Quotes & Sayings About Withdrawal

Neither, it turned out, was politics. His views on government were strong, if a trifle simplistic. The cause of the Depression, he felt, was Al Capone. "The trouble with the nation's economy," he declared, was simply Prohibition, which "makes it possible for large-scale dealers in illicit liquor to amass tremendous amounts of currency"; the "present economic crisis," he explained, was due to the "withdrawal of billions of dollars from the channels of legitimate trade" by these bootleggers. — Robert A. Caro

The ritual is designed to get a group of people through the hour without having to get close to anyone. They may, but they don't have to. It is more comfortable to go to a High Church Mass than to attend a revival service where one may be asked, "Are you saved, brother?" Sexual relations are less awkward in the dark for people for whom physical intimacy has no involvement at the level of personality. There is less chance for involvement in throwing a cocktail party than in having a dinner for six. There is little commitment, therefore little fulfillment. Rituals, like withdrawal, can keep us apart. An — Thomas A. Harris

Of course, I'm not quite ready to forsake all the products of society, just yet. I have my clothes, my books, etc ... But more and more I can see myself leaving much of the rest behind - leaving their makers, and the crucible from which they proceed. If at times, after all, I might benefit by the rays of the sun, must I seek also to reside in its nuclear core? — Mark X.

There is no way you can share your inner self because you are an object of contempt to yourself. When you are contemptible to yourself, you are no longer in you. To feel shame is to feel exposed in a diminished way. When you're an object to yourself, you turn your eyes inward, watching and scrutinizing every minute detail of behavior. This internal critical observation is excruciating. It generates a tormenting self-consciousness that Kaufman describes as "creating a binding and paralyzing effect upon the self." This paralyzing internal monitoring causes withdrawal, passivity and inaction. The severed parts of the self are projected in relationships. — John Bradshaw

If the American military begins to withdrawal, there will be no need for these armed groups. — Muqtada Al Sadr

Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the light of meaning, the meaning of everything was dying. Like a flame under a glass it had dwindled, flickered and gone out, and all existence, including his own hermetic structure from which he had observed existence, had become absurd and unreal. — Paul Bowles

It was a dictum of his that the soul's energy thrives when the body's desires are feeblest. — St.Athanasius

You keep listening to those who seem to reject you. But they never speak about you. They speak about their own limitations. They confess their poverty in the face of your needs and desires. They simply ask for your compassion. They do not say that you are bad, ugly, or despicable. They say only that you are asking for something they cannot give and that they need to get some distance from you to survive emotionally. The sadness is that you perceive their necessary withdrawal as a rejection of you instead of as a call to return home and discover there your true belovedness. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I wondered if I was like a drug addict going through withdrawal. I had all the symptoms, my physical dependence on Lila showing its ugly self.
My depression and anxiety spiked, and I craved her more than I ever had before. I needed her. — K.I. Lynn

When you make such a large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you'll have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium. — Gayle Forman

Hideous psychic fallout they'd all endured both in active marijuana-dependency and then in marijuana-detox: the social isolation, anxious lassitude, and the hyperself-consciousness that then reinforced the withdrawal and anxiety - the increasing emotional abstraction, poverty of affect, and then total emotional catalepsy - the obsessive analyzing, finally the paralytic stasis that results from obsessive analysis of all possible implications of both getting up from the couch and not getting up from the couch ... — David Foster Wallace

It is a kind of geisha containment, a shutteredness, a withdrawal and negation. It's as if she is capable of sensing when people are on the point of knowing who she is and she sends them a subliminal denial. — Deirdre Madden

I knew you were a badass," continued Adrian. "But I didn't realize just how much until I saw you dropping guardians out there."
"Does that mean you're going to be nicer to me?" I teased.
"I'm already nice to you," he said loftily. "Do you know how badly I want a cigarette right now? But no. I manfully suffer through nicotine withdrawal - all for you. — Richelle Mead

The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle ... yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word. — William S. Burroughs

Weakness The Lovers Upright Romance, Love, Honor, Optimism, a Harmonious Partnership Reverse Separation, Untrustworthy, Fickleness, Unreliability The Chariot Upright Perseverance, Seeking Justice, Strong in the face of Adversity Reverse Defeat, Failure, Unproductive Justice Upright Righteousness, Equality, Integrity, Honor, Fairness Reverse Unfairness, Falsely Accused, Mistreatment, Biased The Hermit Upright Withdrawal, Independent, Inner Strength, Carefulness, Observant Reverse Impulsiveness, Immaturity, Recklessness, Stupidity Wheel of Fortune Upright Unexpected Surprises, Progress, Fate, Fortune — Kathleen Rao

