Violent Life Quotes & Sayings

She stood in a swaying, sealed chamber of metal, looking at the giant generators. She had wanted to see them, because the sense of triumph within her was bound to them, to her love for them, to the reason of the life - work she had chosen. In the abnormal clarity of a violent emotion, she felt as if she were about to grasp something she had never known and had to know. She laughed aloud, but heard no sound of it; nothing could be heard through the continuous explosion. "The John Galt Line!" she shouted, for the amusement of feeling her voice swept away from her lips. — Ayn Rand

An unpredictable, faithful and objective hazard seems to have systematically singled out my life to make what are normally uneventful incidents violent, phenomenal and memorable. — Salvador Dali

But the next morning, while night owls slept, I climbed trembling to her cubicle and woke her, weeping aloud with a crazed love that lasted until it was carried away without mercy by the violent wind of real life. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Both the suicidal and non-suicidal are often angry with others. One way to discharge this anger is to fantasize about violent revenge. The insults of daily life often cause fantasies of revenge to flare up and quickly subside. The people with these fantasies usually do not act on them; they are not motives or goals. They are involuntary responses to perceived insult - ways of coping with rage. The suicidal, whether or not they attempt, suffer tremendous and persistent pain and anger. That this pain should find its way into their fantasies and dreams is no surprise. This ideation is not a motive for action; it is an alternative to action. Fantasizing about suicide is an effort to delay or avoid suicide, not the activity of formulating a motive, goal, or intention. Fantasies doubtlessly succeed in preventing many attempts. — David L. Conroy

What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,
As calling home our exiled friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace
We will perform in measure, time, and place. — William Shakespeare

I think so much of my early life, even though I grew up White and middle class, I was completely shattered by the horrifically violent atmosphere I grew up in. I am a consequence of violence. That opened a door to many realities that I would not have experienced had I not survived what I did. — Eve Ensler

Despite what you've read, your sadness is not beautiful. No one will see you in the bookstore, curled up with your Bukowski, and want to save you.
Stop waiting for a salvation that will not come from the grey-eyed boy looking for an annotated copy of Shakespeare,
for an end to your sadness in Keats.
He coughed up his lungs at 25, and flowery words cannot conceal a life barely lived.
Your life is fragile, just beginning, teetering on the violent edge of the world.
Your sadness will bury you alive, and you are the only one who can shovel your way out with hardened hands and ragged fingernails, bleeding your despair into the unforgiving earth.
Darling, you see, no heroes are coming for you. Grab your sword, and don your own armor. — Emily Palermo

Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he's afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person's life may become frozen, emotionally frozen even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there's this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone - the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven't suffered, even toward himself. (174) — Stephen Dobyns

The constant life and death struggles of the Everglades violent and implacable, but not mean, never mean. — Patrick Astre

What was true of an ancient community of Christian believers struggling with a powerful and appealing philosophy is also true for Christians in a postmodern context. Arguments that deconstruct the regimes of truth at work in the late modern culture of global capitalism are indispensable. So also is a deeper understanding of the counterideological force of the biblical tradition. But such arguments are no guarantee that the biblical metanarrative will not be co-opted for ideological purposes of violent exclusion, nor do arguments prove the truth of the gospel. Only the nonideological, embracing, forgiving and shalom-filled life of a dynamic Christian community formed by the story of Jesus will prove the gospel to be true and render the idolatrous alternatives fundamentally implausible. — Brian J. Walsh

In advanced societies it is not the race politicians or the "rights" leaders who create the new ideas and the new images of life and man. That role belongs to the artists and intellectuals of each generation. Let the race politicians, if they will, create political, economic or organizational forms of leadership; but it is the artists and the creative minds who will, and must, furnish the all important content. And in this role, they must not be subordinated to the whims and desires of politicians, race leaders and civil rights entrepreneurs whether they come from the Left, Right, or Center, or whether they are peaceful, reform, violent, non-violent or laissez-faire. Which means to say, in advanced societies the cultural front is a special one that requires special techniques not perceived, understood, or appreciated by political philistines. — Harold Cruse

