Afflicted Quotes

Oh, I hope I don't teach. Because look what we did: we saved the zoo animals and the nice children, and we damned the afflicted and the blacks. You know what I do every day in that classroom? I do everything in my power to make sure those poor souls won't learn the obvious lesson. ~ Chris Cleave

I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. ~ Solomon

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among. ~ Alain De Botton

sister died of the dropsy which had long afflicted her." "That will be for a coroner to decide. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Amma Theodora said: A certain monk, afflicted by many sorrows, said to himself, "Leave this place." With these words he began to put his sandals on his feet, and suddenly he saw the devil in the form of a man sitting in the corner of his cell. The devil was also putting on his sandals. He said to the monk, "Are you leaving here because of me? Well then, wherever you go, I will be there before you." ~ Ignatius Bryanchaninov

It is very difficult to develop a proper sense of self-esteem in a dysfunctional family. Having very little self-worth, looking at one's own character defects becomes so overwhelming there is no room for inward focus. People so afflicted think: "I need to keep you from knowing me. I have already rejected me, but if you knew how flawed I am, you would also reject me…and since this is all I have, I could not stand any more rejection. I am not worthy of someone understanding me so you will not get the chance...so I must judge, reject, attack, and/or find fault with you. I don't accept me so how can I accept you? ~ David Walton Earle

The malefactor is you. And so I would like to know who you are, what you are, where you are, whence you are, and what good you do, for you to possess so much power and to have challenged me so evilly without warning, desolated my bliss-covered meadow, undermined and brought down my tower of strength.

Ah God, Consoler of all afflicted hearts, console and compensate me, this poor, grieving, miserable, lone-sitting man! Send, Lord, plagues; undertake retaliation; shackle and eradicate abominable Death, Your enemy, and enemy to all! Truly, Lord, there is nothing in Your creation more heinous, nothing more hideous, nothing more cruel, nothing more unjust, than Death! He distresses and destroys Your entire earthly realm; he takes the upright away before the dishonest; the harmful, the old, the infirm, the useless, he often leaves here; the good and the useful, he carries all of them off. Pass judgement, Lord, just judgement on the false judge! ~ Johannes Von Saaz

... It's breadth, and the strength between us to know that we're ready for the next step. I want to do it this way so it lasts, and I need you to understand that for me."
"I understand."
"Do you?" Hunter asked him closely. "Then why do I still hear rejection in your voice?"
"Because I'm impulsive, and immature, and ... in love with you. ~ Brandon Shire

The afflicted are almost upon them. The air is a din of hypersonic bursts, snarls and empty shell casings. But still I hear him. As his people start to fall. As his pistol clicks empty. As he rises with only his knuckles left between him and the sheer brutality of mathematics. As the music swells above the carnage, still I hear him breathe the words. "Tell them I was thinking of them. At the end." They pile onto him. All snarls and teeth and fists. But as he falls, I am holding his hand. Easing him into his long good night. "I will tell them, David." The last words he will ever hear. 'I promise. ~ Amie Kaufman

He has achieved what Nietzsche liked to call 'The Great Health' - rare humour, valour, and resilience of spirit: despite being, or because he is, afflicted with Tourette's. ~ Oliver Sacks

The proverb has it that Hunger is the best cook. The Law makes afflicted consciences hungry for Christ. Christ tastes good to them. Hungry hearts appreciate Christ. Thirsty souls are what Christ wants. He invites them: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Christ's benefits are so precious that He will dispense them only to those who need them and really desire them. ~ Martin Luther

To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with a choice. They may either slacken and fall back, accepting the relief of a rational view and the approval of others, or they may push on, and, by falling, arise. When and if by their unforgivable stubbornness they finally burst through to worlds upon worlds of motionless light, they are no longer called afflicted or insane. They are called saints. ~ Mark Helprin

MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal - God is the Omnipotent Father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. - GORE VIDAL ~ Richard Dawkins

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all?
It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful if accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.
Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to wake up.
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearranger of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentment of loss. ~ Joan Didion

