Confronting Quotes

What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of nihilism and has nihilistic implications. I will not pretend that the case against nihilism and for civilization is an easy one to make. We are here confronting the most fundamental of philosophical questions, on the deepest levels. In short, the matter of pornography and obscenity is not a trivial one, and only superficial minds can take a bland and untroubled view of it. ~ Irving Kristol

There are various positive side effects of enhancing one's feeling of compassion. One of them is that the greater the force of your compassion, the greater your resilience in confronting hardships and your ability to transform them into more positive conditions. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Remorse, predictably, was the form taken by her distress, the merciless whipping that is self-condemnation, as if in times as bizarre as these there were a right way and a wrong way that would have been clear to somebody else, as if in confronting such predicaments the hand of stupidity is ever far from guiding anyone. ~ Philip Roth

Hello, glad to be here, but just don't expect to get from me what you will never get from me. You will not get from me big, glad news…no, things are going pretty bad, I think." - @ Creative Time Summit 4: Confronting Inequity ~ Slavoj Zizek

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. ~ James Baldwin

A woman's power of imitation and adaptation make her capable of confronting you with your own arguments after even the briefest acquaintance: how much more so if a state of intimacy exists. ~ Anthony Powell

Lucinda," Elizabeth said for the third time in an hour, "I cannot tell you how sorry I am about this." Five days ago, Lucinda had arrived at the inn at the Scottish border where she joined Elizabeth for the journey to Ian Thornton's house. This morning, their hired coach broke an axle, and they were now ignominiously ensconced on the back of a hay wagon belonging to a farmer, their trunks and valises tipping precariously to and fro along the rutted path that evidently passed for a road in Scotland. The prospect of arriving in a hay wagon on Ian Thornton's doorstep was so horrible that Elizabeth preferred to concentrate on her guilt, rather than her forthcoming meeting with the monster who had ruined her life.
"As I said the last time you apologized, Elizabeth," Lucinda replied, "it is not your fault, and therefore not your responsibility to apologize, for the deplorable lack of roads and conveyances in this heathen country."
"Yes, but if it weren't for me you wouldn't be here."
Lucinda sighed impatiently, clutched the side of the hay wagon as it made a particularly sharp lurch, and righted herself. "And as I have already admitted, if I hadn't been deceived into mentioning Mr. Thornton's name to your uncle, neither of us would be here. You are merely experiencing some nervousness at the disagreeable prospect of confronting the man, and there is no reason in the world-"The wagon tipped horribly and they both clutched at the sides of it for leverage. "-no reason ~ Judith McNaught

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander'd
alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother - from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither - ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man - yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them - but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing. ~ Walt Whitman

If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it's new you are confronting problems and challenges you don't have references for. ~ Jonathan Ive

I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day. ~ Bertrand Russell

How can we who are so weak in ourselves, so inferior in power to the enemies confronting us, bear up under our trials which are so numerous, so protracted, so crushing? We could not, and therefore Divine grace has provided for us an all-sufficient Helper. Without His aid we had long since succumbed, mastered by our trials. Hope looks forward to the Glory to come; in the weary interval of waiting, the Spirit supports our poor hearts and keeps grace alive within us. ~ Arthur W. Pink

I can recall, as a young adult, running through the rain forest at the Forest Reserve, at times feeling a sense of fear when I felt I was in danger. In danger of confronting an ugly snake or a coral snake, which represented the greatest fear of someone in a rural area when you traverse the forest. ~ Anthony Carmona

Even though some individual scholars try to tell us there is no direct connection between images of violence and the violence confronting us in our lives, the commonsense truth remains- we are affected by the images we consume and by the states of mind we are in when watching them. If consumers want to be entertained, and the images shown us as entertaining are images of violent dehumanization, it makes sense that these acts become more acceptable in our daily lives and that we become less likely to respond to them with moral outrage or concern. Were we all seeing more images of loving human interaction, it would undoubtedly have a positive impact on our lives. ~ Bell Hooks

Without a doubt it was Dr. Urbino's most contagious initiative, for opera fever infected the most surprising elements in the city and gave rise to a whole generation of Isoldes and Otellos and Aidas and Siegfrieds. But it never reached the extremes Dr. Urbino had hoped for, which was to see Italianizers and Wagnerians confronting each other with sticks and canes during the intermissions. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

You get anxious about confronting somebody in your life. That anxiety cripples you and you start wondering why you're so anxious. Now you're becoming anxious about being anxious. Oh no! Doubly anxious! Now you're anxious about your anxiety, which is causing more anxiety. Quick, where's the whiskey?
Or let's say you have an anger problem. You get pissed off at the stupidest, most inane stuff, and
you have no idea why. And the fact that you get pissed off so easily starts to piss you off even more.
And then, in your petty rage, you realize that being angry all the time makes you a shallow and mean person, and you hate this; you hate it so much that you get angry at yourself. Now look at you: you're angry at yourself getting angry about being angry. Fuck you, wall. Here, have a fist.
Or you're so worried about doing the right thing all the time that you become worried about how much you're worrying. Or you feel so guilty for every mistake you make that you begin to feel guilty about how guilty you're feeling. Or you get sad and alone so often that it makes you feel even more sad and alone just thinking about it.
..Welcome to the feedback loop from hell. ~ Mark Manson

I'm not really into comfort books. There are too many of those as it is. Just sort of narcotic books, like my grandmother used to read. They have value like Paxil has value, but there's plenty of them in the world already. There's a shortage of confronting, stimulating, exciting books. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Confronting the US made him [Hugo Chavez] a target for demonization. Partisan and/or lazy journalism exaggerated his faults, ignored his virtues, and downplayed the influence of strident and on occasion anti-democratic opponents. The flip side is his anti-imperialist posturing so dazzled his cheerleaders they overlooked his flaws, flaws which worsened over time, and they created their own caricature. ~ Rory Carroll

Blaming others wouldn't do. Only when I began to see the world's ills mirrored in myself did I begin to find an answer; only as I began to address that uncomfortable word, sin, did I see that I was not being handed a load of needless guilt so much as a useful tool for confronting the negative side of human behavior. ~ Kathleen Norris

A person frequently writes in order to escape madness and crushing despondency by culling moral lesson and healing growth serum from personal experiences. Akin to riders on a storm, and a dog without a bone, we only come to understand our limits by enduring suffering. Only by deliberately confronting the essential facts of life does a person come to understand humanity. Without suffering the full brunt of love, sorrow, pain, illness, death, and accepting the relentless march of time a person never comes to know anything at all regarding the wonderful mystery of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Noboru tried to compare the corpse confronting the world so nakedly with what might have seemed the unsurpassably naked figures of his mother and the sailor; by comparison, they weren't naked enough. They were still swaddled in skin. Even that marvellous hom and the great wide world whose expanse it had limned couldn't possibly have penetrated as deeply as this ... the pumping of the bared heart placed the peeled kitten in direct and tingling contact with the kernel of the world. ~ Yukio Mishima

People who find that they have a lot of drama in their relationships need to allow themselves to get 'bored'. At first, it will feel excruciating, and they may find themselves confronting a very real fear underneath all that drama: being truly close and therefore vulnerable to another human being. ~ Tracy McMillan

Confronting a liar makes a better liar. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

The chief reason [Bill] O'Reilly is a conservative is that like all conservatives he offers no solutions for the major issues confronting those he pretends to champion--such as better wages, workable health insurance, education for every deserving child, controls on the corporate thugs that are destroying our earth, an unfettered national voice for the ordinary citizen, reform of the election laws of this country that permitted corporations to own the country and enslave the people. ~ Gerry Spence

Then you have this other phenomena of the paranormal romance. It's all the benefits of being a vampire without the sacrifices. By the gods, Meyer's vampires walk around sparkling in the daylight and some are vegetarians. But this phenomenon is also tied to a lot of our communal fears. Fear of aging. Fear of fading youth. Fear of loneliness. But whereas the classic motifs are more concerned with confronting and overcoming our fears, the fears of the paranormal romance genre become twisted fantasies of denial. The idea of staying young, attractive and powerful for eternity feeds into the modern self-absorbed ethos. ~ Julie Ann Dawson

Patel, the jerk, had gravely presented his diagnosis - syncope resulting from an exaggerated respiratory response, leading to ventilation exceeding metabolic demands, resulting in hemodynamic and chemical changes.

When Tommy'd looked at him blankly, he'd laughed and said, "Relax, Tommy. You hyperventilated and fainted. At least we're pretty sure that's what happened. But we'd like to watch you for a while to rule out cardiogenic causes."

And now, here he lay, confronting the fact that in layman's terms, he'd been scared shitless. ~ Norah Wilson

Ethics based on this faultily quoted verse have changed nothing in post-Gandhi India, save the color of its administration. From a hungry man's point of view, though, it's all the same who makes him hungry. I submit that he may even prefer a white man to be responsible for his sorry state if only because this way social evil may appear to come from elsewhere and may perhaps be less efficient than the suffering at the hand of his own kind. With an alien in charge, there is still room for hope, for fantasy.
Similarly in post-Tolstoy Russia, ethics based on this misquoted verse undermined a great deal of the nation's resolve in confronting the police state. What has followed is known all too well: six decades of turning the other cheek transformed the face of the nation into one big bruise, so that the state today, weary of its violence, simply spits at that face. As well as at the face of the world. ~ Joseph Brodsky

Even though some individuals scholars try to tell us there is no direct connection between images of violence and the violence confronting us in our lives, the common sense truth remains; we are all affected by the images we consume and by the state of mind we are in when watching them. ~ Bell Hooks

Confronting and overcoming challenges is an exhilarating experience. It does something to feed the soul and the mind. It makes you more than you were before. It strengthens the mental muscles and enables you to become better prepared for the next challenge. ~ Jim Rohn

The choices we make now will shape the future of not just our countries, but the world at large. We should intensify our cooperation in confronting global challenges like Terrorism, Cyber Security and Climate Change. ~ Narendra Modi

I think this is one of the problems that we're having in Indigenous affairs. Why we're not confronting the issues that are going to resolve it, the anger and the guilt. The anger on the Aboriginal side; the guilt on the non - Aboriginal side. We have got to deal with that, move on and start doing real work. ~ Warren Mundine

We need to be reminded that there is nothing morbid about honestly confronting the fact of life's end, and preparing for it so that we may go gracefully and peacefully. ~ Billy Graham

Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses reach far ... ~ Thomas Sowell

The real evil is usually the element that makes one nervous while they are confronting or exposing it. ~ Walid Shoebat

The whole thing is too abstract, continued Zafar, this business of our lives standing for something else. All we know is that we don't want it to stand for nothing. So we dive headlong into becoming heroes, becoming the big swinging dick on Wall Street or the rock star or the hot-shot human rights lawyer. Which is about making our lives stand for something that our intelligence can grasp, saving us from confronting what we fear might be true - or what we would fear if we gave ourselves the chance - namely, that we're accidental pieces of flesh, mutton without meaning. ~ Zia Haider Rahman

Confronting discomfort is giving me strength, in a world where perfect strangers can render me powerless. ~ Veronica Larsen

So these days, I'm on the lookout for grace, and I'm especially on the lookout for ways that I withhold grace from myself and from other people. At first, showing people grace makes you feel powerful, like scattering candy from a float in a parade - grace for you, grace for you. You become almost giddy, thinking of people in generous ways, allowing for their faults, absorbing minor irritations. You feel great, and then you start to feel just ever so slightly superior, because you're so incredibly evolved and gracious. But then inevitably something happens, and it usually involves you confronting one of your worst selves, often in public, and you realize that you're not throwing candy off a float to a nameless, dirty public, but rather that you are that nameless, dirty public, and that you are starving and on your knees, praying for a little piece of sweetness, just one mouthful of grace. ~ Shauna Niequist

Up until now, the prospect of parole has kept us from confronting our captors with any real determination. ~ George Jackson

The gospel is more radical, more countercultural, more confronting than anything the Bible has to say about men and women, or wealth, or sex, or whatever! And so it is entirely worng-footed to think we can silence a 'dificult part of God's word in order to win souls for Christ. Christ is the stumbling block (Romans 9:33) and the miracle of faith is that once we trust in Christ, God enables us by his Spirit to see the truth and wisdom and goodness of all his word and his ways. ~ Claire Smith

If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals ... We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us
create who we are. It is we who created the system. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009) ~ Haruki Murakami

The reason to drive this point home with a vivid and frank comparison is many New Yorkers are still not confronting the reality of how serious our crisis is. It was an exhortation to face reality. ~ Eliot Spitzer

Every book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months if not many years, of one man's solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of that solitude ~ Paul Auster

It's called being in love. It's more frightening than confronting your deepest fear and opens you to being hurt beyond the physical plane." He placed a hand over his heart. "It might seem as though it's a weakness to you but it is proof that we are more than numbers, experiments, or whatever else Mercile intended us to be. It takes bravery and strength to feel such strong emotions for one person when we were denied from birth the chance to ever care about anything or anyone. I'm not saying it's easy or painless. It is probably one of the most complex things I've experienced. Jessie is my life. My heart beats for her and I will admit to all that I wouldn't want to go on if I lost her. The unmated ones don't understand and are currently looking confused or horrified. I'm hopeful they'll know the ups and downs of falling in love one day. It's a gift and a curse at times but everyone should experience it. It's a part of life and we are survivors. ~ Laurann Dohner

Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. ~ Emma Goldman

A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales. ~ Marie Curie

But, no, really, I had it this time. One of my first Salon essays was about confronting my debt, which had gotten so out of control I had to borrow money from my parents. That was a low moment, but it came with a boost of integrity. A free tax attorney helped me calculate the amount I owed the IRS - $40,000 - and put me on a payment plan. My commitment was seven years, which made me feel like the guy in Shawshank Redemption, tunneling out of prison with a spoon. ~ Sarah Hepola

A startup's job is to (1) rigorously measure where it is right now, confronting the hard truths that assessment reveals, and then (2) devise experiments to learn how to move the real numbers closer to the ideal reflected in the business plan. ~ Eric Ries

I never forgot that, because, though I was only a child, something seemed to become clear to me: this is existence as such confronting time as such; and that confrontation, I understood, is named boredom. ~ Milan Kundera

So long as human beings can gain sufficient co-operation from some to enable them to dominate others, they will use the forms of law as one of their instruments. Wicked men will enact wicked rules which others will enforce. What surely is most needed in order to make men clear sighted in confronting the official abuse of power, is that they should preserve the sense that the certification of something as legally valid is not conclusive of the question of obedience, and that, however great the aura of majesty or authority which the official system may have, its demands must in the end be submitted to a moral scrutiny. ~ H.L.A. Hart

As TV embedded itself into the national consciousness, it got us to remember how more than just the facts transmits truth and reality - and in fun, engaging ways. TV also showed us how telling our stories, confronting our own truths makes us and the people with whom we're sharing feel less lonely and alienated. ~ Lee Gutkind

Confronting this regime and opposing Zionists are a national duty, as well as religious and Islamic duty, and a human duty. Even the people of Europe and America despise the Zionists. They hate them. They feel humiliated by the Zionists, who are a burden on them. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Simplicity of living means meeting life face to face. It means confronting life clearly, without unnecessary distractions. It means being direct and honest in relationships of all kinds. It means taking life as it is. ~ Duane Elgin

