Unpleasantness Quotes & Sayings

I've won his heart, but it's like owning a house in which most of the doors are permanently locked. He wants to shield me from all unpleasantness. And it's not really marriage - not like the marriage you have with Cam - until he's willing to share the worst of himself as well as the best of himself. — Lisa Kleypas

I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions. — Henri Matisse

The despicable crone known as Mombi stands accused of high witchery, gross dishonesty, untold crimes against monkeys, outrageous trespassing, and general unpleasantness. Also, she is extremely unattractive. Miss Amy, do you speak for the witch? — Danielle Paige

If you consider all the unpleasantness you encounter while you're alive, it seems improbable that it would all come to an end simply because you're dead. — Peter Hoeg

The Business of the World is Trade and Death, and you must engage with that unpleasantness, as the price of your not-at-all-assur'd Moment of Purity. - Fool. — Thomas Pynchon

Anne of Green Gables was cuddled up next to Huckleberry Finn; The Hunchback of Notre Dame was wedged tightly between Heidi and Little Women; and Nicholas Nickleby leaned in a familiar way against A Girl of the Limberlost. None of the books were in alphabetical order, which made it necessary to cock my head sideways to read each one of the spines. By the end of the third shelf I had begun to realize why librarians are sometimes able to achieve such pinnacles of crankiness: It's because they're in agony. If only publishers could be persuaded, I thought, to stamp all book titles horizontally instead of vertically, a great deal of unpleasantness could be avoided all round. — Alan Bradley

Of course, women are capable of all sorts of major unpleasantness, and there are violent crimes by women, but the so-called war of the sexes is extraordinarily lopsided when it comes to actual violence. Unlike the last (male) head of the International Monetary Fund, the current (female) head is not going to assault an employee at a luxury hotel; top-ranking female officers in the US military, unlike their male counterparts, are not accused of any sexual assaults; and young female athletes, unlike those male football players in Steubenville, aren't likely to urinate on unconscious boys, let alone violate them and boast about it in YouTube videos and Twitter feeds. No female bus riders in India have ganged up to sexually assault a man so badly he dies of his injuries, nor are marauding packs of women terrorizing men in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and there's no maternal equivalent to the 11 percent of rapes that are by fathers or stepfathers. — Rebecca Solnit

The West in the voice of her thundering cannon had said at the door of Japan, Let there be a nation - and there was a Nation. And now that it has come into existence, why do you not feel in your heart of hearts a pure feeling of gladness and say that it is good? Why is it that I saw in an English paper an expression of bitterness at Japan's boasting of her superiority of civilization - the thing that the British, along with other nations, has been carrying on for ages without blushing? Because the idealism of selfishness must keep itself drunk with a continual dose of self-laudation. But the same vices which seem so natural and innocuous in its own life make it surprised and angry at their unpleasantness when seen in other nations. — Rabindranath Tagore

Only the shallowest person believes that they can attain true happiness by maximizing their wealth at any cost. In absence of morality, ethics, and a sustainable philosophy to guide us in an ethical search for happiness, we will always perceive life's random countervailing forces of adversity and unpleasantness as inflicting a great personal injustice upon us. Through application of a deeply embedded personal philosophy, we can push back against the negative implications of a life of suffering. We can use a philosophical stance to gain the perspective needed to say 'yes' to all of life, both its rosy path of ineffable joys and a blackened trail of tears. We must learn to accept life as it truly is and not waste precious time in wistfulness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

To postpone unpleasantness is human; to forget it is divine. — Mason Cooley

He was a devoted follower of the teachings of Epicurus - "that pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily" - although I hasten to add that he was an Epicurean not in the commonly misunderstood sense, as a seeker after luxury, but in the true meaning, as a pursuer of what the Greeks call ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance. He consequently avoided arguments and unpleasantness of any kind (needless to say, he was unmarried) and desired only to contemplate philosophy by day and dine by night with his cultured friends. He — Robert Harris

We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don't expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a, cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you. — George Orwell

They therefore have no opportunity to suffer the interval between desire and gratification which the less privileged endure, and which, for all its apparent unpleasantness, has the incalculable benefit of allowing people to know and fall deeply in love with paintings in Dresden, hats, dressing gowns, and someone who isn't free this evening. — Alain De Botton

The Supreme Grand Master raised his arms. 'Brethren,' he said, 'let us begin . . .' It was so easy. All you had to do was channel that great septic reservoir of jealousy and cringing resentment that the Brothers had in such abundance, harness their dreadful mundane unpleasantness which had a force greater in its way than roaring evil, and then open your own mind . . . . — Terry Pratchett

Here the intellectual cynicism of the Jew almost counterbalances his social unpleasantness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If our education had included training to bear unpleasantness and to let the first shock pass until we could think more calmly, many an unbearable situation would become manageable, and many a nervous illness avoided. There is proverb expressing this. It says, trouble is a tunnel thorough which we pass and not a brick wall against which we must break our head. — Claire Weekes

given the unpleasantness of the man driving. Maybe a tree would try to — Nick Affton

He had reached an age where he found the best way to deal with unpleasantness was to pretend it didn't exist. — Douglas Preston

The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unpleasantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible. — Glenn Greenwald

We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted. — Henepola Gunaratana

I would like to meet myself sometime to see how I would look to myself. But I'd have to be in an extremely good state of mind on such a day, because I don't like unpleasantness. — Multatuli

The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, - the minor key, - to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word of tragedy means in itself unpleasantness. — Isak Dinesen

From the viewpoint of absolute truth, what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion. Of all the various delusions, the sense of discrimination between oneself and others is the worst form, as it creates nothing but unpleasantness for both sides. If we can realize and meditate on ultimate truth, it will cleanse our impurities of mind and thus eradicate the sense of discrimination. This will help to create true love for one another. The search for ultimate truth is, therefore, vitally important. — Dalai Lama

Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back. — Mignon McLaughlin

It is from the unpleasantness of the storm that we get the pleasantness of the rainbow. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The experiment shows that individuals feel relieved of responsibility when they know that others have heard the same request for help. Did the results surprise you? Very probably. Most of us think of ourselves as decent people who would rush to help in such a situation, and we expect other decent people to do the same. The point of the experiment, of course, was to show that this expectation is wrong. Even normal, decent people do not rush to help when they expect others to take on the unpleasantness of dealing — Daniel Kahneman

We use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness. — Bill McKibben

I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this: "We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don't expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. — George Orwell

Dreams with a painful content are to be analyzed as the fulfillments of wishes. Nor will it seem a matter of chance that in the course of interpretation one always happens upon subjects of which one does not like to speak or think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams arouse is simply identical with the antipathy which endeavors - usually with success - to restrain us from the treatment or discussion of such subjects, and which must be overcome by all of us, if, in spite of its unpleasantness, we find it necessary to take the matter in hand. But this disagreeable sensation, which occurs also in dreams, does not preclude the existence of a wish; every one has wishes which he would not like to tell to others, which he does not want to admit even to himself. — Sigmund Freud

As I stumble through this life
help me to create more laughter than tears, dispense more cheer than gloom, spread more joy than despair. Never let me become so indifferent that I will fail to see the wonder in the eyes of a child, or the twinkle in the eyes of the aged. Never let me forget that my total effort is to cheer people, make them happy, and forget momentarily all the unpleasantness in their lives. And in my final moment, may I hear You whisper, 'When you made My people smile, you made Me smile. — Nancy Mehl

We were caught in a vicious circle of unpleasantness and sorrow. Not a very happy period for either us, but at leasst it's coming to an end. — Anne Frank

There's nothing like a good, long sleep to allow unpleasantness to recede into the past. — David Michie

It seems like it's all just remembering and forgetting. Things happen so fast, and then they're gone before you notice them. Events ambush you from out of nowhere, blindside you, and then you have to spend the time afterward trying to remember or forget what the hell it all was to begin with. The more you think about it, the more the events crumble, crack, breakdown, or refuse to change at all. They're either pieces of ice in your hand, changing shape and melting away until they're nothing like what they were to begin with, or pieces of glass. Sharp and irritating, unchanging reminders of pain and unpleasantness - or happiness. — Gregory Galloway

The task of art is to take hold of the shining, the radiance, the manifestation, of that which as spirit weaves and lives throughout the world. All genuine art seeks the spirit. Even when art wishes to represent the ugly, the disagreeable, it is concerned, not with the sensory - disagreeable as such, but with the spiritual which proclaims its nature in the midst of unpleasantness. If the spiritual shines through the ugly, even the ugly becomes beautiful. In art it is upon a relation to the spiritual that beauty depends. — Rudolf Steiner

Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible. — Leo Tolstoy

...I told myself that, after all, life was like that for most of us - the small unpleasantness rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction. — Barbara Pym

The expectation of an unpleasantness is more terrible than the thing itself. — Marie Bashkirtseff

Now, if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French, based upon movies, rumors, recent headlines, unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters, or ... you know ... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint. — Abe Fortas

Religion is unusual among divisive labels in being spectacularly unnecessary. If religious beliefs had any evidence going for them, we might have to respect them in spite of their concomitant unpleasantness. But there is no such evidence. To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic. — Richard Dawkins

Perseverance is such a beautiful word. But to experience it means we must first endure the unpleasantness life is sure to always bring our way. — Tony C. Skye

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren't deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors - doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operation of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren't paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it. And on the other hand, you got people like Ligur and Hastur, who took such a dark delight in unpleasantness you might even have mistaken them for human. — Terry Pratchett

Getting shot was an experience that Elise ranked on the "unpleasantness" scale right around "trying to survive a week without coffee. — S.M. Reine

Admittedly, given the Dreamland's tendency towards the dramatic, should any ship come to the island it would probably be full of cannibalistic pirates, piratical cannibals, Jehovah's witnesses or similar. That was acceptable, however. He was sure they could come to some arrangement that didn't involve any unpleasantness. Any unpleasantness to himself,at any rate. — Jonathan L. Howard

People have gotten used to living a botched-up life - to be anxious, insecure, hateful, jealous, and in various states of unpleasantness through the day - slowly humanity has begun to see it as normal. None of these things are normal. These are abnormalities. Once you accept them as part of life they become normal because the majority has joined the gang of unpleasantness. They are all saying, "Unpleasantness is normal. Being nasty to each other is normal. Being nasty to myself is normal." Someone trusted that you would be doing good things at least to yourself and said, "Do unto others what you do unto yourself." I am telling you, never do unto others what you are doing to yourself! By being with people, I know what they are doing to themselves is the worst thing. Fortunately, they are not doing such horrible things to others. Only once in a while they are giving a dose to others, but to themselves they are giving it throughout the day. — Jaggi Vasudev

The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all
isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth. — W. H. Auden

[I]t was as if I had been strolling absentmindedly and banged into a door. — Elena Ferrante

No one whines like a vampire forced to deal with some minor unpleasantness. — Tori Centanni

Emotional maturity is the ability to stick to a job and to struggle through until it is finished, to endure unpleasantness, discomfort and frustration. — Edward Adam Strecker

When you encounter unpleasantness from the human population, try to keep in mind that you will be able to dance on their graves long after they're dead. It's a cheering thought. - from The Guide for the Newly Undead. — Molly Harper

Comedically, unpleasantness is great fun. — Teller

If the political left weren't so joyless, humorless, intrusive, taxing, over-taxing, anarchistic, controlling, rudderless, chaos-prone, pedantic, unrealistic, hypocritical, clueless, politically correct, angry, cruel, sanctimonious, retributive, redistributive, intolerant, and if the political left wasn't hell-bent on expansion of said unpleasantness into all aspects of my family's life the truth is: I would not be in your life. If the democratic party were run by Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, if it had the slightest vestige of JFK and Henry "Scoop" Jackson I wouldn't be on the political map. If the American media were run by biased but not evil Tim Russert and David Brinkley types I wouldn't have joined the fight. You would not know who I am. The left made me do it, I swear, I am a reluctant cultural warrior. — Andrew Breitbart

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. — Christopher Hitchens

1. Live now. Be concerned with the present rather than with past or future.
2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent.
3. Stop imagining. Experience the real.
4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see.
5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge.
6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness.
7. Accept no should or ought other than your own. Adore no graven image.
8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts.
9. Surrender to being as you are. — Claudio Naranjo

It's all right if this part of your journey is not pleasant. Part of your repatterning is learning to be with unpleasantness in a healthy way. The mature and sober person knows that on some days things simply feel rotten, and that is okay. You are learning to move through distress by simply being with it, without the need to overeat or to act out in any other way. — Marianne Williamson

