of subjecting yourself to be deceived is to consider yourself more cunning than others. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

[ Serialism ] is like a sailless ship, driven out to sea by its captain, who has grown tired of its being used only as a pontoon, and who is privately convinced that by subjecting life aboard to the rules of an elaborate protocol, he will prevent the crew from thinking nostalgically either of their home port or of their ultimate destination ... — Claude Levi-Strauss

I found most of my friends quite content to be used as tax-material, even though the sums of money taken from them were employed against their own beliefs and interests. They had lived so long under the system of using others, and then in their turn being used by them, that they were like hypnotized subjects, and looked on this subjecting and using of each other as a part of the necessary and even Providential order of things. The great machine had taken possession of their souls. — Auberon Herbert

If I see myself on a worst-dressed list - and I've been on many of them - I tend to have low self esteem for 24 hours. I just like to feel comfortable, and I like being excited about whatever it is I'm wearing. I hate subjecting myself to that kind of criticism! — Busy Philipps

Sean groaned. "What are you thinking? The future of Vamps around the world depends on this, and you're subjecting those poor innocent girls to a playboy and the self-proclaimed Love Doctor?"
Phineas huffed. "Dude, I can be a perfect gentleman."
"On what planet?" Sean growled. — Kerrelyn Sparks

One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop, ... Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy ... And third, prisoner abuses exact on us a terrible toll in the war of ideas because inevitably these abuses become public. — John McCain

I'm using my own person in pieces, but I'm trying to turn my person into a nonperson in the sense of a person without will, without volition. I'm subjecting myself to a scheme. — Vito Acconci

From the perspective of the radicals, the habitus basis of human existence is, as a whole, no more than a spiritually worthless puppet theatre into which a free ego-soul must be implanted after the fact, and through the greatest effort. If this fails, one experiences an effect in most people that is familiar from many athletes and models: they make a promising visual impression - but if one knocks, no one is at home. According to these doctrines, the adept can only rid themselves of their baggage by subjecting their life to a rigorous practice regime by which they can de-automize their behaviour in all important dimensions. At the same time, they must re-automatize their newly acquired behaviour so that what they want to be or represent becomes second nature. — Peter Sloterdijk

I don't like raw tomatoes. And I thought I'd skip the onions so I could make out with the sexiest man alive after lunch without subjecting him to my death breath. — Olivia Cunning

Lady Harborough ... was on the platform, making a short speech in which she described the valuable work her hospital fund was doing. It seemed to consist largely of rescuing unmarried mothers from poverty and subjecting them to slavery instead, with the additional disadvantage of being preached at daily by evangelical clergymen. — Philip Pullman

Adventure is really always just subjecting yourself to something unfamiliar — Jenny Erpenbeck

Humankind, which discovers its capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through its own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of things that are. People think that they can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to their wills, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which human beings can indeed develop but must not betray. — Pope John Paul II

After decimating several vegetables, I decide juicing is my favorite form of food preparation. There's something perversely appealing about subjecting an innocent plant to that much violence. — A. J. Jacobs

A commonality among factitious disorder is a lack in bonding personal relationships, providing alternative supports. Mr. McIlroy a skilled patient would receive over 200 hospital admissions in Britain subjecting himself to hundreds of painful treatments and procedures (Pallis & Bamji, 1979). The strength of compulsion of being viewed in the patient role becomes ever more obvious through the individual's willingness to submit to such rigors. Munchausen's syndrome may be rare yet continues to be a consistent disorder at the same time. The characteristics of Munchausen syndrome include physiological complaints presented by a dramatic patient. The patient exaggerates the illness exhibiting Pseudologia Fantastica. To minimize communication a patient will make use of hospital networks within different geographical locations. — Steven G. Carley

Wordsmiths who serve established power ... castrate the public imagination by subjecting language to a complexity which renders it private. Elitism is always their aim. — John Ralston Saul

Healthy" and "diseased," as Susan Sontag points out ... are often subjective judgments that society makes for its own purposes. Women have long been defined as sick as a means of subjecting them to social control. — Naomi Wolf

It is this trick of capitalism, of subjecting labor to competition, while lifted wholly above it by class law itself, that is objectionable. — Joshua K. Ingalls

The earliest lock gates moved vertically, subjecting them to great pressure and friction. Leonardo's innovation was paired mitered lock gates forming a V pointed in the direction of the higher water. Water was deflected to the sides when the gates were swung open, and pressure sealed the lock when the gates were closed. Over half a millennium later, canal locks are still built — Gerard Koeppel

Be cautious of playing your Queen in front of your King and in subjecting yourself to a discovered check. It is better when check is given to your King to interpose a man that attacks the checking Piece than with one that does not. — Howard Staunton

People get into the habit of entrusting the things they desire to wishful thinking, and subjecting things they don't desire to exhaustive thinking — Thucydides

If there was a God. I would spit in his face for subjecting me to this. If there was a Devil, I would sell my sould to make it end. If there was something Higher that controlled out f***ing fates, I would tell it to take my fate and shove it up its fucking ass. Shove it hard and far, you motherf***er. Please end. Please end. Please end. — James Frey

The presumption took hold and grew ever firmer that it was the business of government to find solutions to all such problems. Any minister who sought to say that there was nothing that he could or should try to do about them was at once forced on to his defensive back foot by media and parliamentary pressure. At the same time, more citizens were ready to complain about the shortcomings of existing services, and more numerous and competent pressure groups, like the claimants' unions I had come across in supplementary benefits, arose to pursue their complaints. To cap it all, the courts began, and went on to widen, the practice of subjecting the administrative decisions of ministers to judicial review. No wonder that the ministers themselves, also wilting (as their American and French counterparts were not) under the pressures of increasing parliamentary business, found themselves in difficulties. — Richard Wilding

I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing. — Tim Ferriss

Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past, it no longer recognizes a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst-not by subjecting all its members to an -authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association. It seeks the most complete development of individuality combined with the highest development of voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all imaginable aims; ever changing, ever modified associations which carry in themselves the elements of their durability and constantly assume new forms, which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all. — Pyotr Kropotkin

but not subjecting him to the tiresome demands of polite social interaction. — Neal Stephenson

Carson's thesis that we were subjecting ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that polluted the environment may seem like common currency now, but in 1962 Silent Spring contained the kernel of social revolution. — Rachel Carson

The more I consider the condition of the white men, the more fixed becomes my opinion that, instead of gaining, they have lost much by subjecting themselves to what they call the laws and regulations of civilized socieities. — Tomochichi

It was easier to ignore the consideration of paternal genes then than it would be now. We did not then consider ourselves held in the genetic trap. We thought each infant was born pure and new and holy: a gold baby, a luminous lamb. We did not know that certain forms of breast cancer were programmed and almost ineluctable, and we would not have believed you if you had told us that in our lifetime young women would be subjecting themselves to preventative mastectomies. — Margaret Drabble

I grant this mode of secluding boys from the intercourse of private families has a tendency to make them scholars, but our business is to make them men, citizens, and Christians. The vices of young people are generally learned from each other. The vices of adults seldom infect them. By separating them from each other, therefore, in their hours of relaxation from study, we secure their morals from a principal source of corruption, while we improve their manners by subjecting them to those restraints which the difference of age and sex naturally produce in private families. — Benjamin Rush

For whenever we turn away from Christ, we 'are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace' (Heb. 6:6). — John R.W. Stott

quitting, gives you even more time to ponder. But perhaps I wanted time to stop. Maybe I was meant to lie here on my back in the desert to question why I was running through an oven. Why was I subjecting myself to this torture? I started running for reasons I had — Scott Jurek