We hope and we've made clear that the forces need to come out. It needs to be full and complete withdrawal. Our position is it needs to be done as soon as possible so that the elections can be free, fair and free of outside influence. — Stephen Hadley

every relationship had its own "love account." Doing something kind for your partner was like a deposit. A negative comment was a withdrawal. The trick was to keep your account in credit. — Liane Moriarty

But there is no withdrawal, but with tobacco there is terrible withdrawal, it is almost impossible for a lot of people. I did, I went cold turkey, they never had any patches in those days but grass was not difficult, alcohol not difficult, but tobacco - oh my god. — Larry Hagman

In our homes, where we work, in our friendships, we come inevitably to a fork in the road where we must decide, "Will I forgive that?" If the answer is yes, we go forward together in love. If we choose "no, I will not forgive," at that point we will tend to amplify the fault we observe to excuse our withdrawal into bitterness. Everyone loses - and the gospel most of all. — James MacDonald

Golden sees parental uninterest in collective solutions as part of a larger "decline in the social contract" ... "As a scholar, I'm very disturbed that we have more [media] articles about toxins in the home than the fact that we don't have universal prenatal care, she says. "We've moved from collective concern about infant and child welfare into this very privatized focus on "my child" and this intensive child-rearing. — Emily Matchar

Iraqis will never forget that on 8 August 1990 Kuwait became part of Iraq legally, constitutionally and actually. It continued to do so until last night, when withdrawal began. — Saddam Hussein

I'm not suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I would say that I have a balanced state of mind. — Jean-Claude Juncker

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. — Charles Bukowski

Veeva should count her blessings. Three years ago it was cocaine and a year ago it was crack and lemme tell you, that stuff you got to have. You do anything for that high." He laughed again, savoring his memories. "Where do you think the furniture went? Up my nose, that's where. She finally had me carted out of here screaming like an insane man. Spent some time in Bellevue with little sparkly bugs coming out my orifices. Compared to that being a drunk is practically a sensible existence. — Dan Ahearn

Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die. — Nicolaus Cusanus

The crimes committed against the people of West Papua are some of the most shameful of the past years. The Western powers have much to answer for, and at the very least should use their ample means to bring about the withdrawal of the occupying Indonesian army and termination of the shameful exploitation of resources and destruction of the environment and the lives and societies of the people of West Papua, who have suffered far too much. — Noam Chomsky

But promoting philosophical skepticism is not quite the mission of this book. If awareness of the Black Swan problem can lead us into withdrawal and extreme skepticism, I take here the exact opposite direction. I am interested in deeds and true empiricism. So, this book was not written by a Sufi mystic, or even by a skeptic in the ancient or medieval sense, or even (we will see) in a philosophical sense, but by a practitioner whose principal aim is not to be a sucker in things that matter, period. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If I don't see my kids for six days, I start to get withdrawal pains. — Ron Silver

You ordered an immediate withdrawal, sir. Am I to understand I have the liberty to countermand your orders in combat? — Owen R. O'Neill

Secret kabals of vegetarians habitually gather under the sign to exchange contraband from beyond the Vegetable Barrier. In their pinpoint eyes dances their old dream: the Total Fast. One of them reports a new atrocity published without compassionate comment by the editors of Scientific American: "It has been established that, when pulled from the ground, a radish produces an electronic scream." Not even the triple bill for 65 will comfort them tonight. With a mad laugh born of despair, one of them throws himself on a hot-dog stand, disintegrating on the first chew into pathetic withdrawal symptoms. The rest watch him mournfully and then separate into the Montreal entertainment section. The news is more serious than any of them thought. One is ravished by a steak house with sidewalk ventilation. In a restaurant, one argues with the waiter that he ordered "tomato" but then in a suicide of gallantry he agrees to accept the spaghetti, meat sauce mistake. — Leonard Cohen

It is not enough to know the Son of God in the Father's nature only, unless we acknowledge Him in what is ours without withdrawal of what is His own. For that self-emptying, which He underwent for man's restoration, was the dispensation of compassion, not the loss of power. For, though by the eternal purpose of God there was 'no other name under heaven given to men whereby they must be saved' (Acts 4:12), the Invisible made His substance visible, the Intemporal temporal, the Impassable passable: not that power might sink into weakness, but that weakness might pass into indestructible power. — Pope Leo I

The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo - the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do. — Alan W. Watts

Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps. — Haruki Murakami

We must have a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces - or at the very least a plan for it - something the administration has incredulously failed to do for over two years. — Sherrod Brown

This seclusion of the artist with his work, sometimes misconceived as a selfish thing, is in truth as needful a tool as any, if a vision is to be made clear to others. And all the men I have known do creative work obtained it; either mechanically, by the walls of a workroom, or by that withdrawal into themselves which is part of their power. — Georgiana Burne-Jones

This evening, I've demonstrated coitus interruptus to the both of you." We stared at the Levantine, confused. The doctor snickered at his secretary's statement, as if taking part in a private conspiracy. "Jabril mentioned to me earlier that you didn't understand the meaning of coitus interruptus. Rather than providing a verbal explanation, we decided to give a demonstration," our host explained. Zac and I looked at the men agape. The Levantine smiled lasciviously before adding, "In layman's terms, coitus interruptus, otherwise known as the rejected sexual intercourse, is the withdrawal or pull-out method. "In heterosexual terms, it is a form of birth control in which a man, during intercourse, withdraws his penis from a woman's vagina prior to orgasm. Ejaculating outside her orifice and directing his semen away from the vagina is an effort to avoid insemination. — Young

They are going to leave [Gaza], not because this is a gift from Israel. This is because they failed to confront our people, so don't describe their withdrawal from here ... as a gift for the Palestinians. This is because they are defeated here. HAMAS will never recognize the existence of a Jewish State in the region. — Zuheir Mohsen

The negotiations must address all aspects, both peace and withdrawal. — Yitzhak Rabin

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent. — Maya Angelou

Do no be ashamed to make a temporary withdrawal from the field if you see that your enemy is stronger than you; it is not winning or losing a single battle that matters, but how the war ends. — Paulo Coelho

Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence of God and learns something of the secret of His perfections less by seeing than by fruitive love. — Thomas Merton

The government is currently experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and we musn't feed the habit by injecting more tax dollars into it. — Ronald Reagan

Vis a vis the Golan Heights, the present government of Israel, under my leadership, is the first government that is ready to speak about a withdrawal. — Yitzhak Rabin

Jonah's anger was not marked by outbursts of rage but by a quiet withdrawal from the company of others and a growing preoccupation with the events in his own life. — Colin S. Smith

I am without any doubt whatever a NON-actor. For a start, the gushing pretension of would-be actors puts me off. Ergo ego. I watch them preening in front of the rehearsal mirrors in the drama hall. Just waiting for applause. All they want is to be liked. Plus admired, adored, idolized, flattered, etc. And they're more like groupy than glue. If they're on their own for more than five minutes they get withdrawal symptoms and go walkabout, looking for kindred lost souls to coagulate with. — Aidan Chambers

Comfort is a stance of avoidance rather than the pursuit of excellence. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The list of American grievances is long: Pakistan developed nuclear weapons while promising the United States that it would not; the United States helped arm and train Mujahideen against the Soviets during the 1980s, but Pakistan chose to keep these militants well armed and sufficiently funded even after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989; and, from the American perspective, Pakistan's crackdown on terrorist groups, particularly after 9/11, has been halfhearted at best. — Husain Haqqani

They are both stances of "disbelief," but mere cynicism is negative, a withdrawal from politics into private tranquility, while "kynicism" is openly antagonistic, a radically engaged reaction to the collapse of meaningful options within the public sphere. — Drew Daniel

Undoubtedly, our weariness is not based on the fact that we're running. Rather, our weariness is all too frequently based on the fact that many of the things that we're running from are the very things we should be running to. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

[Judith Warner:] Our neurotic quest to perfect the mechanics of mothering can be interpreted as an effort to do on an individual level what we've stopped trying to do on a society-wide one. — Emily Matchar

As soon as I decided I'd have to dig down still deeper to uncover the root of my listless withdrawal from life, I became aware of some interference from the past distracting and confusing my thoughts, causing me a sensation that was at the same time oppressive, expectant and empty. In these somewhat contradictory feelings, I came to recognize my childish sense of having run down like a clock that needed someone to wind it before it could go again; and saw that I was now no less helpless than in those far-off days when I waited for somebody to take me by the hand and tell me what to do. On my own initiative I could do nothing, take no responsibility, make no decisions only watch my existence unroll. — Anna Kavan

The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called "engaged withdrawal,"mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some - often even uglier - variant of the
very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities. — David Graeber

It was not long before I discovered that withdrawing addicts lost their composure in exactly the same manner that careless millionaires lose their money: gradually, then suddenly. — Andrew Davidson

In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, non-cooperation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evildoer. I am endeavoring to show my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that evil can only be sustained by violence. Withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil. — Mahatma Gandhi

This is the essence of all games. Games are a way of using time for people who cannot bear the stroking starvation of withdrawal and yet whose NOT OK position makes the ultimate form of relatedness, intimacy, impossible. — Thomas A. Harris

The procrastination, the laziness, the halfhearted attempts, the going through the motions - all indicate that the old story isn't motivating you anymore. What once made sense, makes sense no longer. You are beginning to withdraw from that world. Society does its best to persuade you to resist that withdrawal, which, when resisted, is called depression. — Charles Eisenstein

When I sat late, I mean late. A three-year old with insomnia is very similar to a heroin addict going through withdrawal. — Jim Gaffigan

Hillary Clinton failed to mention that her agreement with a precipitous withdrawal and declaration of victory in 2011 helped left swaths of territory and weaponry from ISIS. She failed to mention that she described Bashar al-Assad as a positive reformer and opened an American embassy. She failed to mention a complete failure strategy in Libya, which now is enabling ISIS to move into Libya. — Carly Fiorina

Yet powerful as they were, as powerful as music that brings heart-piercing pain, tears, laughter, with its enchantments, they were as music, subordinate to their own creator. Humans need not, Paks saw, worship their immortality, their cool wisdom, their knowledge of the taig, their ability to repattern mortal perceptions. In brief mortal lives humans met challenges no elf could meet, learned strategies no elf could master, chose evil or good more direct and dangerous than elf could perceive. Humans were shaped for conflict, as elves for harmony; each needed the other's balance of wisdom, but must cleave to its own nature. It was easy for an immortal to counsel patience, withdrawal until a danger passed . . . — Elizabeth Moon

The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country. — James A. Garfield

Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place. — Noam Chomsky

I wouldn't even go into the history of the last days of the Soviet Union, the withdrawal from Europe, and what promises were given at that time, because those were oral promises, and our leaders of that time strongly believe that, like in ancient Russia, a word given is better than any treaty. — Sergei Lavrov

I am miserable now - not feeling unhappiness, just lack of life coming to me and coming out of me - resignation to getting nothing and seeking nothing, staying behind shell. The glare of unknown love, human, unhad by me, - the tenderness I never had. I don't want to be just a nothing, a sick blank, withdrawal into myself forever. I just want something, beside the emptiness I've carried around in me all my life. — Allen Ginsberg

The life spills over, some days.
She cannot be at rest,
Wishes she could explode

Like that red tree -
The one that bursts into fire
All this week.

Senses her infinite smallness
But can't seize it,
Recognizes the folly of desire,

The folly of withdrawal -
Kicks at the curb, the pavement,
If only she could, at this moment,

When what she's doing is plodding
To the bus stop, to go to school,
Passing that fiery tree - if only she could

Be making love,
Be making a painting,
Be exploding, be speeding through the universe

Like a photon, like a shower
Of yellow flames -
She believes if she could only catch up

With the riding rhythm of things, of her own electrons,
Then she would be at rest -
If she could forget school,

Climb the tree,
Be the tree,
burn like that. — Alicia Suskin Ostriker

It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame. — Lewis H. Lapham

The cigarette hung unlit from his lips. Was he doomed to roam forever in his ghost state, always wanting to light that cigarette? A small twinge of satisfaction rolled through me at the thought of him in permanent nicotine withdrawal. — Deanna Chase

They got that way, Garraty had noticed. Complete withdrawal from everything and everyone around them. Everything but the road. They stared at the road with a kind of horrid fascination, as if it were a tightrope thay had to walk over an endless, bottomless chasm. — Richard Bachman

The U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol endangers the entire process. — Laurent Fabius

A three-year-old with insomnia is very similar to a heroin addict going through withdrawal. There is nothing that calms them. They can't focus. You can't tell them enough stories. They don't understand why they are still awake four hours past their bedtime. This is commonly understood by all parents of three-year-olds and has inspired great works of literature, such as Go the F-ck to Sleep. — Jim Gaffigan

There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself. — Haruki Murakami

From the Greek word for spectators, theatai, the later philosophical term "theory" was derived, and the word "theoretical" until a few hundred years ago meant "contemplating," looking upon something from the outside, from a position implying a view that is hidden from those who take part in the spectacle and actualize it. The inference to be drawn from this early distinction between doing and understanding is obvious: as a spectator you may understand the "truth" of what the spectacle is about; but the price you have to pay is withdrawal from participating in it. — Hannah Arendt

Los Angeles people are incapable of passively mainlining TV and movies. Here you have to read who produced or directed every episode, who wrote it, who had guests shots and whether you know them personally and if they like you. You have to figure out who everybody's agent is and whether yours is better. You not only know but deeply care about the difference between such job titles as Producer, Supervising Producer, and Executive Story Editor ... So while the rest of the country is lying stupid in a media-induced coma, people in L.A. are in constant withdrawal. — Cynthia Heimel

The nocturnal glory of being great without being
anything! The sombre majesty of splendours no one
knows ... And I suddenly experience the sublime feeling
of a monk in the wilderness or of a hermit in his retreat,
acquainted with the substance of Christ in the sands and
in the caves of withdrawal from the world. — Fernando Pessoa

The Romans held Britain from the invasion of Julius Caesar till their voluntary withdrawal from the island, A.D. 420,- that is, about five hundred years. — Thomas Bulfinch

I'm thoroughly addicted to you, Becca. If I don't get a regular fix of your body, I might go into withdrawal."
"That's a very serious condition. Maybe we should wean you off that addiction."
"Oh, no. I'm happily addicted. I don't have many vices, you know. I don't really drink, don't smoke, I'm not into partying or anything like that. But you? I'm very much into you. I wouldn't give you up for anything."
"Well, in that case, we'd better make sure you get your fix, Mr. Dorsey. I wouldn't want you to go into withdrawal."
"No, we wouldn't want that. it'd be bad."
"What are the symptoms of withdrawal, just so I know what to look for?"
"Well, I tend to get cranky, that's the firs thing. I get really horny, and it's hard for me to concentrate."
"I see. And what's the best method of giving you a fix?"
"I'm not particular."
"So if you touched me, right here in this parking lot, that would help you? — Jasinda Wilder

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the acknowledged architect of the British victory in the French and Indian War, rose to condemn the decision to militarize the conflict. He recommended the withdrawal from Boston of all British troops, who could only serve as incendiaries for a provocative incident that triggered a war. — Joseph J. Ellis

Academic life is but half life it is a withdrawal from the fight to utter smart things that cost you nothing except the thinking them from a cloister. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Depressive lucidity, usually described as a radical withdrawal from ordinary human concerns, generally manifests itself by a profound indifference to things which are genuinely of minor interest. Thus it is possible to imagine a depressed lover, while the idea of a depressed patriot seems frankly inconceivable. — Michel Houellebecq

During this week, Ragan has experience a bit of insecurity with me, the result of my being quieter than usual, which he interprets as being a withdrawal from him. "No," I countered, "it is a withdrawal into myself." I do not think the same need exists in him. Quiet can be the two of us reading silently. But he prefers that I be nearby. I need regular time without anybody else around in order to feel restored. — Phyllis Theroux

Her mother's quiet disapproval and withdrawal was a death in itself, and Franckline's despair at it was transmitted, she was sure of it, to the child. She transgressed twice, first by making the child, then by giving it her despair, the despair that left it unable to live. — Pamela Erens

The withdrawal of more than half a million Russian troops and dependents from Germany since 1991 is described by historians as 'the biggest pullout ever by an army not defeated in battle.' — Stephen Kinzer

The essence of oneself and the essence of the world: these two are one. [ The aim is not to see, but to realize that one is, that essence; then one is free to wander as that essence in the world.] Hence separateness, withdrawal, is no longer necessary. Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence-for he has the perfected eye to see. — Joseph Campbell

Charlus takes the narrator's chin and slides his magnetized fingers up to the ears "like a barber's fingers." This trivial gesture, which I begin, is continued by another part of myself; without anything interrupting it physically, it branches off, shifts from a simple function to a dazzling meaning, that of the demand for love. Meaning (destiny) electrifies my hand: I am about to tear open the other's opaque body, oblige the other (whether there is a response, a withdrawal, or mere acceptance) to enter into the interplay of meaning: I am about to make the other speak. In the lover's realm, there is no acting out: no propulsion, perhaps even no pleasure
nothing but signs, a frenzied activity of language: to institute, on each furtive occasion, the system (the paradigm) of demand and response. — Roland Barthes

I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts. — Maya Lin

Delaying a meal brings about symptoms most people call "hunger." These symptoms include abdominal cramping, weakness, and feeling ill-the same as during drug withdrawal. This is not hunger. Our dietary habits, especially eating animal-protein-rich foods three times a day, are so stressful to the detoxification system in our liver and kidneys that we start to get withdrawal, or detoxification, symptoms the minute we aren't busy processing such food. Real hunger is not that uncomfortable. — Joel Fuhrman

If suffering is ubiquitous in life, the withdrawal from and avoidance of suffering is accordingly the withdrawal from and avoidance of life. You — Kelly G. Wilson

A privileging of individual rights over group goods can lead to serious problems, as we've seen with the antivaccination movement. — Emily Matchar

The next stage, culture shock or cultural fatigue, may follow as the newcomer is increasingly frustrated by disorienting cultural cues. Deprivation of the familiar may cause a loss of self-esteem, depression, anger, or withdrawal. The severity of this shock will vary as a function of the personality of the individual, the emotional support available, and the perceived or actual differences between the two cultures. — Lynne T. Diaz-Rico

Reading was the stable backdrop against which my life was played. It was what I used to do through long evenings. Never mornings even to one so self-indulgent, it seems slightly sinful to wake up and immediately sit down with a book and afternoons only now and then. In daylight I would pay what I owed the world. Reading was the reward, a solitary, obscure, nocturnal reward. It was what I got everything else (living) out of the way in order to do. Now the lack was taking its toll. I was having withdrawal symptoms. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz

If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can't stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse. — Chris Prentiss

If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round. True, they are a merry-go-round of ill-gaited and wind-broken horses, painted first in pastel colors, then in dull grays and browns, but perplexing and intolerably dizzy the thing is, as never were the merry-go-rounds of childhood or adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth. For most men and women these thirty years are taken up with a gradual withdrawal from life. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I did not want the evening to end just yet. I needed time to memorize what happiness felt like because I had experienced so little of it. Looking up into the night sky, I saw the Milky Way. I instantly thought of God and how I was afraid I was losing my faith in Him and the immensity of the fear and cowardice I felt when I thought of facing the world without Him. I was receiving the Eucharist every day of my life and fighting this war with faithlessness with every cell of my body, but I could feel the withdrawal taking place without my consent. — Pat Conroy

It was growing dark on this long southern evening, and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils.
Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold ... The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, he depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks. — Pat Conroy

outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was not a result of some global strategy, but of a set of specific, regional calculations and miscalculations; on one hand, Israel's long-standing wish to strike at the growing military power of Egypt and, on the other, the tactical mistakes of Nasser in May of that year, through which he requested the withdrawal of UN buffer forces and so left himself open to the Israeli attack. — Fred Halliday

The events that followed our withdrawal from Vietnam, including the plight of the boat people and the more than 1 million slaughtered by the new communist rulers of Cambodia, showed that media critics who said we were on the wrong side were mistaken. — Richard M. Nixon

I can't do it. I've been here before and it's not a room with a view. The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal. If I don't withdraw I have no power at all. A relationship where one person has no power or negative power, isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave. — Jeanette Winterson

It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with it's silence and immobility but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world- invulnerable because elusive. — Joseph Conrad

In its effect on family relationships, in its facilitation of parental withdrawal from an active role in the socialization of their children, and in its replacement of family rituals and special events, television has played an important role in the disintegration of the American family. — Marie Winn

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also has dissociative symptoms as an essential feature. PTSD has been classically seen as a biphasic disorder, with persons alternately experiencing phases of intrusion and numbing... [T]he intrusive phase is associated with recurrent and distressing recollections in thoughts or dreams and reliving the events in flashbacks. The avoidant/numbing phase is associated with efforts to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma, emotional constriction, and social withdrawal. This biphasic pattern is the result of dissociation; traumatic events are distanced and dissociated from usual conscious awareness in the numbing phase, only to return in the intrusive phase. — James A. Chu