A toy boat, a toy boat, a toy boat,' she repeated, thus enforcing upon herself the fact that it is not articles by Nick Greene on John Donne nor eight-hour bills nor covenants nor factory acts that matter; it's something useless, sudden, violent; something that costs a life; red, blue, purple; a spirit; a splash; like those hyacinths (she was passing a fine bed of them); free from taint, dependence, soilure of humanity or care for one's kind; something rash, ridiculous, like my hyacinth, husband I mean, Bonthrop: that's what it is - a toy boat on the Serpentine, ecstasy - it's ecstasy that matters. — Virginia Woolf

A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called violent. — E.F. Schumacher

Women are often belittled for trying to resurrect these men and bring them back to life and to love. They are in a world that would be even more alienated and violent if caring women did not do the work of teaching men who have lost touch with themselves how to love again. This labor of love is futile only when the men in question refuse to awaken, refuse growth. At this point it is a gesture of self-love for women to break their commitment and move on. — Bell Hooks

make use of some such alarm signals as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as by beating several times on a glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them at the same time with a sharp word and a compelling glance, violent methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them into their everyday life among the sane, either from force of professional habit or because they think the whole world a trifle mad. Their — Marcel Proust

We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people. — James Lee Burke

It was desperate, this kiss. Violent, even.
But of course it was. It had been building up between them for such a long time, as the battle about this boy who had destroyed her life had raged inside her. This boy who had saved her life, who was cruel and kind, strong and weak. Who was selfish and selfless all at once. — Morgan Rhodes

It may be worth considering whether middle-class American life - for all its material good fortune - has lost some essential sense of unity that might otherwise discourage alienated men from turning apocalyptically violent. — Sebastian Junger

All snowmen look to the sky, knowing their death will be delivered by the horizon. Before dawn, their life becomes the darkest. The moment before the sun burns all.
The Snowmen go mental. Kill or be killed.
I only just escaped the violent puddles, the sticks and stones.
The broken carrot noses. — Craig Stone

Bodies lay everywhere, in grotesque attitudes of violent death, but manifesting the miracle of life in a snore, a mutter, the flight of a bubble from the lips. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Shakespeare's plays were a great Teutonic Valhalla with brilliant sunshine at times and violent tempests at others. The world to him was a battlefield, but his sense of poetic justice, his sublime faith in life and its infinite resources, guided the battles. — Bjornstjerne Bjornson

A truly nonviolent man would never live to tell the tale of atrocities. He would have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance. — Mahatma Gandhi

In looking back now, I see how it began in my childhood, altho' I was not conscious of the necessity until '67 or '68 when I broke down first, acutely, and had violent turns of hysteria. As I lay prostrate after the storm with my mind luminous and active and susceptible of the clearest, strongest impressions, I saw so distinctly that it was a fight simply between my body and my will, a battle in which the former was to be triumphant to the end ... So, with the rest, you abandon the pit of your stomach, the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, and refuse to keep them sane when you find in turn one moral impression after another producing despair in the one, terror in the others, anxiety in the third and so on until life becomes one long flight from remote suggestion and complicated eluding of the multifold traps set for your undoing. — Alice James

What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in maturer life. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

That's the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image. — William Faulkner

This nothingness into which the West is sliding is not the natural end, the dying, the sinking of a flourishing community of peoples. Instead, it is again a specifically Western nothingness: a nothingness that is rebellious, violent, anti-God, and antihuman. Breaking away from all that is established, it is the utmost manifestation of all the forcesopposed to God. It is nothingness as God; no one knows its goal or its measure. Its rule is absolute. It is a creative nothingness[113] that blows its anti-God breath into all that exists, creates the illusion of waking it to new life, and at the same time sucks out its true essence[114] until it soon disintegrates into an empty husk and is discarded. Life, history, family, people, language, faith - the list could go on forever because nothingness spares nothing - all fall victim to nothingness.[115] — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This is a weird feeling in my life I have to deal with, not being a violent man anymore when my whole life's reputation was built on being extremely violent. I just don't know how to deal with that right now. I don't even go to strip clubs no more. I don't know who I am sometimes, but I am not the guy I used to be. I'm not an angel or anything. I'm still lascivious, periodically. I'm just looking for some balance in my life — Mike Tyson