If there was one thing Tully had always done well, it was to ignore unpleasantness. For most of her life she'd been able to box up bad memories or disappointments and store them deep in the back of her mind, in a place so dark they couldn't be seen. Sure, she dreamed about the bad times, and woke occasionally in a cold sweat with memories on the oily surface of consciousness, but when daylight came, she pushed those thoughts back into their hiding place and found it easy to forget. — Kristin Hannah

The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass. — Herman Melville

[Meditation] trains us to be with a painful experience in the moment, without adding imagined distress and difficulty. If we look closely at it, the pain is bound to change, and that's as true of a headache as it is of a heartache: the discomfort oscillates; there are beats of rest between moments of unpleasantness. When we discover firsthand that pain isn't static, that it's a living, changing system, it doesn't seem as solid or insurmountable as it did at first. — Sharon Salzberg

Most people, including Ma, preferred to brush unpleasantness away, as if, by sweeping it outside with the dust, it could be forgotten. As if, by acknowledging the existence of something unsavory in their community, they might be tainted by it themselves. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

But why would anyone on a joyous occasion rake over past unpleasantness and dwell on painful events horrible to experience and repellent to recall? Silence is mightier than words. It clothes the wreckage that befalls us in the deep folds of forgetfulness unless someone stirs up the painful memories for the sole purpose of edifying us by example and, as with illnesses, of helping us avoid the causes that led us to them. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in. — Mitch Daniels

Certainty is not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the language and tools of probabilities. We have methods for analyzing and ranking opinion according to their likelihood of correctness. That is enough. — Robert A. Burton

Still, she has an aura of mystery that stops her from being teased or singled out for typical high school unpleasantness. Her mother is a Sinclair. — E. Lockhart

As a writer I find the relationship fascinating. Consider it. There is tension, and often unpleasantness, in both the union of man and woman, and of State and citizen. There is a great deal of hypocrisy too, but the relationship is not ever severed. The intercourse between State and citizens (it will be appropriate to call it forcible intercourse) also produces offspring as a marriage does. But frightening ones, like the "Safety Act and Ordinance". Offspring that resemble their father, the State, more than the citizenry. — Saadat Hasan Manto

Ignoring your subconscious is like neglecting the termite infestation in your basement. Sooner or later, the consequences of neglect will far outweigh the momentary unpleasantness of clearing the nests. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

She had grown to accept unpleasantness as a part of life rather than to struggle futilely against truths that could not be changed. — Terry Brooks

The music gave her an odd, wrenching kind of feeling. There was no pain or unpleasantness involved, just a sensation that all the elements of her body were being physically wrung out. Aomame had no idea what was going on. Could Sinfonietta actually be giving me this weird feeling? — Haruki Murakami

Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden. — Thomas Sowell

The place we want to explore unpleasantness in the real world is in art. — Teller

Her mother had responded in kind, and the result was "unpleasantness and misery rebounding all the time. — Francine Prose

Emotional maturity is ability to stick to a job and to struggle through until it is finished; to endure unpleasantness, discomfort, and frustration; to give more than is asked for or required; to size things up and make independent decisions; to work under authority and to cooperate with others; to defer to time, other persons, and to circumstances. — Edward Adam Strecker

Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain; it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness. If men and women practiced mental calisthenics as they do physical calisthenics, they would purge their brains of this foolishness. — Arnold Bennett

We have to learn to be kind to ourselves. In the long run avoiding unpleasantness is a very unkind thing to do to yourself. — Henepola Gunaratana

The tremendous danger is that this belief - that genuine happiness comes only from pleasant feelings - becomes a strong motivation to stay closed to anything unpleasant. But by staying closed to all unpleasantness, we also stay closed to our own wellspring of compassion. — Joseph Goldstein

The Tea Party is a fitting representation of our era of no-debate, politically correct politics, where each political side has its own media, and opposing views are almost never given a fair hearing. Conservatives listen only to conservatives, and liberals listen only to liberals. People are spared the inconvenience of facts that don't fit their beliefs and the unpleasantness of seriously considering a point of view other than their own. — Juan Williams

There was so much unpleasantness in the workaday world. The last thing you ever wanted to do at night was go home and do the dishes. And just the idea that part of the weekend had to be dedicated to getting the oil changed and doing the laundry was enough to make those of us still full from lunch want to lie down in the hallway and force anyone dumb enough to remain committed to walk around us. It might not be so bad. They could drop food down to us, or if that was not possible, crumbs from their PowerBars and bags of microwave popcorn surely would end up within an arm's length sooner or later. The cleaning crews, needing to vacuum, would inevitably turn us on our sides, preventing bedsores, and we would make little toys out of runs in the carpet, which, in moments of extreme regression, we might suck on for comfort. — Joshua Ferris

You don't have to be involved with my parents. Not if you don't want to be. Yes, you're the father,
but you aren't my boyfriend or husband. My family is my problem."
"I do," he said, before he even realized what he was saying. "I do want to be involved. With all of it.
We're talking about really making this work, about making a ... I don't know if we're talking about a
family, not in the traditional sense, but we're in this together, right?"
"I guess."
"That means I get to help you with parent things, and other unpleasantness. And you have to know
my brother. — Maisey Yates

Once you get over the simple unpleasantness of it - I suspect most people would gag, the first time - it is easier to wipe somebody else's bum than it is your own, because you can see what you're doing and use both hands at once if necessary. The whole process is much more efficient and uses no more toilet paper than is strictly required, so it's better for the environment, too. If we were really green we'd all have somebody else wipe our bums, though I can't see it catching on. — Iain Banks

Habit does much to reconcile us to unpleasantness ... — Margaret Deland

As I believe I told you before, there had been some slight unpleasantness between us, arising from the occasion when she had sent me over to New York to disentangle my cousin Gussie from the clutches of a girl on the music hall stage. When I tell you that by the time I had finished my operations Gussie had not only married the girl but had gone on the halls himself and was doing well, you'll understand that relations were a trifle strained between aunt and nephew. — P.G. Wodehouse

This whole business of telling the truth just never seems to work without some kind of awkward unpleasantness. — Jeff Lindsay

At best, I consider flying an unavoidable necessity, a time to resurrect forgotten prayers and contemplate the end of all joy in a twisted howling heap of machinery; at worst, I rank it right up there with psychotic episodes and torture at the hands of malevolent strangers. — T.C. Boyle

You can tell all Namorn this is what happens when I am vexed," she informed him softly.
"Little *bitch*," he snapped.
Sandry looked him over soberly. "If you had understood that earlier, we could have avoided this unpleasantness," she replied. — Tamora Pierce

You must never be deflected by unpleasantness. I want you to remember that. Although it may not be apparent to others, your duty will become as clear to you as if it were a white line painted down the middle of the road. You must follow it, Flavia. — Alan Bradley

A person of my acquaintance said: ...
Study has always been for me the sovereign remedy against life's unpleasantness, since I have never experienced any sorrow that an hour's reading did not eliminate. — Montesquieu

And on the other hand, you got people like Ligur and Hastur, who took such a dark delight in unpleasantness you might even have mistaken them for human. Crowley — Terry Pratchett

Nothing cuts a neural route faster through the brain then a pinch of pain. Periods of unhappiness penetrate and scar the brain. Experiencing intense periods of unpleasantness incites us to grow. If we can bunt the destructive forces of extreme pain and embrace its forceful impact for its educational value, experiencing profound pain causes us to appreciate the pleasure of simply living in the moment, enjoying each blade of grass in nature's glorious bouts of beauty. — Kilroy J. Oldster

... it is a well-known fact that more than two men shut up together in an enclosed space for more than an hour constitute a hazard to society. If unpleasantness is to be avoided, they must be made to go outdoors and work off their animal spirits. — Alan Bradley

I think that the worst unpleasantness of age is not its final fact ... but the tediousness of preparation, the accumulating number of defeats. — Freya Stark

On the other hand, there is a certain advantage in traveling with someone who has a reputation for shooting rather than being shot: as Keram said, in a self-satisfied way, they might kill me, but they would know that, if I was with him, there would be unpleasantness afterwards. — Freya Stark

Let's begin with a quotation from mindfulness expert and teacher Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It beautifully encapsulates what deceptive brain messages are, what they do to you, and how they keep you from following the path of your true self: We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those [thoughts] for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears, endlessly seeking security.16 To phrase it another way: We spend a considerable amount of our time engrossed in following deceptive brain messages until we begin to see them for what they are and value our true emotions and needs. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The fire of love or fire of knowledge creates unpleasantness or a sense of longing in the beginning, but it moves on to the blossoming of bliss, the blossoming of fullness. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar