Difficult Subjects Quotes

I am often drawn to what appear at first to be 'dark' or 'difficult' subjects, but which, upon further examination, are always and only reflections of the ways human beings attempt, however clumsily, badly, or well, to connect with others. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Whether or not you employ humor in dealing with difficult subjects, the tone of the writing is of the utmost importance. Personally, I can read about almost any subject if I feel a basic trust in, and respect for, the writer. The voice must have authority. But more than that, I must know that the writer is all right. If she describes a suicide attempt or a babysitter's cruelty to her, or a time of acute loneliness, I need to feel that the writer, not the character who survived the experience, is in control of telling the story....The tone of such pieces may be serious, ironic, angry, sad, or almost anything except whiny. There must be no hidden plea for help - no subtle seeking of sympathy. The writer must have done her work, made her peace with the facts, and be telling the story for the story's sake. Although the writing may incidentally turn out to be another step in her recovery, that must not be her visible motivation: literary writing is not therapy. Her first allegiance must be to the telling of the story and I, as the reader, must feel that I'm in the hands of a competent writer who needs nothing from me except my attention. ~ Judith Barrington

Foundational principles - don't criticize, condemn, or complain; talk about others' interests; if you're wrong, admit it; let others save face. Such principles don't make you a clever conversationalist or a resourceful raconteur. They remind you to consider others' needs before you speak. They encourage you to address difficult subjects honestly and graciously. They prod you to become a kinder, humbler manager, spouse, colleague, salesperson, and parent. Ultimately, they challenge you to gain influence in others' lives not through showmanship or manipulation but through a genuine habit of expressing greater respect, empathy, and grace. ~ Dale Carnegie

Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not. ~ Plato

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I've always been interested in exploring difficult subjects for the mainstream. ~ Beeban Kidron

What are the heights, and depths, and lengths, of human science, with all the boasted acquisitions of the brightest genius of mankind! Learning and science can measure the globe, can sound the depths of the sea, can compass the heavens, can mete out the distances of the sun and moon, and mark out the path of every twinkling star for many ages past, or ages to come; but they cannot acquaint us with the way of salvation from this long, this endless distress. What are all the sublime reasonings of philosophers upon the abstruse and most difficult subjects? What is the whole circle of sciences which human wit and thought can trace out and comprehend? Can they deliver us from the guilt of one sin? Can they free us from one of the terrors of the Almighty? Can they assuage the torment of a wounded spirit, or guard us from the impressions of divine indignation? Alas, they are all but trifles in comparison of this blessed Gospel, which saves us from eternal anguish and death.

It is the Gospel that teaches us the holy skill to prevent this worm of conscience from gnawing the soul, and instructs us how to kill it in the seed and first springs of it, to mortify the corruptions of the heart, to resist the temptations of Satan, and where to wash away the guilt of sin. It is this blessed Gospel that clearly discovers to us how we may guard against the fire of divine wrath, or rather how to secure our souls from becoming the fuel of it. It is this Book that teaches us to sprinkle ~ Isaac Watts

Lobbyists are in many cases expert technicians and capable of explaining complex and difficult subjects in a clear, understandable fashion. They engage in personal discussions with Members of Congress in which they can explain in detail the reasons for positions they advocate. Because our congressional representation is based on geographical boundaries, the lobbyists who speak for the various economic, commercial, and other functional interests of this country serve a very useful purpose and have assumed an important role in the legislative process. ~ John F. Kennedy

There was a time when no difficult subjects were ever aired in the 'Lady', and sadly, life isn't like that. ~ Rachel Johnson

Humor is a bit like Mary Poppins' sugar-it helps the medicine go down. A little bit of humor allows people to think about very difficult subjects. ~ James Fadiman

All my life, I've found it difficult to advocate for myself, to ask for what I want. I fear burdening people so much. ~ Jessica Knoll

It is not difficult, indeed, to see the absurdity of naming a few men and saying to them, "Make laws regulating all our spheres of activity, although not one of you knows anything about them! ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

Nothing is too difficult unless you decide to keep shifting it to tomorrow till you can't do it any longer. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Now Lucy sighed on his behalf. Communication must be difficult when your ass whittled the opposite sex's vocabulary down to one word. ~ Tessa Bailey

Shut up, me," Leo said aloud.
"What?" Piper asked.
"Nothing," he said. "Long night. I think I'm hallucinating. It's cool."
Sitting in front, Leo couldn't see their faces, but he assumed from their silence that his friends were not pleased to have a sleepless, hallucinating dragon driver.
"Just joking." Leo decided it might be good to change the subject. ~ Rick Riordan

Until 45 I can play a woman in love. After 55 I can play grandmothers. But between those ten years, it is difficult for an actress. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Sometimes you hold onto things, not because you want to keep them, but because they are difficult to let go. ~ Phaedra Patrick

Scientists generally are really chicken about getting involved in some kind of dispute. As a broadcaster, I find it very difficult to urge them, if it is a controversial subject. They don't want to have science being portrayed badly. ~ David Suzuki

102. After my friend's accident I take care of her. It is always taking care, but it is difficult, because at times to take care of her is also to cause her pain. ~ Maggie Nelson

It's very strange to go from being completely secluded and doing your own work for yourself, to having an audience - and having an audience that's aware of what you do and expects you to do things that they like. It can make things difficult. ~ Jhonen Vasquez

The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself. ~ W. H. Auden

One of the most difficult things when you were trying to navigate the world of books was dealing with all the unreliable authors. They were so unbelievably tricky to keep track of. An author might write a brilliant book, only to follow it up with something utterly mediocre. Or, and this was almost worse, one might have written a brilliant book but then turn out to be dead. Then there were those authors who started a series but never finished it. ~ Katarina Bivald

What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. ~ Terence McKenna

When we start a relationship, professional, romantic or otherwise, even when we're born, we establish these threads of energy that connect us to another person...Even by just being here, you're creating one with me. Many times, as people grow or change, or hurt us, the energy that was flowing gets confused and trapped. Especially in the case of loss, where the energy doesn't have anywhere tangible to move forward. We can become very sick by storing up outdated energy. Cord cutting isn't always about severing completely from someone, but it is about separating ourselves off from the iteration of the relationship that no longer enriches our life. It's a ceremony, really. And a difficult one. But it's tremendously important. ~ Courtney Maum

Love now–a good, solid love is something infinitely rarer and more difficult to maintain, because you don't know everything your partner is feeling. Love takes work. Love means being able to apologize and mean it when you blunder. Love is worth fighting for! ~ Mercedes Lackey

In part, it's so difficult to come up with something original, to come up with a character nowadays. If you created a globetrotting adventurer, he'd be compared to Indiana Jones. If you created a super spy, he'd be compared to James Bond. ~ Marc Guggenheim

I'm an active and involved senator. It's very difficult to do the job I want to do and spend as much time as I want with my kids ... It is time for me to be a father first to them, and I realize as I watch them grow and become young adults that I won't be able to get this time back. ~ Robert J. Garagiola

Grown-up people find it difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. ~ E. Nesbit

A few minutes?" Feeling suddenly shy, she crossed her arms over her chest. The smile on his face widened, becoming touched with the feral wildness of the cat. It made thinking difficult. "I believed males needed a longer recovery time to mate."
"Not this kitty cat." Rising to his feet, he said, "Get ready to play. ~ Nalini Singh

If it is difficult to know yourself as an individual, it seems to be more complex as a couple. So if you say, "Oh I like a person who is like this and that," you might take away the possibility of seeing the only one that might be right for you. ~ Jack Nicholson

It is disgusting to note the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. ~ Frederick The Great

All the most difficult problems become easy when we find the solutions. ~ Debasish Mridha

I know a lot of people who have tremendous commercial success and they go directly for it. There's something that has always been difficult about that for me. ~ David Friedman

I call it our English Renaissance because it is indeed a sort of new birth of the spirit of man, like the great Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, in its desire for a more gracious and comely way of life, its passion for physical beauty, its exclusive attention to form, its seeking for new subjects for poetry, new forms of art, new intellectual and imaginative enjoyments: and I call it our romantic movement because it is our most recent expression of beauty. ~ Oscar Wilde

The issue of racism and racial prejudice is very, very difficult to discuss. It is difficult to discuss the history of apartheid - many people have made the observation that it is very, very difficult to find anybody in South Africa who ever supported apartheid: because everybody was opposed to that; it was against our will and so on. ~ Thabo Mbeki

It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer. ~ Twyla Tharp

I would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life. ~ Alfred Nobel

Being an athlete in a cold-weather sport is really difficult to deal with the asthma. ~ Charlie White

What can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command. ~ Eugene V. Debs

We [ with Russel Crowe] had an Arabic coach there [ in the Body of Lies] that was really helpful, because it was more so than any accent. You have to be so exact, and there's different dialects of Arabic from country to country so it was really, really difficult to tell you the truth. And one of the hardest things I've ever had to do language-wise, because it comes from the throat. It's different. And also learning about the customs and the culture and all that, so we had advisors for that sort of thing. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

Three main components of leadership: mastery of the subject-matter, ability convincingly to articulate the particular course of action required and a fervent belief in its correctness. ~ Ninian Stephen

Well, I have severe OCD and social anxiety disorder. I was diagnosed when I was fifteen and every year I get worse. I don't like people, I don't like outdoors, and I don't like trying new things. I have a routine and when my routine is interrupted, like you seem to enjoy doing, I get extremely stressed and it becomes difficult for me to focus for hours afterwards. ~ Nash Summers

So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I think he will probably come round in time, I mean to renew the subject pretty often. ~ Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing. ~ Kate DiCamillo

It is very difficult to know exactly what good should come out of a particular situation. To attempt to manipulate circumstances so your idea of good can come about, is to let the ego play God-and that, as you know, can and does backfire. ~ Neem Karoli Baba

There is nothing in existence available without payment. If you want to know yourself, you will have to drop all false identities. They are your investments, they are your power, they are your prestige, they are your religion, they are your qualifications. It is difficult to drop them; it feels like death. ~ Rajneesh

THE RAINS had come, the rains had gone, and the sun was back on its throne like an absolute monarch kept off it for a week by his subjects' barricades, and now reigning once again, choleric but under constitutional restraint. The heat braced without burning, the light domineered but let colors live; from the soil cautiously sprouted clover and mint, and on faces appeared diffident hopes. "Il Gattopardo. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Yes, the divorce was difficult. It was difficult. ~ Priscilla Presley

If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works. ~ Chanakya

Obviously ice hockey's much faster. You play street hockey, most likely, with a ball. Where the puck is more difficult to maneuver with. There's not too many things that are different. Playing on the ice is totally, totally different than playing on the street. It's totally a different game in that aspect. ~ Jeremy Roenick

The biggest influence in my life has been by husband, who is also my partner in the business. We started our companies together, and he's always been there encouraging me to take on new challenges in my life. And when I do take them on, he's right beside me supporting and helping me through all the difficult time. ~ Anousheh Ansari