For he alone, as the only all-gracious Son of an all-gracious Father, in accordance with the purpose of his Father's benevolence, has willingly put on the nature of us who lay prostrate in corruption, and like some excellent physician, who for the sake of saving them that are ill, examines their sufferings, handles their foul sores, and reaps pain for himself from the miseries of another, so us who were not only diseased and afflicted with terrible ulcers and wounds already mortified, but were even lying among the dead, he has saved for himself from the very jaws of death. For none other of those in heaven had such power as without harm to minister to the salvation of so many. ~ Eusebius

Ah, afflicted one, your disabilities were meant to unite with God's enablings, your weakness to mate His power. God's grace is at hand -sufficent
and at its best when human weakness is most profound. Appropriate it and learn that those who wait on God are stronger in their weakness than the sons of men in their stoutest health and vigor. ~ F.B. Meyer

Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf.

Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this
riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb.

Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incom ~ James Gould Cozzens

It is the heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul to seek shelter from all ills beneath the wings of Jehovah. A hypocrite, when afflicted by God, resents the infliction, and, like a slave, would run from the Master who has scourged him ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Harm reduction is often perceived as being inimical to the ultimate purpose of "curing" addiction - that is, of helping addicts transcend their habits and to heal. People regard it as "coddling" addicts, as enabling them to continue their destructive ways. It's also considered to be the opposite of abstinence, which many regard as the only legitimate goal of addiction treatment. Such a distinction is artificial. The issue in medical practice is always how best to help a patient. If a cure is possible and probable without doing greater harm, then cure is the objective. When it isn't - and in most chronic medical conditions cure is not the expected outcome - the physician's role is to help the patient with the symptoms and to reduce the harm done by the disease process.

In rheumatoid arthritis, for example, one aims to prevent joint inflammation and bone destruction and, in all events, to reduce pain. In incurable cancers we aim to prolong life, if that can be achieved without a loss of life quality, and also to control symptoms. In other words, harm reduction means making the lives of afflicted human beings more bearable, more worth living. That is also the goal of harm reduction in the context of addiction. Although hardcore drug addiction is much more than a disease, the harm reduction model is essential to its treatment. Given our lack of a systematic, evidencebased approach to addiction, in many cases it's futile to dream of a cure.

So long as s ~ Gabor Mate

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, s yet he opened not his mouth; t like a u lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. ~ Anonymous

( ... )"He said we all have this different idea of what love is and that's what makes our circle. The more ideas and misconceptions you throw in, the larger the diameter and the harder it is to connect with someone. We," he said, squeezing Hunter's hand and signaling Margie and everyone around them, "all sit around the edge looking at everyone else around the circle. Sometimes we just settle for the person next to us because it's easy or convenient and we skip our way around its circumference, never really knowing what love is all about."
He took a sip of his Coke and kept his eyes on Margie. "But other times, you see that person across from you, staring back at you, and you fight like hell trying to get across while he does the same. If you're lucky, there's a rope you can toss over and help draw each other in, never looking away, never worrying about those still on the circumference; just you and him, pulling each other in, deeper and deeper." ~ Brandon Shire

For poverty is miserable. It is ugly, disorganized, rowdy, sick, uneducated, violent, afflicted with crime. Poverty demeans human dignity. The demanding tone, the inarticulateness, the implied violence deeply offended us. We didn't want to see it on our sacred monumental grounds. We wanted it out of sight and out of mind. ~ Hampton Sides

Believe me, the gods spare the afflicted, and do not always oppress those who are unfortunate. ~ Ovid

People in California seem to age at a different rate than the rest of the country. Maybe it's the passion for diet and exercise, maybe the popularity of cosmetic surgery. Or maybe we're afflicted with such a horror of aging that we've halted the process psychically. ~ Sue Grafton

People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge. ~ Winifred Gallagher

Muhammad Iqbal, who had spent three rewarding years as a student in Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, now wrote of it in the satirical tradition of the Illahabadi:
The West develops wonderful new skills
In this as in so many other fields
Its submarines are crocodiles
Its bombers rain destruction from the skies
Its gases so obscure the sky
They blind the sun's world-seeing eye
Dispatch this old fool to the West
To learn the art of killing fast- and best
On his previous trips to the West, Liang, like Tagore and Iqbal, had been a qualified admirer. During his longest sojourn there, he began to develop grave doubts about the civilization that had so blithely thrown away the fruits of progress and rationalism and sunk into barbarism. The 'materialist' West had managed to subdue nature through science and technology and created a Darwinian universe of conflict between individuals, classes and nations. But to what effect? Its materialistic people, constantly desiring ever-new things and constantly being frustrated, were worn out by war, were afflicted with insecurity, and were as far from happiness as ever. ~ Pankaj Mishra

We too aspire to communism as the most perfect achievement of human solidarity, but it must be anarchist communism, that is, freely desired and accepted, and the means by which the freedom of everyone is guaranteed and can expand; for these reasons we maintain that State communism, which is authoritarian and imposed, is the most hateful tyranny that has ever afflicted, tormented and handicapped mankind. ~ Errico Malatesta

To restore the human subject at the centre - the suffering, afflicted, fighting, human subject - we must deepen a case history to a narrative or tale; only then do we have a 'who' as well as a 'what', a real person, a patient, in relation to disease - in relation to the physical.
The patient's essential being is very relevant in the higher reaches of neurology, and in psychology; for here the patient's personhood is essentially involved, and the study of disease and of identity cannot be disjoined. ~ Oliver Sacks

Most people aren't overly afflicted with curiosity. It separates the creative and the tormented from the rest of the pack. - ~ Jonathan Kellerman

Blizzards, floods, volcanos, hurricanes, earthquakes: They fascinate because they nakedly reveal that Mother Nature, afflicted with bipolar disorder, is as likely to snuff us as she is to succor us. ~ Dean Koontz

From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. ~ Charles Sumner

More important is the fact that embryonic stem cell research could lead to new treatments and cures for the many Americans afflicted with life-threatening and debilitating diseases. ~ Ron Kind

In the past few years, more and more passionate debates about the nature of SFF and YA have bubbled to the surface. Conversations about race, imperialism, gender, sexuality, romance, bias, originality, feminism and cultural appropriation are getting louder and louder and, consequently, harder to ignore. Similarly, this current tension about negative reviews is just another fissure in the same bedrock: the consequence of built-up pressure beneath. Literary authors feud with each other, and famously; yet genre authors do not, because we fear being cast as turncoats. For decades, literary writers have also worked publicly as literary reviewers; yet SFF and YA authors fear to do the same, lest it be seen as backstabbing when they dislike a book. (Small wonder, then, that so few SFF and YA titles are reviewed by mainstream journals.) Just as a culture of sexual repression leads to feelings of guilt and outbursts of sexual moralising by those most afflicted, so have we, by denying and decrying all criticism that doesn't suit our purposes, turned those selfsame critical impulses towards censorship.

Blog post: Criticism in SFF and YA ~ Foz Meadows

The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind. ~ Pope Pius XII

But when a person commits suicide, he does not do violence only to himself; he inflicts death upon those whom he least considered would be so afflicted. ~ F. Sionil Jose

These things I continually see and feel, and am afflicted and oppressed with, yet the wisdom of God doth order them for my good; 1. They make me abhor myself; 2. They keep me from trusting my heart; 3. They convince me of the insufficiency of all inherent righteousness; 4. They show me the necessity of flying to Jesus; 5. They press me to pray unto God; 6. They show me the need I have to watch and be sober; 7. And provoke me to pray unto God, through Christ, to help me, and carry me through this world. ~ John Bunyan

I'm still afflicted with the malady of research. I don't like what I do, and I paint it out, and paint it out again. I hope this mania will come to an end ... I'm like a child at school. The white page must always be evenly written and slap! bang! and there's a blot! I'm still blotting and I'm forty years old. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Our rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own infantilism on our instituitions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn, they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic limitations. The vicious circle is completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our instituitions. And so it goes, on and on. ~ Alfred Korzybski

[Providences] often puzzle and entangle our thoughts, but bring them to the Word, and your duty will be quickly manifested. "Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then understood I their end" (Ps. 73:17). And not only their end, but his own duty, to be quiet in an afflicted condition and not envy their prosperity. ~ John Flavel

They asked for Plato's assistance. He told them: "You hated wisdom and ran away from geometry, therefore God has afflicted you a punishment, for wisdom and philosophical knowledge have a high rank with God." ... The plague was lifted and they ceased to defame the branches of theoretical knowledge. ~ Mulla Sadra

Can you see the pictures before you on how to intervene on behalf of the oppressed? Are you thinking of what to do to the disenfranchised of your society? Do you notice the abused of your society? Can you see the afflicted that are crying for that justice every day? What of those who are been maltreated on daily basis, do you think they need that justice? Did you see any of those who are downtrodden, would that justice help them? Anyone oppressed and suppressed around you, can you serve them justice? ~ Sunday Adelaja

For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon. ~ Lewis Buzbee

Saints spring and thrive most internally, when they are most externally afflicted. Afflictions are the mother of virtue. ~ Thomas Brooks

Religion, charity, pure benevolence, and morals, mingled up with superstitious rites and ferocious cruelty, form in their combination institutions the most powerful and the most pernicious that have ever afflicted mankind. ~ John Quincy Adams

Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own -- not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong. Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition. ~ Marcus Aurelius

In an industry afflicted by sequelitis, it has taken John Boorman almost three decades to make the sequel to his much-cherished Hope and Glory, but Queen and Country turns out to be well worth the wait. ~ Joe Morgenstern

I am made to sow the thistle for wheat; the nettle for a nourishing dainty
I have planted a false oath in the earth, it has brought forth a poison tree
I have chosen the serpent for a councellor & the dog for a schoolmaster to my children
I have blotted out from light & living the dove & the nightingale
And I have caused the earthworm to beg from door to door
I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just
I have taught pale artifice to spread his nets upon the morning
My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay
My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapor of death in night

What is the price of Experience do men buy it for a song
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath his house his wife his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the withered field where the farmer plows for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summers sun
And in the vintage & to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer
To listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filled with wine & with the marrow of lambs
It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear a dog howl at the wintry door, the o ~ William Blake

You forget I'm a goddess," she hissed. "Your goddess."
And a bitch as well. But then, weren't all goddesses afflicted with bitchery? ~ Kresley Cole

Let me say this: being an idiot is no box of chocolates. People laugh, lose patience, treat you shabby. Now they say folks supposed to be kind to the afflicted, but let me tell you this - it ain't always that way. Even so, I got no complaints, cause I reckon I done live a pretty interesting life, so to speak. ~ Winston Groom

Live in joy, in love,
even among those who hate.
Live in joy, in health,
even among the afflicted.
Live in joy, in peace,
even among the troubled.
Look within, be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
know the sweet joy of the way. ~ Gautama Buddha

What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast
To hear sounds of love in the thunderstorm that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field and the sickness that cuts off his children
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door and our children bring fruits and flowers

Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten and the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains and the poor in the prison and the soldier in the field
When the shatter'd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead
It is an easy thing to rejoic ~ William Blake

1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.

2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.

3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.

4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.

5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.

6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.

7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.

8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.

9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.

10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.

11. That time excludes an ~ Czesław Miłosz

I know many people far more upright and conscientous than I am who disagree, who think nothing of it. I know that vegetarianism runs against mankind's most casual assumptions about the world and our place within it. And I know that factory farming is an economic inevitability, not likely to end anytime soon.
But I don't answer to inevitabilities, and neither do you. I don't answer to the economy. I don't answer to tradition and I don't answer to Everyone. For me, it comes down to a question of whether I am a man or just a consumer. Whether to reason or just to rationalize. Whether to heed my conscience or my every craving, to assert my free will or just my will. Whether to side with the powerful and comfortable or with the weak, afflicted, and forgotten. ~ Matthew Scully

In the early '70s, the nation was afflicted with incurable pattern viruses - small microbes that reproduced and multiplied from a single swatch left on a sofa, and soon covered an entire room. ~ James Lileks

Hidden, unfelt, unconfessed iniquity is the true leprosy; but when sin is seen and felt, it has received its deathblow, and the Lord looks with eyes of mercy upon the soul afflicted with it. Nothing is more deadly than self-righteousness, or more hopeful than contrition. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

My comments concerning persons afflicted with AIDS as well as various minority groups have left people wondering if I am a racist. ~ John Rocker

The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I don't know for sure what ever became of Hatsumomo. A few years after the war, I heard she was making a living as a prostitute in the Miyagawa-cho district. She couldn't have been there long, because on the night I heard it, a man at the same party swore that if Hatsumomo was a prostitute, he would find her and give her some business of his own. He did go looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found. Over the years, she probably succeeded in drinking herself to death. She certainly wouldn't have been the first geisha to do it.

In just the way that a man can grow accustomed to a bad leg, we'd all grown accustomed to having Hatsumomo in our okiya. I don't think we quite understood all the ways her presence had afflicted us until long after she'd left, when things that we hadn't realized were ailing slowly began to heal. Even when Hatsumomo had been doing nothing more than sleeping in her room, the maids had known she was there, and that during the course of the day she would abuse them. They'd lived with the kind of tension you feel if you walk across a frozen pond whose ice might break at any moment. And as for Pumpkin, I think she'd grown to be dependent on her older sister and felt strangely lost without her.

I'd already become the okiya's principal asset, but even I took some time to weed out all the peculiar habits that had taken root because of Hatsumomo. Every time a man looked at me strangely, I found myself wondering if he'd heard something u ~ Arthur Golden

The afflicted pray for healing--just as hungry people pray for bread, but when has God ever sent bread? In my recollection of the scriptures, God has always sent a woman. A woman like Eve and the unnamed woman that preceded her. A woman like Moses's mother, Jochebed, and the woman who raised him to be a king, Bithia. A woman like Deborah and her skull-piercing homegirl, Jael. Maybe some manna, but when has God ever sent bread? ~ DaMaris B. Hill

I snapped to consciousness with the incandescent realization that somewhere, deep in our dreams, or deep in unconsciousness, or deep in the afterlife, all conflicts and acrimonies are resolved. That it was consciousness that so unrelentingly afflicted us with suffering. ~ Rex Pickett

On the right side-panel of the verbose and somewhat tautological box of Cheerios, it is written,
If you are not satisfied with the quality and/or performance of the Cheerios in this box, send name, address, and reason for dissatisfaction - along with entire boxtop and price paid - to: General Mills, Inc., Box 200-A, Minneapolis, Minn., 55460. Your purchase price will be returned.
It isn't enough that there is a defensive tone to those words, a slant of doubt, an unappetizing broach of the subject of money, but they leave the reader puzzling over exactly what might be meant by the "performance" of the Cheerios.
Could the Cheerios be in bad voice? Might not they handle well on curves? Do they ejaculate too quickly? Has age affected their timing or are they merely in a mid-season slump? Afflicted with nervous exhaustion or broken hearts, are the Cheerios smiling bravely, insisting that the show must go on? ~ Tom Robbins

A plague of ennui afflicted London's many prophets. Warning signs were discarded, pamphlets pulped, megaphones thrown into cupboards. Those who could count questionable presences insisted that even since the Architeuthis had disappeared, something new had been walking. Something driven and intense and intent on itself. And since shortly after that, it had unfolded again and become something a little more itself, emerged from a pupa of unspecificity
into sentience, a obsessive moment of now that trod heavy in time.
No, they didn't really know what that mean, either, but that was their very strong impression. And it was freaking them out. ~ China Mieville

In Kendall's mind, there were only three types of women: good, bad, and fallen. Being a journalist muddied my position in his moral hierarchy, but Kendall tried to ignore that inconvenience and slot me into the first group. It was cold comfort. I'd read that in a man like this, afflicted with the conditions Dr. Stone had mentioned, admiration was intertwined with hatred. So labeling a person "good" meant he would almost automatically see her as withholding approval. Any resulting feelings of stress or shame then morphed immediately into overwhelming rage. That ~ Claudia Rowe

"The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world," says an old Buddhist teaching. In other words: Get used to it. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Snow is kind of weird," Dillon said. "It's so slow, drifts a little here and there, and it doesn't make much noise," he said as he looked at Hunter. "I think I want to skip the symphony," he added as he untied Hunter's tie and slipped it from around his neck. " I would like very much for us to stay in and see if you can match its rhythm. What do you think? ~ Brandon Shire

Watch, O Lord,
with those who wake,
or watch or weep tonight,
and give your angels charge
over those who sleep.
Tend your sick ones,
O Lord Jesus Christ;
rest your weary ones;
bless your dying ones;
soothe your suffering ones;
pity your afflicted ones;
shield your joyous ones;
and all for your love's sake.
Amen. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary. ~ Charles Spurgeon

But the demagogues and regional divisions that troubled Washington still afflicted the nation with 'ill-founded jealousies and false alarms,' spreading the flames of faction under the cover of pretend patriotism, fueled by a fundamental misreading of the Constitution. ~ John P. Avlon

Zebra crossings have produced a peculiar new type of mentality in an increasing number of people. This has its new correlated freedom: THE RIGHT TO ZEBRA-CROSS. If Freud were still alive he would certainly be able to define this new psychological trait, this zebra-complex. For those afflicted, life is simply a huge zebra-crossing: as soon as they step into the arena they expect all movement to come to a standstill and give way to them. In very bad cases the patient expects people to watch him admiringly and wave to him with friendly smiles. ~ George Mikes

17You, LORD, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, 18defending the fatherless and the oppressed, so that mere earthly mortals will never again strike terror. ~ Anonymous

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by
their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to
have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed
ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have
decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the
acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that
neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our
nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor
longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have
exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's
capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can
do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy
failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to
thee what thou hast left undone? ~ Henry David Thoreau

She was easy to look at and easy to be with most of the time, but she was in no sense of the word an easy person. She was afflicted with a restlessness of spirit he could not guess at, but he knew she was the one for him. ~ Harper Lee

There is no denying that consideration of others is worthwhile and that our happiness is inextricably bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if society suffers, we ourselves suffer, and the more our hearts and minds are afflicted with ill-will, the more miserable we become. We can reject religion, ideology, received wisdom, but we cannot escape the need for love and compassion. ~ Dalai Lama

Do nothing in a depressed mood, nor as one afflicted, nor as thinking that you are in misery, for no one compels you to that. ~ Epictetus

The unmerciful man is most certainly an unblessed man. His sympathies are all dried up; he is afflicted with a chronic jaundice, and lives timidly and darkly in a little, narrow rat-hole of distrust. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction. ~ Tryon Edwards

It is incumbent on us diligently to remember that the kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge. ~ Edward Gibbon

The tragedy of our lives is that, while we suffer from the wounds afflicted on us by those who love us, we cannot avoid wounding those we want to love. ~ Henri Nouwen

Ah, but depression - that is what we all hate. We the afflicted. Whereas the relatives and shrinks, the tribal ring, they rather welcome it: you are quiet and you suffer. ~ Kate Millett

I don't want to be rude to the afflicted but Uncle Eddie is bald in a way which is the baldest I have ever seen. ~ Louise Rennison

Not for the first time I felt myself confronted by the dizzying possibility that an entire episode in the story of mankind might have been forgotten. Indeed it seemed to me then, as I overlooked the mathematical city of the gods from the summit of the Pyramid of the Moon, that our species could have been afflicted with some terrible amnesia and that the dark period so blithely and dismissively referred to as `prehistory' might turn out to conceal unimagined truths about our own past. What is prehistory, after all, if not a time forgotten--a time for which we have no records? What is prehistory if not an epoch of impenetrable obscurity through which our ancestors passed but about which we have no conscious remembrance? It was out of this epoch of obscurity, configured in mathematical code along astronomical and geodetic lines, that Teotihuacan with all its riddles was sent down to us. And out of that same epoch came the great Olmec sculptures, the inexplicably precise and accurate calendar the Mayans inherited from their predecessors, the inscrutable geoglyphs of Nazca, the mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco ... and so many other marvels of which we do not know the provenance. It is almost as though we have awakened into the daylight of history from a long and troubled sleep, and yet continue to be disturbed by the faint but haunting echoes of our dreams ~ Graham Hancock

To put it in a nutshell, he was afflicted with a love of literature. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality. ~ Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Wingare regarded him through slitted blue eyes. "Have you any idea, Rathbourne, how utterly detestable you become when you adopt that tone of patient superiority?"
"The trouble is, you are tired, hungry, anxious, and afflicted with an aching hand," he said. "The trouble is, you had confidently expected a happy outcome only to have your hopes dashed. Consequently, you are too low-spirited at present to appreciate that I am perfect and therefore cannot be detestable."
She gazed at him for a moment, up and down, then up again. Then, "Did your wife ever throw things at you?" she said. ~ Loretta Chase

Skepticism relieved two terrible diseases that afflicted mankind: anxiety and dogmatism. ~ Sextus Empiricus

When you see people your own age afflicted and experiencing life-threatening illnesses, I think it prompts you to apply to yourself the philosophy, 'I want to do the best I know how to do every day.' ~ Thomas S. Monson

Why is it that the wounds we are afflicted with early in life don't disappear? Whether they are caused by abuse or humiliation or loneliness? ~ Erik Valeur

Afflicted with existence, each man endures like an animal the consequences which proceed from it. Thus, in a world where everything is detestable, hatred becomes huger than the world and, having transcended its object, cancels itself out. ~ Emile M. Cioran

I gave myself up to fruitless speculation, and was always looking for secluded places. I became particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I used to climb, I remember, on to the high wall, settle myself on it and sit there, a youth afflicted by such misery, solitude and grief that I would be overcome with self-pity. How I reveled in these melancholy feelings - how I adored them. ~ Ivan Turgenev

I am afflicted with the power of thought, which is a heavy curse. The less a person thinks and inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things, when dragging along through life, the happier it is for him, and doubly, trebly so, for her. ~ Miles Franklin

You took to the trenches and said: war is more beautiful,
you shall never see my feet again.
I will seek the roads and taverns,
I am the blind poet.
The frowning autumn gives music for colors –
sunset gives me the opulence of roses
and I ask about you. I ask about you
but as a stung man does after something has afflicted his blood.
Peace be . . .
– I do not want your reply. ~ Saadi Youssef

Madness," he said quietly, "is as a drop of ink in water. It sends sly tendrils from the afflicted person into everyone around until all are shaded in black. Soon one does not know who is mad and who is not. ~ Lynn Cullen

A large number of deaf, crippled and blind people are afflicted solely through the malice of the demon. And one must in no wise doubt that plagues, fevers and every sort of evil come from him. ~ Martin Luther

If you offer yourself to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness. Isaiah 58:10 ~ Beth Moore

May the power of Christ, which brings freedom and service, be felt in so many hearts afflicted by war, persecution and slavery. ~ Pope Francis

This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field without its Spirits, nor a City without its Daemons, and the Lunaticks speak Prophesies while the Wise men fall into the Pitte. We are all in the Dark, one with another. And, as the Inke stains the Paper on which it is spilt and slowly spreads to Blot out the Characters, so the Contagion of darkness and malefaction grows apace until all becomes unrecognizable. Thus it was with the Witches who were tryed by Swimming not long before, since once the Prosecution had commenced no Stop could be put to the raving Women who came forward: the number of Afflicted and Accused began to encrease and, upon Examination, more confess'd themselves guilty of Crimes than were suspected of. And so it went, till the Evil revealed was so great that it threatened to bring all into Confusion.

And yet in the way of that Philosophie much cryed up in London and elsewhere, there are those like Sir Chris. who speak only of what is Rational and what is Demonstrated, of Propriety and Plainness. Religion Not Mysterious is their Motto, but if they would wish the Godhead to be Reasonable why was it that when Adam heard that Voice in the Garden he was afraid unto Death? The Mysteries must become easy and familiar, it is said, and it has now reached such a Pitch that there are those who wish to bring their mathematicall Calculations into Morality, viz. the Quantity of Publick Good produced by any Agent is ~ Peter Ackroyd

But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and does ~ Tim Madigan

Our deepest, most painful wounds not only leave us with scars that we bear forever, but also, if we make our peace with them, leave us wiser, stronger, more sensitive than we otherwise would have been had we not been afflicted with them. ~ Renita J. Weems

Just as the body takes time to recover from an infection that has afflicted it, so the soul needs times of silence and solitude for its recovery from the insane pace of modern life. ~ Howard Baker