Escaping Abuse Quotes

He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been. ~ George R R Martin

Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. ~ Kate Chopin

I don't want to get in a big, long discussion about right and wrong, but our company has been working on the issue of underage drinking and alcohol abuse for a long time. I've been outspoken about it. ~ Pete Coors

DON'T ABUSE ME, I've never flown one of these things before." Richard Reiss put the tip of his tongue between his teeth and squinted at the controls. While he did this, building blocks, tree limbs, and swirling leaves scudded past the plastic windscreen. Chaison stared at the ambassador. "Richard, why are you dressed as a clown?" Ballooning pantaloons and a polka-dotted top spilled out around the edges of Reiss's seat; he had red smudges on his cheeks that he'd obviously been trying to rub off. The ambassador turned with great dignity, fixed Chaison with a steely eye and said, "It is a very long story, and one I find I would rather not relate. ~ Karl Schroeder

Consciousness means that we have developed an acute awareness of both our suffering and our humanity: what happens to us and what we have a right to. We know we are human and so the suffering (inferior status, exploitation, sexual abuse) is an intolerable series of violations that must be stopped. Experiencing suffering as such - instead of becoming numb - forces us to act human: to resist oppression, to demand fairness, to create new social arrangements that include us as human. When humans rebel against suffering, the heroes of history, known and unknown, are born. ~ Andrea Dworkin

Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses ...
As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] ... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long
or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament. ~ Lawrence Martin

I knew you were bad for me, and I still couldn't let you go. I suffered because I kept going back. Every day, when I laid in your bed, I was her prey. I was used and abused. I was once a person with high self-esteem. The first day we crossed paths, I got caught in your web, and I didn't even try to break free. You didn't let me come up for air, because you kept drowning me with your lies and abuse one after another. You were a thorn in my side that caused me to bleed to death, but I never had the strength to take it out."
~Love is respect ♥~ ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. ~ Montesquieu

The abusive man's high entitlement leads him to have unfair and unreasonable expectations, so that the relationship revolves around his demands. His attitude is: "You owe me." For each ounce he gives, he wants a pound in return. He wants his partner to devote herself fully to catering to him, even if it means that her own needs - or her children's - get neglected. You can pour all your energy into keeping your partner content, but if he has this mind-set, he'll never be satisfied for long. And he will keep feeling that you are controlling him, because he doesn't believe that you should set any limits on his conduct or insist that he meet his responsibilities. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on. ~ Robert Southey

Money values do not simply mirror the state of affairs in the real world; valuation is a positive act that makes an impact on the course of events. Monetary and real phenomena are connected in a reflexive fashion; that is, they influence each other mutually. The reflexive relationship manifests itself most clearly in the use and abuse of credit. ~ George Soros

Economists have calculated that every dollar invested in high-quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payments, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better-paying jobs.37 ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

As a child you received messages from your family to keep your mouth shut and remain invisible. You also learned to become invisible in order to protect yourself. You no longer need to be invisible to survive. If people do not notice you, they may not abuse you, but they also will not love you or attend to your needs. Make yourself and your needs known. ~ Beverly Engel

One in three women may suffer from abuse and violence in her lifetime. This is an appalling human rights violation, yet it remains one of the invisible and under-recognized pandemics of our time. ~ Nicole Kidman

The systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have. ~ Harriet Martineau

I'm interested in confronting police brutality and police abuse of cracking down on street performers and street artists, but also in valorizing street art as legitimate performance within the artistic sphere, where it's so often conflated with pan-handling and begging and not "successful" art. I want to change laws around street performance. ~ Kalan Sherrard

But for a mother who was submissive to the degree my mother was, it was OK to kill girls. For a father like mine, it was normal to chop off his daughters hair with sheep shears, and to beat her with a belt or a cane or tie her up in the stable all night with the cows. ~ Souad

Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can't look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back. ~ Anna Funder

Outwardly we might say we believe that liberty is a gift. But our belief that we have a 'right' to that 'gift' is the thing that's certain to kill it. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

He was on his second plate of steaming-hot kidney pie by the time his chewing slowed. And that's when he heard it. The faintest sounds escaping her room, sweeping across the antechamber, and sliding under the door to him.
The sounds of bathing.
A splash.
A trickle.
A faint series of drips.
It all added up to torture. Pure, liquid torture.
He pushed his plate away, propped his elbows on the table, and buried his face in his hands with a groan. Even plugging his ears didn't help.
When he closed his eyes, he could picture her. Naked in a shallow tub. Her feet dangling over the lip at one end, and her head reclined against the other. And all that water embracing her with heat, lapping at her nakedness, pouring over her most secret curves and furrows.
He was immediately, startlingly hard. ~ Tessa Dare

We cannot build the new culture for learning to which we aspire in an environment which is depressed and dampened every day by the impact of alcohol and drug abuse, and we should not, and we cannot, hide from that reality any longer. More and more of our students are demanding that they not be imposed upon by others whose judgment and behavior are impaired by substance abuse. It is time to take a stand. ~ Robert Carothers

I am not damaged goods, I am not a product of my past. I am whole! ~ Patricia Dsouza

Will you be able to touch me again without thinking about Sean? I don't want you to be disgusted by me. ~ Stephanie Witter

One researcher, J.P. Gump found that the most profound shame results from the destruction of your subjectivity when "what you need, what you desire, and what you feel are of complete and utter insignificance. ~ Pamela Newkirk

Offer yourself forgiveness as a gift. The word 'give' is the basic keyword in the word forgiveness, therefore it relays a meaning therein. ~ Stephen Richards

Finally, the dirty little secret about sexual objectification is that it is an act that cannot be performed with any attention to its ethical meaning. Experientially - from the point of view of a man who is sexually objectifying - sexual objectification and ethical self awareness are mutually exclusive. A man cannot reflect on what he is doing and its real consequences for real people and at the same time fully accomplish the act of sexual objectifying. There's no way it can be done, because hos own subjective reality is too contingent upon the unreality of someone else. All that can be left "out there" in his field of awareness is the other person's sexedness - an abstract representation of a gender - in comparison with which his own sexedness may flourish and engorge. So it is that a man shuts off his capacity for ethical empathy - whatever capacity he may ever had - in order to commit an act of despersonalization that is "gratifying" essentially because it functions to fulfill his sense of an identity that is authentically male. ~ John Stoltenberg

Stand up against all abuse by standing up for your rights. Because truth is...any injustice is always too much
www.bullyingben.com ~ Timothy Pina

When a man's face contorts in bitterness and hatred, he looks a little insane. When his mood changes from elated to assaultive in the time it takes to turn around, his mental stability seems open to question. When he accuses his partner of plotting to harm him, he seems paranoid. It is no wonder that the partner of an abusive man would come to suspect that he was mentally ill.
Yet the great majority of my clients over the years have been psychologically "normal." Their minds work logically; they understand cause and effect; they don't hallucinate. Their perceptions of most life circumstances are reasonably accurate. They get good reports at work; they do well in school or training programs; and no one other than their partners - and children - thinks that there is anything wrong with them. Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Worldview is often confused with perception; rather, it is our perception that influences our worldview. ~ Asa Don Brown

Sloughing my skin / escaping it's grip / stripped of my wit / it hurts to be me . ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is. ~ Ronald Reagan

For many people, the shock of sexual abuse pales before the shock of this mother's statement, "I wish the fuck I never had her." So thoroughly is motherhood sentimentalized that the mother who wishes to be rid of her child is considered a monster. In reality, women have always greeted the burden of motherhood ambivalently, even in the best of circumstances, and many women bear children involuntarily. But the approbrium which attaches to any woman who willing gives up her child is so great that some mothers will keep and mistreat their children rather than admit that they cannot care for them. Sometimes, the revelation of maternal neglect constitutes a plea for outside intervention, signaling the fact that a mother wants to be relieved of the duty to care for her child. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

Nothing pleases a woman quite so well as to look so sweet that a man wants to kiss her, and then abuse him for his impudence. ~ E.W. Howe

When healing from abuse, taking care of your physical body is wise:
* Get sunshine daily
* Exercise regularly
* Eat a healthy diet
* Get enough sleep
* Go to the doctor when needed. ~ Caroline Abbott

I think there's definitely billions and billions in waste, fraud and abuse. There's billions that can be generated in the economy by eliminating the bureaucracy. ~ Sean Hannity

A person who is humble would never be abusive or selfish; so don't abuse yourself or withhold self-love or self-care. ~ Bryant McGill

You are not, though, forgiving so as to let others off with things. You are forgiving so that you can empower yourself to get over it and become strong. ~ Stephen Richards

I think back to the last thing Dave said to me and try to imagine what escaping oxygen would look like. It looks a lot like drowning. ~ A.S. King

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

The most basic method one can use to let go of the past is by looking at it as a learning experience. ~ Stephen Richards

People often ask: If there's a God, how can He allow so much suffering in the world? Realize all world suffering you perceive is a mirror to your own psychological self-abuse, gender imbalance, prejudice, poverty, and hunger. You couldn't even perceive each suffering aspect of external reality if it didn't already exist within you. Touch and transmute your own psychological suffering, and perceive the world in kind. ~ Alexandra Katehakis

No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.
Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the sta ~ Ludwig Von Mises

This was misery that could not yield, for he sorrowed for a time he could not return to, and a self he would never again be. ~ Robin Hobb

The underlying attitude comes bursting out of his words: He believes his wife is keeping something of his away from him when she doesn't want intimate contact. He sees sexual rights to a woman as akin to mineral rights to land - and he owns them. ~ Lundy Bancroft

When it comes to sports, women are big targets for abuse because the resentment is two-fold. Some resent us for our confidence and beliefs. But there also is an added resentment because we are supposedly infiltrating a space that has been decidedly male. ~ Jemele Hill