Ages of happiness. - An age of happiness is quite impossible, because men want only to desire it but not to have it, and every individual who experiences good times learns to downright pray for misery and disquietude. The destiny of man is designed for happy moments - every life has them - but not for happy ages. Nonetheless they will remain fixed in the imagination of man as 'the other side of the hill' because they have been inherited from ages past: for the concepts of the age of happiness was no doubt acquired in primeval times from that condition of which, after violent exertion in hunting and warfare, man gives himself up to repose, stretches his limbs and hears the pinions of sleep rustling about him. It is a false conclusion if, in accordance with that ancient familiar experience, man imagines that, after whole ages of toil and deprivation, he can then partake of that condition of happiness correspondingly enhanced and protracted. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For any student of history, change is the law of life. Any attempt to contain it guarantees an explosion down the road; the more rigid the adherence to the status quo, the more violent the ultimate outcome will be. — Henry A. Kissinger

And silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight. — Anais Nin

Be orderly and disciplined in daily life, like a good bourgeois, so that I might be wild and violent in my art. — Gustave Flaubert

His brothers accepted his fluid nature as something Darian simply was. He had been so all his life; suspended between male and female, one rising, the other ebbing without pattern or reason. The Queen, daughterless and doting, had gladly let her youngest son
wear gowns, bows, and curls far longer than appropriate, until his father had intervened with violent persuasion. At court, he now moved as a man. In private, he never stopped wearing gowns or ribbons when the softer she inside him waxed like the full moon. He allowed her complete rein. In truth, he no longer knew where he ended and she began. They were the same. — E.M. Hamill

I had no choice but to pray for his death. Typically enough, the one thing that never occurred to me was to kill him. During the course of my life I have wished innumerable times that I might meet with a violent death, but I have never once desired to kill anybody. I thought that in killing a dreaded adversary I might actually be bringing him happiness. — Osamu Dazai

Any form of corporal punishment or 'spanking' is a violent attack upon another human being's integrity. The effect remains with the victim forever and becomes an unforgiving part of his or hier personality
a massive frustration resulting in a hostility which will seek expression in later life in violent acts towards others. The sooner we understand that love and gentleness are the only kinds of called-far behavior towards children, the better. The child, especially, learns to become the kind of human being that he or she has experienced. This should be fully understood by all caregivers. — Ashley Montagu

Men: Stand in solidarity with women. Women, if you were born female, you were born on a battlefield. You will be punished for even saying that out loud, but the grim truth is you're going to be punished no matter what for the 'sin' of being female. Battering is the most commonly committed violent crime in the United States. That's a man beating a woman. Globally, half of all women will experience life-threatening violence from a man. Half. That's more hatred than I can comprehend. Right now, that battlefield is such a slaughter that we can't even collect our wounded. — Lierre Keith

The year was 1996, and the date was July 5. It was a Friday night and I had just turned 21 two days prior, which, by the way, was a miracle unto itself. Due to the violent life I was living, this was a milestone and something worth celebrating. But on this beautiful summer evening, I was not in a celebratory mood. Rather, I was in a predatory mood and that was what I was doing: lying and waiting for my prey to arrive. — Drexel Deal

Sofya now understood the difference between life and existence: her life had come to an end, but her existence could drag on indefinitely. And however wretched and miserable this existence was, the thought of violent death still filled her with horror. — Vasily Grossman

