Aggravate Quotes

thus it is that egoists have always the last word; having posited at the start that their resolution is unshakeable, the more susceptible the feeling to which one appeals in them to make them abandon their resolution, the more reprehensible they find, not themselves who resist that appeal, but those who put them under the necessity of resisting it, so that their own harshness may be carried to the utmost degree of cruelty without having any effect in their eyes but to aggravate the culpability of the person who is so indelicate as to be hurt, to be in the right, and to cause them thus treacherously the pain of acting against their natural instinct of pity. ~ Marcel Proust

Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. ~ Markus Zusak

Sin is too great an evil for man to meddle with. His attempts to remove it do but increase it, and his endeavours to approach God in spite of it aggravate his guilt. ~ Horatius Bonar

We need to take a less narrow look at our children's problems and, instead, see them as windows of opportunity - a way of exploring and understanding all facets of our children's development. If we can understand the underlying developmental process, we can see a child's struggles as signs of striving toward growth instead of chronic problems or attempts to aggravate adults. ~ Stanley Greenspan

The next time you have the urge to complain, stop and ask yourself what it is you truly want. Do you just want to complain or do you want to improve your situation? Somewhere within each complaint is a genuine desire to improve things, but the complaint by itself is never enough to make it happen. So make the choice not to aggravate a bad situation with your complaints. Choose instead to improve it with your positive thoughts, ideas and actions. ~ Anonymous

Although stunned and hungry, many sang, because it would have been pointless to aggravate misfortune by complaining. ~ Isabel Allende

Often times, we blame others for our frustrations and failures.
In doing so,we disturb our own peace of mind and aggravate our happiness.
No one can harm us. No one can keep our good from us.Let us not blame others, but look for and find the best in everyone.This will lead us to success and happiness ... ~ Tanu Reshma B Singh

On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution, and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt, whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness. He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day, in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a body, which really wants but little. ~ Edmund Burke

Any other man would have accepted defeat, put the camera away and made a quick retreat, but he was a Bradford as well as a Marine, which meant that he was going to aggravate the shit out of her for the sheer pleasure of it. ~ R.L. Mathewson

The movies can only, if they do anything at all, aggravate the damage. We deceive ourselves if we think that, by striking at the movies, we strike at the root of the evil. We cannot so easily shift guilt to the movie producers or the movie stars or the movie censors.
More censorship may be a cure that's worse than the disease, for we would be surrendering freedom of judgement in exchange for peace of mind. Not only our children but we ourselves may eventually find ourselves deprived of the right to distinguish for ourselves the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil. ~ Nick Joaquin

Get some perspective. A lot of things that may aggravate you only do so because you have the luxury of not wrestling with bigger issues. Today, be thankful for everything you have: being alive, your friends and family, your health, a roof over your head, something to eat, clean water to drink, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning, clothes, shoes, a job, and freedoms. Many, many people have it worse. ~ Dinah Sanders

A philosophically informed vision helps us respond to reversals intelligently, not Impulsively, so that we can act to mitigate the situation, not aggravate it. ~ Chaitanya Charan Das

I have a horror of rest; possessions encourage one to indulge in it, and there's nothing like security for making one fall asleep; I like life well enough to live it awake, and so, in the very midst of my riches, I maintain the sensation of a state of precariousness, by which means I aggravate, or at any rate intensify, my life. I will not say I like danger, but I like life to be hazardous, and I want it to demand at every moment the whole of my courage, my happiness, my health ... ~ Andre Gide

Nothing will change if you worry. Rather it may aggravate negative emotions within you. Don't waste your time worrying. ~ Maddy Malhotra

Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him, and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the state of his own mind--or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties of directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate the most useful human characteristics, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.

2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very 'spiritual', that is is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rhuematism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards are her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, ~ C.S. Lewis

A big part of serious fiction's purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves ... I strongly suspect a big part of real art fiction's job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it. ~ David Foster Wallace

As a former football player who has carried a football more than 4,000 times, trust me, I did not go into ballroom dancing with my body being 100 percent, with no aches or pains or ailments coming with me. When you're dancing, you're doing stuff that your body's not used to, and so you start to aggravate those old injuries. ~ Emmitt Smith

But let us not too hastily triumph in the shame of Sparta, lest we aggravate our own condemnation. ~ Thomas Day

I've known no man save you. I can't imagine my life without you aggravating me." Mara
"I aggravate you?" Devyl
"Deed you do. All the time." Mara ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

That Iran is willing to threaten Israel is wrong[ ... ] We pose no threat and if we are conducting nuclear research and development we are no threat to Israel. We have no intention of aggression against any country. [ ... ] Today we announce to you that the political will of Iran is aimed at the negotiated settlement of the case and we dont want to aggravate the situation in our region[ ... ] We know that this issue can be settled in a constructive dialogue and we welcome that. ~ Ali Larijani

Caught him grinning at her. Why do you purposely aggravate ~ Nora Roberts

She's my mom and she's never seen me this happy before. Of course, she thinks I love you."
I braved a look at him. "And do you?"
"If I deny it, will you be able to get through dinner?"
I nodded, ignoring the thin veil of his words over the truth I didn't want to accept. "Then I don't love you. You're the most aggravating woman I've ever met. I can barely tolerate you."
"And my kids?"
"Oh, no," he chuckled. "I definitely love them."
"You do?" An aching affection flooded my body, filling in all of the cracks that fear and uncertainty had left me with. An emotional heat bubbled in my chest and wrapped my stiff limbs with something like hope.
"Yes, I do. But they agree with me about you. You aggravate us all. ~ Rachel Higginson

Marketing jingles from every angle lure patrons to turn our backs on our locally owned stores, restaurants, and farms. And nobody considers that unpatriotic. This appears to aggravate Tod Murphy. We have the illusion of consumer freedom, but we've sacrificed our community life for the pleasure of purchasing lots of cheap stuff. Making and moving all that stuff can be so destructive: child labor in foreign lands, acid rain in the Northeast, depleted farmland, communities where the big economic engine is crystal meth. We often have the form of liberty, but not the substance. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

But the truth is it's hard for me to know what I really think about any of the stuff I've written. It's always tempting to sit back and make finger-steeples and invent impressive sounding theoretical justifications for what one does, but in my case most of it'd be horseshit. As time passes I get less and less nuts about anything I've published, and it gets harder to know for sure when its antagonistic elements are in there because they serve a useful purpose and when their just covert manifestations of this "look-at-me-please-love-me-I-hate you" syndrome I still sometimes catch myself falling into. Anyway, but what I think I meant by "antagonize" or "aggravate" has to do with the stuff in the TV essay about the younger writer trying to struggle against the cultural hegemony of TV. One thing TV does is help us deny that we're lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It's an anesthesia of "form." The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I'm not sure I could give you a steeple-fingere ~ David Foster Wallace

Piketty would impose a progressive annual tax on capital. By a static analysis, such a tax might reduce the yield of capital to the rate of GDP expansion and thus eliminate the bias toward top-heavy accumulation by elites. Upholding the secular stagnation theory of permanent growth slowdown, he naturally focuses on depressing the return to capital. Taking money from the rich and giving it to government might seem to address "inequality." But by putting capital into the hands of the least productive users of it - politicians - he would aggravate the very stagnation he warns against. ~ George Gilder

Ah! Gentle, gracious Dove,
And art thou grieved in me,
That sinners should restrain thy love,
And say, "It is not free:
It is not free for all:
The most, thou passest by,
And mockest with a fruitless call
Whom thou hast doomed to die."

They think thee not sincere
In giving each his day,
" Thou only draw'st the sinner near
To cast him quite away,
To aggravate his sin,
His sure damnation seal:
Thou show'st him heaven, and say'st, go in
And thrusts him into hell."

O HORRIBLE DECREE
Worthy of whence it came!
Forgive their hellish blasphemy
Who charge it on the Lamb:
Whose pity him inclined
To leave his throne above,
The friend, and Saviour of mankind,
The God of grace, and love.

O gracious, loving Lord,
I feel thy bowels yearn;
For those who slight the gospel word
I share in thy concern:
How art thou grieved to be
By ransomed worms withstood!
How dost thou bleed afresh to see
Them trample on thy blood!

To limit thee they dare,
Blaspheme thee to thy face,
Deny their fellow-worms a share
In thy redeeming grace:
All for their own they take,
Thy righteousness engross,
Of none effect to most they make
The merits of thy cross.

Sinners, abhor the fiend:
His other gospel hear -
"The God of truth did not intend
The thing his words declare,
He ~ Charles Wesley

Exchanging Hats

Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady's hat,
--oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist

in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.

Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen's caps
with exhibitionistic screech,

the visors hanging o'er the ear
so that the golden anchors drag,
--the tides of fashion never lag.
Such caps may not be worn next year.

Or you who don the paper plate
itself, and put some grapes upon it,
or sport the Indian's feather bonnet,
--perversities may aggravate

the natural madness of the hatter.
And if the opera hats collapse
and crowns grow draughty, then, perhaps,
he thinks what might a miter matter?

Unfunny uncle, you who wore a
hat too big, or one too many,
tell us, can't you, are there any
stars inside your black fedora?

Aunt exemplary and slim,
with avernal eyes, we wonder
what slow changes they see under
their vast, shady, turned-down brim. ~ Elizabeth Bishop

His easiness and self-assurance aggravate me, just like they did at the labs. It's so unfair, so different from how I feel, like I'm about to have a heart attack, or melt into a puddle. ~ Lauren Oliver

The Submissive Mind (Phil. 2). This chapter focuses on people, and the key verse says, "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better [more important] than themselves" (v. 3). In chapter 1, Paul puts Christ first. In this chapter, he puts others second. Which means he puts himself last! The reason people aggravate us so much is usually because we do not have our own way. If we go through life putting ourselves first, and others go through life putting themselves first, then at many points there are going to be terrific battles. ~ Warren W. Wiersbe

It's repulsive how you act around every two-legged mammal with a beard."
"But it works," Lily returned with a large smile she knew would aggravate her sister. "You should try it, Edythe. God gave you everything needed to capture a man's eye,but then you open your mouth and drive anyone interested in you my way.If you could just learn to keep quiet."
"Amazing,Lily,for that's my aadvice to you.And as far as driving men away,first there would have to be someone to repel.Not one man of marrying age or eligibility has visited since Father left, and secondly, if a man can be so easily intimidated, I wouldn't want him for a dinner companion,let alone a husband."
Lily rolled her eyes,their light shadowy color made only more piercing by her fair skin and dark hair. "You don't intimidate,Edythe. You insult."
"And you,Lily, think anything that isn't dripping with flattery and praise is an insult. ~ Michele Sinclair

What you feel spiritually. I think a lot of that has to do with it. If you have no spiritual life, chances are everything is going to aggravate you, you're going to fly off the handle at everything and that's what I did in the past. I've kind of got that under control now. ~ Mike Ditka

People would say, 'Boy, I really loved you in Ferris Bueller, and it would really aggravate me. I thought I was a one-trick pony, and people had seen the trick. Now that things have worked out and I've gone on to other things, I'm really pleased that people enjoy it. ~ Alan Ruck

When a person does aggravate like a plaguing itch, acceptance is no matter. ~ Sian Lavinia Anais Valeriana

I went to the butchers to buy a leg of lamb. "Is it Scotch?", I asked. "Why?" the butcher said in reply. "Are you going to talk to it or eat it?". "In that case, have you got any wild duck?". "No", he responded, "but I've got one I could aggravate for you." ~ Chic Murray

The widespread diffusion of nuclear weapons would make many nations able, and in some cases also create the pressure, to aggravate an on-going crisis, or even touch off a war between two other powers for purposes of their own. ~ Herman Kahn

There is nothing wrong with people that reasoning with them won't aggravate! ~ Sam Horn

During those periods in which our bitterness of spirit, though steadily diminishing, still persists, a distinction must be drawn between the bitterness which comes to us from our constantly thinking of the person herself and that which is revived by certain memories, some cutting speech, some word in a letter that we have had from her. The various forms which that bitterness can assume we shall examine when we come to deal with another and later love affair; for the present it must suffice to say that, of these two kinds, the former is infinitely the less cruel. That is because our conception of the person, since it dwells always within ourselves, is there adorned with the halo with which we are bound before long to invest her, and bears the marks if not of the frequent solace of hope, at any rate of the tranquillity of a permanent sorrow. (It must also be observed that the image of a person who makes us suffer counts for little if anything in those complications which aggravate the unhappiness of love, prolong it and prevent our recovery, just as in certain maladies the cause is insignificant beyond comparison with the fever which follows it and the time that must elapse before our convalescence.) ~ Marcel Proust

In every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual "taste"... [is] produce[d by the devil and his angels]. This they do bu working through the small circle of artists, dressmakers, actresses, and advertisers who determine the fashionable type. The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely. Thus [they] have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females-and there is more in that than you might suppose. As regards the male taste [they] have varied a good deal. At one time [they] have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men's vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, [they] have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium. At present [they] are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and [they] now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, [they] thus aggravate the female's chronic horror of growing old (with many [successful] results) and render her les ~ C.S. Lewis

Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can't major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed. The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and enormous amounts of grains was probably more a product of lobbying by Big Food than real science; its chief impact has been to aggravate our obesity epidemic. There's plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition. It won't be easy, but it's not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could yield secrets. ~ Peter Thiel

She wondered why two people who loved each other to the point of stupid managed to aggravate each other as often as they seemed to. ~ J.D. Robb

When you hold out for high standards, people are impressed-but they don't always like you for it. Not everybody will be on your side in your struggle to do what's right and ethical. In fact, sometimes even you won't be on your side. You'll wrestle with inner conflict, torn between what you should do and what you want to do. You'll also aggravate other people. Seems when you walk the straight and narrow you always step on someone's toes. Don't count on the ethics of excellence to make you popular. ~ Price Pritchett