That is how I experience life, as apocalypse and cataclysm. Each day brings an increasing inability in myself to make the smallest gesture, even to imagine myself confronting clear, real situations.
The presence of others - always such an unexpected event for the soul - grows daily more painful and distressing. Talking to others makes me shudder. If they show any interest in me, I flee. If they look at me, I tremble.
I am constantly on the defensive. Life and other people bruise me. I can't look reality in the eye. The sun itself leaves me feeling discouraged and desolate. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Your objective is to avoid being on a string.
The first step, I think, is to get over the fear of losing a man by confronting him. Just stop being afraid, already. The most successful people in this world recognize that taking chances to get what they want is much more productive than sitting around being too scared to take a shot. The same philosophy can be applied to dating: if putting your requirements on the table means you risk him walking away, it's a risk you have to take. Because that fear can trip you up every time; all too many of you let the guy get away with disrespecting you, putting in minimal effort and holding on to the commitment to you because you're afraid he's going to walk away and you'll be alone again. And we men? We recognize this and play on it, big time. ~ Steve Harvey

I will work on myself, since the work on myself is going to be the highest thing I can do for it all, since I understand that as man up-levels his own consciousness, he sees more creative solutions to the problems that he's confronting. ~ Ram Dass

I started to realize how many great things could happen by confronting the things that scare you most. ~ David Archuleta

Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. ~ M. Scott Peck

Every hero is scared. That-s what being brave is about - confronting fear. ~ Nely Cab

Whereas my grandfather was getting used to a much more terrifying reality. Holding my hand to keep his balance, as trees and bushes made strange, sliding movements in his peripheral vision, Lefty was confronting the possibility that consciousness was a biological accident. Though he'd never been religious, he realized now that he'd always believed in the soul, in a force of personality that survived death. But as his mind continued to waver, to short-circuit, he finally arrived at the cold-eyed conclusion, so at odds with his youthful cheerfulness, that the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

I had my own insecurities, which a lot of my comedy would come from, about not being able to live up to their academic expectations. Acting out those insecurities was a way of confronting them, like, "Let me just lean into being a guy who can't read or write." ~ Charlie Day

It has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well and if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it. ~ William Faulkner

In the psychology of aesthetics, there is a name for the moment between the anxiety of confronting something new and the satisfying click of understanding it. It is called an 'aesthetic aha. ~ Derek Thompson

I jumped out of an airplane on my 34th birthday because I promised myself I would. I have an interest in confronting my fears. ~ Michael Trucco

Where is the love in what you're doing? ~ Karen Witemeyer

It's a harrowing experience to see death approaching in haste towards you, what is hell but confronting your own mortality ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

I wrote an entire book about death, called 'It's not About the Bike', about confronting the possibility of it, and narrowly escaping it.

(...)

What I didn't and couldn't address at the time was the prospect of life. Once you figure out you're going to live, you have to decide how to, and that's not an uncomplicated matter. ~ Lance Armstrong

He's not a safe safe or a tame God, securely lodged behind the bars of a distant Heaven; He has the most annoying manner of showing up when we least want Him; of confronting us in the strangest ways. ~ Thomas Merton

For nearly a hundred years, psychiatry has been striving to apply medical model thinking to psychiatric disorders. In this model, the symptoms besieging patients are sorted into specific disease entities and the causes then identified and removed. For doctors of internal medicine, this works. In the case of diabetes mellitus, for example, the symptoms of urinary frequency, fatigue, and confusion often lead to suspicion of the underlying cause, which is confirmed by blood sugar monitoring and then treated by insulin replacement.

But psychiatric symptoms are much harder to sort into diagnoses. People with depression sometimes become paranoid. People with schizophrenia sometimes become depressed. Some people who hear voices have no other symptoms whatsoever, and others who hear voices also fall victim to terrible mood swings. Thus far, the hope that psychiatry would be able to identify homogeneous disease states, uncover the biological underpinnings, and remedy them has been largely a barren one.

Kappler's symptoms, however, evolved when the hope for psychiatry's becoming a true medical specialty was bright to the point of being blinding. Over the years he would collect over a dozen diagnoses and cavalierly take a myriad of medicines, but no one would be able to bring him close to confronting the past he had disowned, to stand a chance of making peace with it and, ultimately, overcoming it. (46) ~ Keith Ablow

Just about every therapist or counselor or social worker is practiced in dealing with people going through failing relationships, ending them, and confronting issues of custody and support. ~ Laura Wasser

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. ~ Alice Walker

This is the process of "systematic desensitization." By confronting your fear, and by repeatedly doing the thing you fear, the fear eventually disappears. ~ Brian Tracy

These labels we put on ourselves, like criminal or orphan or deviant, they mean nothing. The only way we know who we are is by confronting the waves that crash over us and beating our way on, until we can go no further. ~ Beverley McLachlin

At first the social worker may become too emotionally involved with his clients, so that when they fail he suffers, both because they are unhappy and because their failure is his failure, too. It's hard to spend his days confronting devastating problems that he cannot fix - the misery and helplessness rub off on him. It may seem to him that to feel happy or spend money on himself is to betray the people he knows who are still suffering; or it may seem that his own unhappiness is a sign of his devotion. Perhaps he becomes angry, blaming systems and society for what he cannot fix himself.

Gradually, he learns to be more detached. He realizes that he needs to be tough, and to develop a thick skin. But if he becomes too detached, he stops caring about his clients at all. Perhaps he withdraws into cynicism and self-defense, as he feels his ideals and his sense of potency wither. Longer-serving people in the office notice the waning of his enthusiasm, and welcome him to their gallows-humor fellowship. He retreats into apathy and jokes and drinks after work. But even with his fellow apathetics to keep him company, the situation is depressing, and he looks for a way out. ~ Larissa MacFarquhar

The spiritual path is all about confronting resistance and finding strength from within. ~ Deepak Chopra

By about a week before the big day, you will have received less than half of your invitation response cards. Panic sets in when it occurs to you that everyone invited will actually show up. You couldn't have made it easier for your guests. You have included a card that had boxes for 'will attend' or 'will not attend.' You included a pre-addressed, stamped envelope. How inconvenient could it be for them simply to check it off and drop it in in a mailbox? Very inconvenient. You, evil bride-to-be, are confronting two basic human fears. A terror of correspondence and the dread of decision-making. ~ Mimi Pond

We're breaking another taboo, talking about racism, but I've just broken a bigger one confronting that guy before the entire restaurant, instead of sticking to that Asian nonconfrontational thing. But these are rules meant to be broken. Something happens to a kid when they see their parent treated like that. Something happens to the parent. ~ Abigail Hing Wen

But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

One of the interesting takeaways from both the Antonine plague and polio is what a difference a strong leader can make during an epidemic. Marcus Aurelius's swift response to the Antonine plague - and his attempt to help cover expenses for the general populace and rebuild the parts of the army decimated by the disease - staved off the fall of the Roman Empire, at least temporarily. When FDR took up polio as a cause, America followed his lead and went to work eradicating it. Although his role may not have been as significant, Eisenhower is also to be commended for trying to ensure that cost did not prohibit any child from receiving the polio vaccine, and that the vaccine was shared with the world. Those men each acknowledged the seriousness of their crises and went about bravely confronting the disease in their midst head-on. They did not ignore it or glamorize it or shame people for having it, because that never works. That strategy just gives diseases more time to multiply and kill people. Diseases are delighted when you refuse to take them seriously. ~ Jennifer Wright

Almost all good stories are sad because it is the human struggle that engages us readers and listeners the most. To watch characters confront their hardships and uncertainties makes us feel better about our own conflicts and confusions and fears. We have a sense of community, of sympathy, a cleansing sympathy, as Aristotle said, and relief that we are safe in our room only reading the story. A story of sadness, even tragedy, makes us feel, paradoxically, better, as though we are confronting our own conflicts and fears, and have endured. ~ Robert Morgan

The WORST thing you can do is to slip in 'little' white lies just to save yourself from confrontations & emotional conversations. ~ Sijdah Hussain

Incumbency adds a layer of advantage on top of this party dominance. But rather than foster an environment in which members of Congress feel free to buck popular sentiment and wrestle seriously with the problems confronting the country, it reinforces the ideological divide between the parties. ~ Thomas E. Mann

Stanley Hauerwas, named "America's best theologian" by Time magazine, summed up the problem: "I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world. ~ Philip Yancey

Made one feel one was confronting a man who never doubted of himself. He ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The first truth, Buddha taught his disciples, is that suffering is part of the human condition. If we simply try to avoid confronting painful experiences, there is no way to begin the healing process. In fact, this denial creates the very conditions that promote and prolong unnecessary suffering. ~ Peter A. Levine

[Egyptian] advances in medicine, however, as well as in other areas of science, were limited to their attempts to solve the problems confronting them. They did not attempt to probe into the realm of theory.
"History for the Egyptians was the cyclic recurrence of the elements of the divine eternal order. Just as the land was reborn each year, so the pharaoh who died and became Osiris was reborn in Horus, his son and successor. The passage of time was marked by the succession of pharaohs, who were grouped into dynasties and numbered. ~ Norman F. Cantor

If someone is confronting our essential liberties, if someone is inflicting injuries and harm, by God I'll confront them! ~ Margaret Thatcher

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

I take the rawest, realest moments in anyone's life and I open them up and lay them bare. The innocence of a five year old child, the awkwardness of a teenager's first sexual encounter, the heartbreak of longing for a relationship you can't have, confronting the possibility of the death of your newborn child, whatever it is, you open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day. You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can't play it safe. Great writing isn't safe. ~ Dan Alatorre

The biggest problem confronting the country is our excessive spending. If we're not going to deal with it now, when are we going to deal with it? And we've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue. ~ Mitch McConnell

The trick is not escaping your fear, but confronting it and allowing it to drive and teach you. Only by getting to the bottom of your fears can you find their valuable lessons and move forward stronger than before. ~ Jillian Michaels

What I love about the ministry of Jesus is that he identified the poor as blessed and the rich as needy ... and then he went and ministered to them both. This, I think, is the difference between charity and justice. Justice means moving beyond the dichotomy between those who need and those who supply and confronting the frightening and beautiful reality that we desperately need one another. ~ Rachel Held Evans

When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me. I seem to transform myself into the opponent, and every movement he makes as well as every thought he conceives are felt as if they were my own and I intuitively ... know when and how to strike him. ~ D.T. Suzuki

Fearing our confrontations is one thing ... facing them unarmed is a completely different matter. ~ Mark W. Boyer

By using novels, I show ordinary kids confronting and overcoming great odds. ~ Lurlene McDaniel

See yourself confronting your fears in your mind's eye and handling those fears like a champ. ~ Les Brown

I fell asleep at my desk many times. This was when working on events - virtually every one I've done in the last 5 years. I was not confronting the writing of speeches. In fact, I was not wanting to confront what I was doing at the time - being irresponsible ... I am now known for falling asleep. This has happened 50 times in the last 5 years and probably 20 times at my desk in the last 2 years. ~ Mike Rinder

In fact, every child on earth born after June 23, 1988 belongs to what I call Generation Hot. This generation includes some two billion young people, all of whom have grown up under global warming and are fated to spend the rest of their lives confronting its mounting impacts. ~ Mark Hertsgaard

Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional
to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death. ~ Kate Summerscale

Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel. Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or to present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.
The fact that you can now sustain the fun of writing only by confronting the very same unfun parts of yourself you'd first used writing to avoid or disguise is another paradox, but this one isn't any kind of bind at all. What it is is a gift, a kind of miracle, and compared to it the reward of strangers' affection is as dust, lint. ~ David Foster Wallace

If the dominant person is unable or unwilling to see or admit their wrong, then the person who is being mistreated must do a very hard thing... they must "step up" and confront the behavior as it occurs. You will be guided best and with the most clarity by intentionally bringing the LORD into each situation. What I mean is this: the confronting spouse must raise their concerns in light of what God thinks about the behavior and the kind of behavior He desires instead. ~ Carey Green