Dorian strokes my exposed back with the tips of his fingers, sending shockwaves up and down my spine. I gasp from the contact, resisting the urge to beg him for more. He brings his face down to my neck, letting his lips brush my earlobe. "Gabriella, I would love to bend you over this desk right now and pull your dress up past your thighs and over your ass," he murmurs, sex dripping from his soft lips.
"That sounds good to me," I breathe, turning my head a fraction. "What's stopping you?" Never in my life have I been this bold and eager with a man but Dorian has awakened the sleeping sex giant within me. If my days are numbered, I want to at least die happy.
"Oh, I would do it. But I know Aurora will come looking for me and I don't want to be disturbed when I ... ruin you." Ruin me? It sounds so threatening and violent.
I love it. — S.L. Jennings

The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing - as every parent fears - that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader. — Michael Chabon

It is hope
with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet
that is primarily to blame for angering and embittering us. The incompatibility between the grandeur of our aspirations and the mean reality of our condition generates the violent disappointments which rack our days and etch themselves in lines of acrimony across our faces. — Alain De Botton

How do I negotiate my way across life with a system that I find so violent yet it seems so normal to many others? — Malebo Sephodi

Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions and there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people who feel they have no stake in it, who feel they have nothing to lose. To the young victim of the slums, this society has so limited the alternatives of his life that the expression of his manhood is reduced to the ability to defend himself physically. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. — Cesar Chavez

The builder has ginger curly hair on top of his head, and a thick moustache. He has the look of a McDonald's manager from 1970 who spends his evenings sitting in the smoky back row of theatres in Soho. He's tall and muscular with hands the size of shopping baskets and, on the one occasion I did briefly meet him, I stared into his eyes and was shocked by their darkness. His nose is broken in three places and is the size and shape of a chicken nugget. A deep scar runs the length of his cheek hinting at a violent past.
Old tattoos fade on his arms.
The builder may have killed another human being at some point in his life. — Craig Stone

I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary. I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself. — Claes Oldenburg

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride. — Hunter S. Thompson

A life sentence without parole protects public safety while sparing us the barbarity of killing our own. It teaches our children that violence will be punished, but not by emulating the violent. This seems eminently more consistent with American ideals than continuing to share the killing stage with some of the world's worst human rights violators. — Mike Farrell

It is the case that, albeit to a lesser extent, all fictions make their readers live "the impossible", taking them out of themselves, breaking down barriers, and making them share, by identifying with the characters of the illusion, a life that is richer, more intense, or more abject and violent, or simply different from the one that they are confined to by the high-security prison that is real life. Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

And what is love, Angel? What is love! he yelled. Is it a pressure inside that makes me want to scream when you do this? he palmed his chest roughly, Is it my body in constant chaos when you're around me? Is it murder in cold blood when I even think of you being with anybody but me! he roared. Or maybe it's not being able to think or speak when your life is in danger, or wanting to spend every second - of every - fucking day with you, wanting to never leave your side. Is that love? Is it, Isadore? He drew closer and hit his fist repeatedly against his chest. Is it pain so hard and heavy that I can't fucking breathe unless I smell you, touch you, taste you? His body heaved as his bright green gaze seared her heart. Because if it is, Angel...he held his lips together and shook his head slowly, then I am....slain with an eternal and violent love for you. — Lucian Bane

Even when our intentions are noble and our efforts sincere, even when we dedicate our lives to the service of others, the corrosive pressure of frantic over-activity can nonetheless cause suffering in ourselves and others. A "successful" life can become a violent enterprise. — Wayne Muller

Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me.
When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again? — Amy Tan

That a lie can exist reveals a very precarious slope on which human life trundles. What is a lie in its essence?
Is it the possibility of creating another form of truth, which is to say another possibility of an event which if true could have been as fair; or so to speak in a very pessimistic tone, an act of subversion or perversion or inversion or reversion of a kind. Or is it that a lie alters the very nature of human psychological tendencies - which somehow desire a harmony, albeit sometimes in a violent manner.
That a lie exists reveals that there are possibilities beyond what exists; that existence sometimes is a mere human creation; that ideal is not what is desirable, it is something of a promise which veils itself in categories new each time the real is undesirable; that non-existence is a farce until we are not in a position to unexist. — Ashfaq Saraf

Death is always death, and in real life, especially in the world of the hospital, sudden death, whether violent and gruesome or unbelievably prosaic, is unsettling. What can one do? Go home, love your children, try not to bicker, eat well, walk in the rain, feel the sun on your face, and laugh loud and often, as much as possible, and especially at yourself. Because the antidote to death is not poetry, or miracle treatments, or a roomful of people with technical expertise and good intentions - the antidote to death is life. — Theresa Brown

Running was not always the coward's route; it was a matter of survival. The fewer violent encounters one invited, the longer the life. — Marjorie M. Liu

What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live. — David Whyte

You Can't Kill the Spirit resonates with the voices and power of women around the globe who have refused to be either passive or violent but instead act firmly and imaginatively to oppose oppression in its many guises. A wonderful tonic for activists and a treasure for those who teach, these stories bring women's history to life. — Charlotte Bunch

If you take guns away from legal gun owners, then the only people who would have guns would be the bad guys. Even a pacifist would get violent if someone were trying to kill him or her. You would fight for your life, whatever your beliefs. — Bruce Willis

Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs lifesaving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children. — Lilian Katz

He wouldn't kill me. He might not even hurt me - there had been several instances where I could've sworn he didn't want this violent life. But he wanted to touch me, and he was roguish enough to do whatever he thought necessary to reach that end goal. Like lock me in a room. Asshat. After — Laura Thalassa

Politicians need to stop the violence because it has become a way of life in Jamaica. It's the thing to do - be violent in Jamaica. — Damian Marley

The key words of violent economics are urbanization, industrialization, centralization, efficiency, quantity, speed ... The problem of evolving a nonviolent way of economic life [in the West] and that of developing the underdeveloped countries may well turn out to be largely identical. — E.F. Schumacher

Might it have been nothing but life itself? Life; this limitless complex sea, filled with assorted flotsam, brimming with capricious, violent, and yet eternally transparent blues and greens. — Yukio Mishima

If "atheophobia" denotes the violent criticism of atheism, I invite my Bible-thumping friends to sign up without fear for their safety. Don't reserve your insults to Reason for the privacy of those tombs of thought you call temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques! Publish newspapers and blogs, stage plays and puppet shows, to mock what you see as the absurdity of life without God, of life without your Supreme Blankie! — Charb

In all death penalty cases, spending time with clients is important. Developing the trust of clients is not only necessary to manage the complexities of the litigation & deal with the stress of a potential execution; it's also key to effective advocacy. A client's life often depends on his lawyer's ability to create a mitigation narrative that contextualizes his poor decisions or violent behavior. Uncovering things about someone's background that no one has previously discovered--things that might be hard to discuss but are critically important--requires trust. Getting someone to acknowledge he has been the victim of child sexual abuse, neglect, or abandonment won't happen without the kind of comfort that takes hours and multiple visits to develop. Talking about sports, TV, popular culture, or anything else the client wants to discuss is absolutely appropriate to building a relationship that makes effective work possible. — Bryan Stevenson

I think that life is incredibly violent and that individual people are incredibly violent on one level or another. I don't try to change life to suit my writing; in a certain way I'm a naturalist of the nineteenth century school. — Richard Grossman

Rural life in the winter months was rugged: snow-blurred and alcohol-fueled, violent and fast. — John Irving

It is changes that are chiefly responsible for diseases, especially the greatest changes, the violent alterations both in the seasons and in other things. ( ... regimen and temperature, and one period of life to another. — Hippocrates

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

A group of people shouldered their way up to the bar counter at Neil's back, pushing him into Andrew. Andrew didn't budge beneath his weight. He was something solid to lean against, something violent and fierce and unmoving. Neil couldn't remember what it felt like to have someone hold him up. It was terrifying and liberating all at once. His life was out of his control now; he was giving it to Andrew and hoping Andrew would keep it safe. — Nora Sakavic

