Torturing Myself Quotes & Sayings

Slaveowners in America were torturing the Africans they enslaved for reading, but the British had discovered the hard way of truth of the maxim - Nature abhors a vacuum. Fill their minds with your stories and they will adore you; leave their minds free to roam and they will hatch plans to destroy you" (181). — Elizabeth Nunez

Take the example of people who are being most unrealistic - people who are beating monks to death and torturing them. Why shouldn't you be angry or hate that person? Well, the person who is doing that is very unhappy. They are being ordered by a higher-up. — Robert Thurman

I think she was mistaken when she said I was torturing myself. I think that she interpreted me fragmentarily, which is worse than not to interpret at all. — Leonora Carrington

Astrid and Taylor didn't like each other much. But Taylor was an extremely valuable person to have around. She had the ability to instantly transport herself from place to place. To "bounce," as she called it.
The enmity between them went back to Astrid's belief that Taylor had a crush of major proportions on Sam. No doubt Taylor would figure she had a golden opportunity now.
Not Sam's type, Astrid told herself. Taylor was pretty but a bit younger, and not nearly tough enough for Sam, who, despite what he might be thinking right now, liked strong, independent girls.
Brianna would be more Sam's style, probably. Or maybe Dekka, if she were straight.
Astrid shoved the list away irritably. Why was she torturing herself like this? Sam was a jerk. But he would come around. He would realize sooner or later that Astrid was right. He would apologize. And he'd move back in. — Michael Grant

Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn't achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing. — Cherie Blair

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was - this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood - all the women who had ever loved in the world. — L.M. Montgomery

Something was wrong with Luke," Annabeth muttered, poking at the fire with her knife. "Did you notice the way he was acting?"
"He looked pretty pleased to me," I said. "Like he'd spent a nice day torturing heroes."
"That's not true! There was something wrong with him. He looked ... nervous. He told his monsters to spare me. He wanted to tell me something."
"Probably, 'Hi, Annabeth! Sit here with me and watch while I tear your friends apart. It'll be fun! — Rick Riordan

What did religion do to people, to provoke such obstinancy, such hysteria - how did it push people to the stage of torturing themselves and killing each other? — Manil Suri

What is the importance of human lives? Is it their continuing alive for so many years like animals in a menagerie? The value of a man cannot be judged by the number of diseases from which he escapes. The value of a man is in his human qualities: in his character, in his conscience, in the nobility and magnanimity, of his soul. Torturing animals to prolong human life has separated science from the most important thing that life has produced - the human conscience. — John Cowper Powys

I was torturing the fire, giving it life, and snuffing it out.
pg. 33 — Jeannette Walls

Ernst Dwinger in his Siberian Diary
mentions a German lieutenant - for years a prisoner in a camp where cold and hunger were almost
unbearable - who constructed himself a silent piano with wooden keys. In the most abject misery,
perpetually surrounded by a ragged mob, he composed a strange music which was audible to him alone.
And for us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished
beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection
which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity. — Albert Camus

Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now ... — Henry Miller

Colleges and universities, meanwhile, have no such qualms about torturing their applicants. Think about how much work a high-school student must do to even be considered for a spot at a decent college. The difference in college and job applications is especially striking when you consider that a job applicant will be getting paid upon acceptance while a college applicant will be paying for the privilege to attend. — Steven D. Levitt

In Fascism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed. Nobody had the idea of arresting Jews and torturing them to confess the Jewish plot. Because in Fascism, you are guilty for your whole being. — Slavoj Zizek

The rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself is actually a good example of an inexpedient development caused entirely by competition between members of the same species. Human beings of today are attacked by so-called manager diseases, high blood pressure, renal atrophy, gastric ulcers, and torturing neuroses: they succumb to barbarism because they have no more time for cultural interests. — Konrad Lorenz

There are many, many serial sexual murders that have a history of killing cats, torturing cats, tormenting cats, — Jack Rosewood

It's not just the look, the cost, and the time involved in putting sunscreen on a child, it's the battle. My kids have no idea why they would have to wait to have fun while they are smeared with chemicals all over their face and body. They scream. They cry. "It burns!" The process of applying sunscreen just highlights the preposterousness of raising pale kids on a planet that revolves around a hot burning star that emits poisonous UV rays. I can never tell if the concerned looks from strangers are because they think I am torturing my children or because I am dressed like an out-of-shape Superman at the beach. Does anyone know where I can get a red swim cape? — Jim Gaffigan

Hindsight must surely be the most useless function of the human brain, torturing yourself over the unalterable past. — Peter F. Hamilton

Elizabeth, when you look into the darkness you have two choices. You either fall into it, so you'll never fear the unknown again. Or you stay on the ledge, always wondering what's there. Torturing yourself over it. Elizabeth, I live in the abyss, and would like you to leap into the unknown with me. Will you join me? — LeeAnn Whitaker

rogue state: a country that violates international law by committing armed aggression, torturing prisoners, assassinating opponents, and possessing weapons of mass destruction. — Mike Lofgren

After they stopped torturing him they locked him in the jail cell again and pretended they would forget him ... Then, eventually, and unexpectedly, release. Into ignominy, oblivion, married life. — Salman Rushdie

Some memories have the ability to heal, the ability to light up the dark, because the beauty of the memory is so bright, you're still able to bask in it.But the memories of us are killing me slowly. They remind me that for one moment, I had everything, while reminding me it's gone. It's the realization that we're done that's torturing me. The realization that I can see him but can't touch him, that he exists but he's not mine, is agonizing. — Aurora Rose Reynolds

Which would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace. — Marcel Proust

Abby wouldn't want you to suffer because of some jerk that kidnapped her. She would want you to go on your trip so that she would have fun torturing you for not being a puddle on the ground with a box of tissues and an empty gallon of ice cream by your side. Then afterwards to hit you for thinking she was seriously hoping you would be doing that. — Ottilie Weber

As Ruth only knows one priest (one male priest that is) she's not that surprised to find Father Hennessey waiting for her at one of the long tables, a cappucino in front of him. 'Hallo Ruth, sorry to call in on you like this.'

'That's OK.'

'Are you going to get yourself a drink? This coffee's really very good. It's truly terrible, the stuff they serve at the police station.'

'I know.' Ruth has had her own experience of Nelson's coffee. She wonders if it's a way of torturing suspects until they confess. In contrast, the coffee at the university is excellent. Ruth gets herself an espresso. She thinks that she is going to need the energy. She has a feeling that, like the visit from Nelson all those years ago, this conversation is going to complicate her life. — Elly Griffiths

Do you have any idea how much you mean to me Layla? Any at all? Because I
sometimes think, if you did, you wouldn't keep torturing me like this. I can't keep watching you with him. The way you gaze into his eyes, the way he
kisses you and when you tell him you love him, I hate you. I hate you for loving him. I hate you for choosing him. I hate you for wanting him so badly.
But mostly, I hate myself for not being him! I can't hide it anymore. I've tried so fucking hard that I swear I'm going crazy sometimes. It's eating at me.
I can't sleep, can't think; I can't even function because I'm thinking about you so much. But I get it, I do, it's him you want and from now on I'm hands
off. But I have to let you know how I feel before I go nuts. — Marie Coulson

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today. — Paul Haggis

I had no idea where I was going, but at that point, walking straight into the sea didn't seem like such a bad idea. For months I'd been torturing myself, wondering if Archer kissing me had just been part of his act. But he was right, he hadn't kissed me. I had kissed him, and he'd just...responded.God, I was a moron.
Archer caught up with me,but I kept looking straight ahead.
"Mercer-"
"Look,forget it," I said. "Just show me whatever it was you dragged me out here to see."
"Fine," he replied, his voice clipped.
We walked down the beach in total silence. In the moonlight, our shadows stretched out before us, almost touching. — Rachel Hawkins

And in the flush of the first few days of joy I confidently tell myself (not expecting what I'll do in three weeks only) 'no more dissipation, it's time for me to quietly watch the world and even enjoy it, first in woods like these, then just calmly walk and talk among people of the world, no booze, no drugs, no binges, no bouts with beatniks and drunks and junkies and everybody, no more I ask myself the question O why is God torturing me, that's it, be a loner, travel, talk to waiters, walk around, no more self-imposed agony ... it's time to think and watch and keep concentrated on the fact that after all this whole surface of the world as we know it now will be covered with the silt of a billion years in time ... Yay, for this, more aloneness — Jack Kerouac

I've been told that I cannot change shit, so I might as well stop torturing myself. My emotions are ridiculed and branded as childish. I have been told that the world has given up on my people. I have been told, and realise that on many occasions, I myself am viewed as an outcast by some of those suffering. I've been confronted and my answer is always the same: I care even in my most fucked-up moments. I care even when gates of shit pour open to drown me; I care because I am a citizen of the world. — Asaad Almohammad

I will not be tortured, I tear torture out of myself by torturing you! — Bela Lugosi

I'm frustrated about Cathy. She's torturing herself over this guy, and he's not worth it. I should tell her the truth. I really should."
"Doesn't sound like she'd listen," Kristin said. "There are none so deaf as those listening to 'All by Myself' over and over and over again. — Justine Larbalestier

You were torturing a cat," she says. "With a freaking prod."
"A prod I built myself in metal shop," he says. "But of course you never mention that. — George Saunders

How beautiful the tragic seems when it is beneath a mask, but when it appears so nakedly before me and... when I am so forcibly implicated... I don't know whether I care for it so much. Somehow or other it is as though I were torturing myself.

("Thirty-Three Abominations") — Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

After shutting off the phone to ignore the incessant ringing, I'm proud of myself. I hear nothing but silence. There is nothing torturing me. There is no sound to make me jump or panic. There is nothing but complete silence, well, Except In My Head, but whatever. — Sarah Ann Walker

So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare? — Ralph Ellison

Sir. Might I with due respect remind you that Mister Vandemar and myself burned down the City of Troy? We brought the Black Plague to Flanders. We have assassinated a dozen kings, five popes, half a hundred heroes and two accredited gods. Our last commission before this was the torturing to death of an entire monastery in sixteenth-century Tuscany. We are utterly professional. — Neil Gaiman

So when I was beating the guy, I started thinking, 'What if I was Hannah Montana?' ... And little do they know that that's why I look so insane ... I'm torturing myself with thoughts of, 'How could I actually pull off being a high school student and a pop star at night?' — Eli Roth

It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it. — Ang Lee

Save the world by torturing one innocent child? Which innocent child? — William Stafford

When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch at every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts content. — George Bernard Shaw

We have still not answered the question of when an experiment might be justifiable. It will not do to say "Never!" Putting morality in such black-and-white terms is appealing, because it eliminates the need to think about particular cases; but in extreme circumstances, such absolutist answers always break down. Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong. If torture were the only way in which we could discover the location of a nuclear bomb hidden in a New York City basement and timed to go off within the hour, then torture would be justifiable. — Peter Singer

But *why* do clean torture and democracy appear to go hand in hand? This is an important puzzle (though by no means the only one suggested by the data). My explanation for this pattern generally is this: Public monitoring leads institutions that favor painful coercion to use and combine clean torture techniques to evade detection, and, to the extent that public monitoring is not only greater in democracies, but that public monitoring of human rights is a core value in modern democracies, it is the case that where we find democracies torturing today we will also be more likely to find stealthy torture. — Darius M. Rejali

Human beings have become a virus to planet Earth. Our way of life consists of constant pollution of natural resources, violence between nations, oppression of populations, torturing of animals, and the destruction of our own health and wellness. Our society is not sustainable and the people in control have no interest in the well being of the people or the planet. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Our love affairs with sin are not just a matter of morality, though, but of joy. This is not just about faithfulness to God, but about finding our deepest, most satisfying fulfillment. Many people think following Jesus means surrendering our happiness. You can either enjoy a fun, passionate, and exciting life here for a short time or live a bland, boring, but safe life forever with God. That lie is a quiet, but violent concentration camp, fencing men and women in, keeping them away from God, and torturing them with lesser pleasures that only lead to a swift and yet never-ending death. If you want to be truly happy - even in this life, surrounded by everything beautiful, fun, and exciting in this world - you want to be found with Jesus. — Marshall Segal

The future needed service, not pity, not piety; but in the past lay darkness, confusion, waste, and all the cramped primitive minds, bewildered, torturing one another in their stupidity, yet one and all in some unique manner, beautiful. — Olaf Stapledon

You made a decision given your life circumstances and you have to be ok with that. Regrets that can't be change is just torturing yourself. — Michelle Singletary

Accordingly he^ says, the Lord is to be feared in order to edification, but not the devil to destruction. And again, the works of the Lord - that is, His commandments - are to be loved and done; but the works of the devil are to be dreaded and not done. For the fear of God trains and restores to love; but the fear of the works of the devil has hatred dwelling along with it. The same also says " that repentance is high intelligence. For he that repents of what he did, no longer does or says as he did. But by torturing himself for his sins, he benefits his soul. Forgiveness of sins is therefore different from repentance; but both show what is in our power." CHAPTER XIIL — Anonymous

I'm not going to stop torturing myself till I figure out the cause of my pain. — Matt Groening

One of the few times I'm hit emotionally is when I listen to the tapes sadists make of torturing their victims. There the person is currently suffering, you can hear them suffer, and that calls out for an empathic response. But when they're dead, when they're no longer suffering, when it's over, it's hard to feel empathetic for the corpse. — Park Dietz

Why do you enjoy torturing yourself? Do you feel life has been too good to you?"
Tatiana stared at him. "Life has," she said slowly, "been too good to me. — Paullina Simons

I was torturing her. Guilt was her poison, and I was pouring it down her throat. — Rebecca Donovan

When one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. — Mary Shelley

The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead. — Christopher Hitchens

And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

in this you have failed
you have invalidated your dysfunctional efforts
of innocence
of perverted virginity
with a mangy face before the eye of God
not even summations of crawling
not even rust cutters or combustion
as if to test your blue vaginal mirrors
inside a Protestant Crimea
listening to your fallacious absorption neurosis

you've forfeited your flames
you've cast into the moat
salacious bonfire bathing
you've given up the power of deepened torturing rums
of magnetic chromosomal nerves
for a weakly neutered clairaudience of failure — Will Alexander

I was sprawled out in my usual position on the couch, half asleep but entirely drunk, torturing myself by tearing memories out of my mind at random like matches from a book, striking them one at a time and drowsily setting myself on fire. — Jonathan Tropper

And death hasn't come. It never does come when you call it. It enjoys torturing us. I've been calling for it for years and it pays me no attention — Agota Kristof

Afraid of a needle." he muttered to himself under his breath, shaking his head. "Oh, a sadistic vampire, intent on torturing her to death, sure, no problem, she runs off to meet him. An IV, on the other hand ... "
Edward Cullen — Stephenie Meyer

And yet she hadn't the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance. — Nella Larsen

I had a slightly inferior endgame that probably should have been drawn, but Kortchnoi kept torturing me with little threats until finally, exhausted and exasperated, I made a losing mistake. — Pal Benko

My art teacher had said that if you breathed deeply and imagined something, you could be there. You could see it, feel it. During our standoffs with the NKVD, I learned to do that. I clung to my rusted dreams during the times of silence. It was at gunpoint that I fell into every hope and allowed myself to wish from the deepest part of my heart. Komorov thought he was torturing us. But we were escaping into a stillness within ourselves. We found strength there. — Ruta Sepetys

She liked him, so she was torturing him. Her Grace in a nutshell. — Ilona Andrews

I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Were I to enter on that arena, I should only add an unit to the number of Bedlamites.
[Letter to Mathew Carey, 11 November 1816] — Thomas Jefferson