Carol and I have found that unless God baptizes us with fresh outpourings of love, we would leave New York City yesterday! We don't live in this crowded, ill-mannered, violent city because we like it. Whenever I meet or read about a guy who has sexually abused a little girl, I'm tempted in my flesh to throw him out a fifth-story window. This isn't an easy place for love to flourish. But Christ died for that man. What could ever change him? What could ever replace the lust and violence in his heart? He isn't likely to read the theological commentaries on my bookshelves. He desperately needs to be surprised by the power of a loving, almighty God. If the Spirit is not keeping my heart in line with my doctrine, something crucial is missing. I can affirm the existence of Jesus Christ all I want, but in order to be effective, he must come alive in my life in a way that even the pedophile, the prostitute, and the pusher can see. — Jim Cymbala

They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. — Henry David Thoreau

It doesn't take two minutes on an examining table for a girl to know that abortion is painful and destructive and it'll have far-reaching effects on her life. Besides the emotional trauma of going through something so violent, there are the physical aspects, the aftereffects. Unfortunately, by the time she's gone that far, it's too late to change her mind. — Francine Rivers

It's as though not even that most basic level of imaginative thought had been admitted into consciousness to cause the slightest disturbance. A century of destruction unlike any other in its extremity befalls and blights the human race - scores of millions of ordinary people condemned to suffer deprivation upon deprivation, atrocity upon atrocity, evil upon evil, half the world or more subjected to pathological sadism as social policy, whole societies organized and fettered by the fear of violent persecution, the degradation of individual life engineered on a scale unknown throughout human history, nations broken and enslaved by ideological criminals who rob them of everything, entire populations so demoralized as to be unable to get out of bed in the morning with the minutest desire to face the day ... all the terrible touchstones presented by this century, and here they are up in arms about Faunia Farley. — Philip Roth

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. — Gustave Flaubert

Indeed, in the midst of the devastation, most Londoners demonstrated a dogged determination to live as normal a life as possible: it was their way of thumbing their nose at Hitler. Each morning, millions of people left their shelters or basements and, despite the constant disruption of the train and Underground systems, went to work as usual, many hitchhiking or walking ten or more miles a day. Their commutes, which frequently involved long detours around collapsed buildings, impassable streets, and unexploded bombs, could take hours. Of the staff at Claridge's, Ben Robertson noted after a particularly violent raid: "Everyone was red-eyed and tired, but they were all there." The head waiter's house had been demolished during the night, but he had shown up, as had the woman who cleaned Robertson's room. "She was buried three hours in the basement of her house," another maid told Robertson. "Three hours! And she got to work this morning as usual." FOR — Lynne Olson

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for the instinctual drives must be satisfied. — Cyril Connolly

Wherever his faltering mind,
unsteadily wanders,
he should restrain it
and bring it under self-control
Krishna, the mind is faltering,
violent, strong, and stubborn;
I find it as difficult
to hold as the wind. — Vikram Seth

The whirlwind of life
It was true. Sometimes life was like that, a wonderful whirlwind that fills us with joy, like a ride on a merry-go-round when we are children. A whirlwind of love and drunkenness when you sleep in someones arms, in a tiny bed, getting up for breakfast at midday because you've spent the morning making love. But sometimes a whirlwind destroys things, like a violent typhoon that tries to drag us down, when we have been caught by the storm, when we realize that we have to face the tempest alone. And we are afraid. — Guillaume Musso

And indeed, it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system, so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. — Virginia Woolf

Why don't you give up drinking?"
"Because I don't choose. It doesn't matter what a man does if he's ready to take the consequences. Well, I'm ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it's the only thing I've got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay. — W. Somerset Maugham

But more than anything, as a little girl, I wanted to be exactly like Miss Piggy. She was ma heroine. I was a plucky little girl, but I never related to the rough-and-tumble icons of children's lit, like Pippi Longstocking or Harriet the Spy. Even Ramona Quimby, who seemed cool, wasn't somebody I could super-relate to. She was scrawny and scrappy and I was soft and sarcastic. I connected instead to Miss - never 'Ms.' - Piggy; the comedienne extraordinaire who'd alternate eye bats with karate chops, swoon over girly stuff like chocolate, perfume, feather boas or random words pronounced in French, then, on a dmie, lower her voice to 'Don't fuck with me, fellas' decibel when slighted. She was hugely feminine, boldly ambitious, and hilariously violent when she didn't get way, whether it was in work, love, or life. And even though she was a pig puppet voiced by a man with a hand up her ass, she was the fiercest feminist I'd ever seen. — Julie Klausner

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty ... the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mark of cruelty. — James Baldwin

The Hulk is not basically violent, but only reacts violently when a threat is perceived. He has a certain passion for life. He is drawn towards kids and animals and the downtrodden. — Herb Trimpe

We were using ether and oxygen as anaesthetic and she was particularly adept at holding her breath while the mask was on her face then returning suddenly to violent life when we thought she was asleep. We were both sweating when she finally went under. — James Herriot

You could argue that this world is just the result of a monumental "storm" - you're here by accident, through blind, violent forces of nature, through the big bang - and when you die, you'll turn to dust. . . However, if Jesus is who he says he is, there's another way to look at life. If he's Lord of the storm, then no matter what shape the world is in - or your life is in - you will find Jesus provides all the healing, all the rest, all the power you could possibly want. — David Jeremiah

When it feels scary to jump, that's exactly when you jump. Otherwise you end up staying the same place your whole life. And that I can't do. — J. C. Chandor

The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to destroy life and bathe in blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come in close contact with them, are agreed that it is their super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted writers and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders, have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause. — Emma Goldman

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost ...
You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. — Charlie Chaplin

She looked at me, her electricity flaring to life - growing more violent, more dangerous, lighting the room like a calzone stuffed with dynamite. Uh-oh ... — Brandon Sanderson

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

I understand the climate we live in and why people are curious. But it's just tough and almost emotionally violent - for anyone, I think - to see your personal life summarized in a sentence. — Ryan Reynolds

As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad. — Ludwig Von Mises

Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited
or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society. — Errico Malatesta

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. — George Meredith

Gosh, it's easy!' he marveled, open-mouthed. 'I never knew before how easy it is to kill anyone! Twenty years to grow 'em, and all it takes is one little push!'
He was suddenly drunk with some new kind of power, undiscovered until this minute. The power of life and death over his fellowmen! Everyone had it, everyone strong enough to raise a violent arm, but they were afraid to use it. Well, he wasn't! And here he'd been going around for weeks living from hand to mouth, without any money, without enough food, when everything he wanted lay within his reach all the while! He had been green all right, and no mistake about it!
Death had become familiar. At seven it had been the most mysterious thing in the world to him, by midnight it was already an old story. ("Dusk To Dawn") — Cornell Woolrich

To the police," Lily said [speaking of five murders], "these five brutal murders are less than coincidence. One of them told me, 'There's no conspiracy, Lily. It's just life.' How do they come to think this way
that death is life? That unnatural death and murder are somehow a natural part of life? — Dean Koontz

My personal view (and not the view of the LAS by any means) would be to prohibit alcohol, but legalise cannabis. Not only would it cut our workload by, at my estimate, 60-70%, but I've never had anyone high on cannabis try to hit me. Cannabis users are very rarely violent, tend to be generally easier to handle and seldom get loud and annoying. It's true that there are long-term health consequences, and that heavy 'stoners' can waste their life away, but the same holds true of alcohol and alcoholics. — Tom Reynolds

It was pretty late and the streets were quiet so she was almost sure no one had seen her drag the soul eater into the alley ... where she cut his head off with a samurai sword. God, she loved her life. — Samantha Young

We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst; and we saw men die violent deaths as they worked among the horses and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with one another; but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living. — Theodore Roosevelt

When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld