Inflicted Quotes

A G-string is a permanent self-inflicted wedgie. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

As parents, we may as well accept that we will "lose it" at times. Perfect equanimity is beyond us. Temporary breaks in the relationship with the child are inevitable and are not in themselves harmful, unless they are frequent and catastrophic. The real harm is inflicted when the parent makes the child work at reestablishing contact, as in forcing a child to apologize before granting "forgiveness." There ~ Gabor Mate

Courage is a self-inflicted quality that gains momentum every time you try it. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer

One reason to keep going is that the country was given to us as a sacred charge. It is, as Stephen Vincent Benet says in 'the Devil and Daniel Webster,' not the only place that created free man- but... Read More its a place that demands that we decide what to do with out freedom. You can only punish yourself, That's the existential view. I don't think there's any reward beyond participating, beyond being here. And the antithesis of reward is punishment, and the only punishment that can come is self-inflicted. I remain optimistic. Whether or not the optimism is justified, I don't know. I want to stay around for the third act. ~ Mort Sahl

Needless, heedless, wanton and deliberate injury of the sort inflicted by Life's picture story is not an essential instrument of responsible journalism. ~ Abe Fortas

The interrogation has succeeded; I am now an enemy of the state. ... I have become a violent act of reality inflicted upon the fiction of which we are both citizens. I want him to know that I understand this, that every thump of his truncheon hardens my resolve, that he has my permission. ~ Anthony Marra

The quiet conscience is the invention of the devil. No one of us may permit any preventable pain to be inflicted even though the responsibility for that pain is not ours. No one may shut his eyes and think that the pain which is therefore not visible, is non-existent. ~ Albert Schweitzer

There is always a man eager to explain my mental illness to me. They all do it so confidently, motioning to their Hemingway and Bukowski bookshelf as they compare my depression to their late-night loneliness. There is always someone that rejected them that they equate their sadness to and a bottle of gin (or a song playing, or a movie) close by that they refer to as their cure. Somehow, every soft confession of my Crazy that I hand to them turns into them pulling out pieces of themselves to prove how it really is in my head.

So many dudes I've dated have faces like doctors ready to institutionalize
and love my crazy (but only on Friday nights.)

They tell their friends about my impulsive decision making and how I "get them" more than anyone they've ever met but leave out my staring off in silence for hours and the self-inflicted bruises on my cheeks.

None of them want to acknowledge a crazy they can't cure.

They want a crazy that fits well into a trope and gives them a chance to play Hero. And they always love a Crazy that provides them material to write about.

Truth is they love me best as a cigarette cloud of impossibility, with my lipstick applied perfectly and my Crazy only being pulled out when their life needs a little spice.

They don't want me dirty, having not left my bed for days. Not diseased. Not real.

So they invite me over when they're going through writer's block but don't answer m ~ Lora Mathis

Every moment away from you feels like time spent in a sort of cell. I can think of nothing, dream of nothing, but you. Unfortunately, I will have to remain in my self-inflicted prison a bit longer, since work will keep me from meeting you tonight. I can't seem to find a way to avoid this ... however, I hope this gift will make up for my unforgivable behavior. I saw this and though of you, and St. George. You have slain the dragon.
Until we meet again, I am your Lucien. ~ Meg Cabot

And soon afterwards this manuscript will appear, my final book ... There will be outrage and disgust and people will turn on me at the last, they will hate me, my reputation will for ever be destroyed, my punishment earned, self-inflicted like this gunshot wound, and the world will finally know that I was the greatest feather man of them all. ~ John Boyne

I walked far down a dirt side road and into a farmer's field - some sort of cereal that was chest high and corn green and rustled as its blades inflicted small paper burns on my skin as I walked through them. And in that field, when the appointed hour, minute, and second of the darkness came, I lay myself down on the ground, surrounded by the tall pithy grain stalks and the faint sound of insects, and held my breath, there experiencing a mood that I have never really been able to shake completely - a mood of darkness and inevitability and facination - a mood that surely must have been held by most young people since the dawn of time as they have crooked their necks, stared at the heavens, and watched their sky go out. ~ Douglas Coupland

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man. ~ Washington Irving

Are there things about yourself which you have never told anyone? Way back upon the creaky floors of your childhood, in your solitude, the shadows of your private mind, the things you've done and said and thought that compound and contain you: shameful things, sexual things, often solitary acts, but sometimes not, sometimes agonizing stabs of cruelty you've inflicted on people you love, or the moments where reality itself seemed to tear as they looked into your eyes and told you 'you are nothing'. And for a moment you stand there adjusting to the pain, the pain that someone could say that to you, and what that must mean about who you are. ~ Russell Brand

One of the most common platitudes we heard was that "words failed." But words were not failing us at all. It was not true that there was no way to describe our experience. We had plenty of language to talk to each other about the horror of what was happening, and talk we did. If there was a communication problem it was that there were too many words; they were far too heavy and too specific to be inflicted upon others. If something was failing it was the functionality of routine, platitudinous language - the comforting clichés were now inapplicable and perfectly useless. We instinctively protected other people from the knowledge we possessed; we let them think that words failed, because we knew they didn't want to be familiar with the vocabulary we used daily. We were sure they didn't want to know what we did; we didn't want to know it either. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect - a process which occurs in every dialectical victory - you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one's own advantage. - Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such phrases as "Death before dishonour," and so on. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

In Hong Kong, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera", in which the hero must wait until his seventies before being united with his beloved. In a moment of Melancholy, I inscribed my copy: Angelina, I will love you always. Adam and sent it to her, via Jacinta. It was an unhealthy book for me to have read at that time, and to have then inflicted on Angelina. Just wait long enough and somehow the right people will die. The starts will align, we'll get over ourselves and we'll be together. And in the meantime, what? ~ Graeme Simsion

In the taxonomy of pain there is only the pain inflicted by touching and the pain inflicted by not touching. Peter grew up an expert in both. Malnourished, the skin on his thin neck perpetually covered in boils, he was as scarred as the surface of Mercury; a planet lacking atmospheric protection, exposed to the hurtling debris of space and wearing its history of collision and battery on its face. ~ Sarah Krasnostein

What did you do to this?' he asked in a horrorstruck voice.
'It didn't want to come out of the dashboard.'
'So you felt the need to torture it?'
'You know how I am with tools. No pain was inflicted intentionally.'
He shook his head, his face a mask of faux tragedy. 'You killed it. ~ Stephenie Meyer

So, what, you got cigarette burns, too?" Gitanes said. Chip showed his palm, "It's nothing." "Self-inflicted. You pathetic American." "Different kind of prison" Chip said. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Thoughts and actions which, when detected, mean certain death are not formally forbidden, and the endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments and vaporisations are not inflicted as punishment for crimes which have actually been committed, but are merely the wiping-out of persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future. ~ George Orwell

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false. ~ Bertrand Russell

Hiroshima is like a nakedly exposed wound inflicted on all mankind. ~ Kenzaburo Oe

It is important in this journey to remember that just because someone has inflicted hurt upon us, it does not give us the right to do the same. Body shaming and hurtful tactics will never get the job done. ~ Zendaya

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries. ~ Theodore John Kaczynski

When at length we tire of putting people down, this self-inflicted fatigue can give way to the invigorating calisthenics of lifting people up. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Thus the tower was both disease and cure. It rendered him unfit for the world and it remedied the hurts inflicted by the world. ~ Georges Rodenbach

My personal convictions drive me to join those like-minded, in the recruitment of a growing army without guns, no hatred or prejudice, but with a leadership voice of influence and harnessing resources to create the change they desire. The major problems facing the world, particularly our beloved African continent, will not be won by sanctions, cruelty, ethnic cleansing, revenge, guns or bullets. The challenges are not largely externally motivated, so the platform to change them must shift. Shift from selfish to selfless, from external to internal, from behaviours to beliefs. Some of them are externally sponsored but self-inflicted, whilst most of them are due to greed, short-sightedness, abuse and selfishness. ~ Archibald Marwizi

Veblen argues that the existing social hierarchy is actively maintained by competitive consumption among all classes of society. Thus, consumerism, far from being something that is inflicted upon the working classes by the scheming bourgeoisi, is something that the working classes actively participate in maintaining - even though it is not in their collective interest to do so. If the working classes had wanted to buy out the capitalists, they could easily have done so by now, simply by saving a fraction of the wage increases that they have received over the years. But instead they have chosen to max out their spending on consumer goods. ~ Joseph Heath

During the ice age, many animals died of cold, so the porcupines decided to band together to provide one another with warmth and protection. But their spines or quills kept sticking into their surrounding companions, precisely those who provided most warmth. And so they drifted apart again. And again many of them died of cold. They had to make a choice: either risk extinction or accept their fellow porcupines' spines. Very wisely, they decided to huddle together again. They learned to live with the minor wounds inflicted by their relatives, because the key to their survival was that shared warmth. ~ Paulo Coelho

God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of humans are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with the quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And, now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Rome was not the first state of organized gangsterdom, nor was it the last; but it was the only one that managed to bamboozle posterity into an almost universal admiration. Few rational men admire the Huns, the Nazis or the Soviets; but for centuries, schoolboys have been expected to read Julius Caesar's militaristic drivel ("We inflicted heavy losses upon the enemy, our own casualties being very light") and Cato's revolting incitements to war. They have been led to believe that the Romans had attained an advanced level in the sciences, the arts, law, architecture, engineering and everything else. It is my opinion that the alleged Roman achievements are largely a myth; and I feel it is time for this myth to be debunked a little. What the Romans excelled in was bullying, bludgeoning, butchering and blood baths. Like the Soviet Empire, the Roman Empire enslaved peoples whose cultural level was far above their own. They not only ruthlessly vandalized their countries, but they also looted them, stealing their art treasures, abducting their scientists and copying their technical know-how, which the Romans' barren society was rarely able to improve on. No wonder, then, that Rome was filled with great works of art. But the light of culture which Rome is supposed to have emanated was a borrowed light: borrowed from the Greeks and the other peoples that the Roman militarists had enslaved. ~ Petr Beckmann

A reform in the system of criminal jurisprudence, by which the death penalty shall no longer be inflicted ... and by which our so-called prisons shall be virtually transformed into vast reformatory workshops, from which the unfortunate may emerge to be useful members of society, instead of the alienated citizens they now are. ~ Victoria Woodhull

The greatest barrier to own own healing is not the pain, sorrow or violence inflicted upon us as children. Our greatest hindrance is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. If we can harden our heart against ourselves and meet our most tender feelings with anger and condemnation, we simultaneously armor our heart against the possibility of gentleness, love and healing. ~ Wayne Muller

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? ~ Henry Louis Gates

I played in bombed-out houses and grew up with the ever-present consequences of a lost war and the awareness that my own country had inflicted terrible pain on many nations during the horrific World War II. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Let's remind ourselves that to be compassionate and forgiving doesn't mean we are endorsing dysfunctional behaviour. On the contrary, it's essential the harm that was inflicted upon us is properly validated and grieved. Forgiveness isn't an intellectual concept or an airy-fairy idea. It's a painstaking process. To be compassionate and to forgive mean we are gradually letting go of poisonous, toxic feelings that are trapped in our minds and bodies. ~ Christopher Dines

46 - The Obstacle of Bookish Bedevilment
Read the scriptures but do not persist in being obsessed with them. If one were to be obsessed with the scriptures forming conjectures with its meaning, relying on one's preconception, the mistake is great, discard the scriptures, without argument, while it is a big mistake, similarly obsession with the scriptures, not seeking a wise master, is an even bigger mistake, discarding books and obsession with them are all wrong. If one were to be obsessed with books for Tao, one has been inflicted with bookish bedevilment, in not seeking a wise master the great task is jeopardized, one must study carefully, distinguish the right and wrong, seek out a wise master to confirm them, only then can one come to understand Tao.
四十六,书魔关
读经书而不可偏执经书也。若执经书以意猜度，依己偏见，误之甚矣，弃经书，全不理论，固是大错，若执经书，不求明师，更是大错，弃书执书皆非也。若执书为道，中了书魔，不求明师则误大事，必须细心钻研经书，辨别邪正，访求明师以证是非，方能明道。 ~ Liu Yiming

The dignified catastrophes of tragedy bear little resemblance to the slow ruin inflicted by life. ~ Mason Cooley

You were as much a victim of the violence you inflicted as of the violence you endured. ~ Édouard Louis

Throughout history humans have inflicted countless violent, cruel, and hurtful acts on each other, and continue to do so. Are they all to be condemned; are they all guilty? Or are those acts simply expressions of unconsciousness, an evolutionary stage that we are now growing out of?
Jesus' words, "Forgive them for they do not know what they do," also apply to yourself. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered-one does not usually lead to the other-but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed. ~ Daniel D. Polsby

Serpentining means trying to control a situation, backing out of it, pretending it's not happening, or maybe even pretending that you don't care. We use it to dodge conflict, discomfort, possible confrontation, the potential for shame or hurt, and/or criticism (self- or other-inflicted). Serpentining can lead to hiding out, pretending, avoidance, procrastination, rationalizing, blaming, and lying.
I have a tendency to want to serpentine when I feel vulnerable. If I have to make a difficult call, I'll try to script both sides of it. I'll convince myself that I should wait, I'll draft an e-mail while telling myself that it's better in writing, and I'll think of a million other things to do. I'll emotionally run back and forth until I'm exhausted. ~ Brene Brown

Drunkenness. This Greek word means overindulgence in alcohol. Alcohol may be used for medicine, but it can also become a terrible drug. The way it is used in our world is probably one of the great evils of our day. It is a self-inflicted impediment that springs from "a man taking a drink, a drink taking a drink, and drink taking the man."
Distilled liquors as we have them today were unknown in Bible times.12 ~ Billy Graham

Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ's body. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Guns are far too accessible and too readily available. There are over 200 million guns in our society - and that's just the legal ones, the ones we know about. Every ten seconds, another gun is produced. And every fourteen minutes, some person in America dies from gun-inflicted action. ~ Joycelyn Elders

I have often sat in that chair behind my desk and wondered how you would look lying naked here on this sofa. It was a form of self-inflicted torture."
"Good heavens ~ Amanda Quick

Who has suffered? The families of the dead, no doubt. But a greater loss was inflicted on Pakistan because, as I said, we lost the pillars of our society. ~ Pervez Musharraf

The nerves of the skin send pain signals to the brain to warn us of the danger from and impending injury. In the case of self-inflicted wounding, this pain acts as the body's own defense mechanism to stop one from proceeding in the effort at physical injury. If a person proceeds despite the pain, that means that he or she is motivated by something stronger than the pain, something that makes him or her capable of ignoring or enduring it. ~ Steven Levenkron

What I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue. (For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime? And what can that really mean? For the language of the criminal can contain only the goodness of the criminal's deed. The language of the criminal can explain and express the deed only from the criminal's point of view. It cannot contain the horror of the deed, the injustice of the deed, the agony, the humiliation inflicted one me. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Katrina hated to see the widows in black. They struck her as relics of their own making, frozen in permanent deference to reckless or foolish or simply unfortunate men who were nonetheless dead and sealed away in the earth forever.

Husbands never wore black. Husbands were never confined to that kind of passive declaration, were never compelled to sulk across the world for the remainder of their lives, walking signposts of mourning. Husbands were permitted rage, permitted wrath, permitted to avenge their loss by marching out and inflecting on others the very same carnage once inflicted on them. It seemed to Karina further proof that wartime was the only time the world became as simple and carnivorously liberating as it must exist at all times in men's minds. Some of the women she met never used their own names again - she knew them only as Widow This or Widow That - but she'd never met a Widower Anything. ~ Omar El Akkad

You're the only one that can put pressure on yourself ... No one else can put pressure on you. It's self-inflicted. For me, I just want to go out and play football. ~ Maurice Jones-Drew

Michael Jackson plays the wounded puppy very well. 'I must be the loneliest man in the world'. Well, you're not a man. And the loneliness is self inflicted, so sod off you pathetic puerile pimp. I wonder what color his willy is. ~ John Lydon

A man does not marry a girl, nor a woman. He marries a promise, and it shines with a bright purity that is ageless. It shines, in other words, with the glory of lies. The deception is self inflicted. The promise was simple in its form, as befitted the thick-headedness of young men, and in its essence it offered the delusion that the present moment was eternal; that nothing would change; not the fires of desire, not the flesh itself, not the intense look in the eye. ~ Steven Erikson

Remember those dogs I was talking about? The cues? While I was watching TV, I missed a few. Take a look:
Steven is smiling, almost laughing. After all the punishment he's received from my sister over the years, he's developed quite the sadistic streak when it comes to other people getting their asses handed to them.
Then there's Matthew. God only knows what kind of sick and depraved penalties Delores has inflicted on that poor bastard, because he just looks scared.
Kate, on the other hand, is staring at my hand like it's a cockroach. That she wants to squash. And then she gets an idea - a wonderful, awful idea. If you look hard enough, you can see the light bulb go on above her head. She smiles and leaves the room.
I missed all this the first time. ~ Emma Chase

Her Mother and Father were especially blind to feelings. Her Father denied he even had feelings and her Mother assumed everyone shared hers. Heather didn't know for years that her ability to see people's feelings and even feel them sometimes was unusual and when she discovered that the cruelty and rudeness that adults and friends inflicted on each other was unintentional or at least uninformed, she decided to withdraw, overwhelmed by the pain of typical human behavior. ~ Matthew Weiner

In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. ~ Martin Luther

Sugar leans her chin against the knuckles of the hand that holds the pen. Glistening on the page between her silk-shrouded elbows lies an unfinished sentence. The heroine of her novel has just slashed the throat of a man. The problem is how, precisely, the blood will flow. Flow is too gentle a word; spill implies carelessness; spurt is out of the question because she has used the word already, in another context, a few lines earlier. Pour out implies that the man has some control over the matter, which he most emphatically doesn't; leak is too feeble for the savagery of the injury she has inflicted upon him. Sugar closes her eyes and watches, in the lurid theatre of her mind, the blood issue from the slit neck. When Mrs Castaway's warning bell sounds, she jerks in surprise.
Hastily, she scrutinises her bedroom. Everything is neat and tidy. All her papers are hidden away, except for this single sheet on her writing-desk.
Spew, she writes, having finally been given, by tardy Providence, the needful word. ~ Michel Faber

Her eyes weren't blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all the way through to the back of him and beyond, out into the cold space of the future in which they would both soon be dead, out into the nothingness that Lalitha and his mother and his father had already passed into, and yet she was looking straight into his eyes, and he could feel her getting warmer by the minute. And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind. ~ Jonathan Franzen

It was civilization itself which inflicted this wound upon modern man. Once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions between the sciences inevitable, and once the increasingly complex machinery of State necessitated a more rigorous separation of ranks and occupations, then the inner unity of human nature was severed too, and a disastrous conflict set its harmonious powers at variance. The intuitive and the speculative understanding now withdrew in hostility to take up positions in their respective fields, whose frontiers they now began to guard with jealous mistrust; and with this confining of our activity to a particular sphere we have given ourselves a master within, who not infrequently ends by suppressing the rest of our potentialities. While in one a riotous imagination ravages the hard-won fruits of the intellect, in another the spirit of abstraction stifles the fire at which the heart should have warmed itself and the imagination been kindled. ~ Friedrich Schiller

That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit that prosper. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Once we remember that all that takes place during the first days of life on the emotional level shapes the patterns of all future reactions , we cannot but wonder why such a torture has been inflicted on the child. How could a being who has been aggressed in this way, while totally helpless, develop into a relaxed, loving, trusting person? Indeed, he will always never be able to trust anyone in life. He will always be on the defensive, unable to open up to others and to life. ~ Frederick Leboyer

The wounds inflicted upon us by others help us to appreciate the joy of His love even more! EL ~ Evinda Lepins

The Vietnam war will not be over until it ends for everyone. Over four hundred thousand U.S. veterans are still recovering from wounds inflicted on their bodies and their spirit. Sixty-three million souls in Vietnam are still suffering from their 'victory. ~ Le Ly Hayslip

The word was ours now, and as long as we held on to it, we could control the hurt it inflicted. ~ Kody Keplinger

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her. ~ Simone Weil

I'd never blame anyone else who falls for the same brand of seduction. I embrace that we're all similarly flawed. That makes the self-inflicted wounds hurt less. I'd read Tennessee Williams. I just didn't expect to be living my own tainted little version of Suddenly Last Summer. ~ Dan Skinner

[A]ll her hardships had been self-inflicted and recreational in the past. ~ Iain M. Banks

He suspected that any life form that inflicted unnecessary pain tended to find its consciousness eroding. Without consciousness to reflect back upon life, all life might lose its sense of purpose. ~ Frank Herbert

She was a cop, a Homicide lieutenant with eleven years on the job protecting and defending the hard, merciless streets of New York. There was little she hadn't seen, touched, smelled, or waded through. Because people, to her mind, would always and could always find more inventive and despicable ways to kill their fellow man, she knew just what torments could be inflicted on the human body.
But bloody and brutal murder was nothing compared to giving birth. ~ J.D. Robb

Most fear comes from the anticipation of an event rather than the actual event itself. We worry beforehand as a form of preparation. We want to get ahead of our negative predictions. It's disguised as mental precaution when it's actually self-inflicted torment. The price of being ready for future suffering is that you suffer in the present moment. ~ Emily Maroutian

There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not bleeding. ~ Georges Duhamel

Truth cannot be imparted. [] It must be inflicted. ~ Brian Evenson

This, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, ~ George Orwell

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents? ~ Michael Connelly

Even when a person suffers pain in consequence of a thorn having entered into his hand, although it is at once drawn out, it is a punishment that has been inflicted on him, and the least pleasure he enjoys is a reward; all this is meted out by strict justice; as is said in the Scripture, "all His ways are judgement" (Deut. xxxii. 4); we are only ignorant of the working of that judgement. ~ Maimonides

Abortion is violence; a deep, desperate violence inflicted by a woman upon, first of all, herself. ~ Adrienne Rich

the cross. I remember that Cicero referred to it as 'an abominable punishment' that inflicted terrible suffering on the crucified person before he or she died. And yet, nowadays people wear it around their neck, hang it on their bedroom wall, and have come to identify it as a religious symbol, forgetting that they are looking at an instrument of torture. ~ Paulo Coelho

Something about the way Chinedu said his name, Abidemi, made her think of gently pressing on a sore muscle, the kind of self-inflicted ache that is satisfying. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just. ~ Simone Weil

While wounds can be inflicted easily upon those we love, it's often much more difficult to heal them. ~ Nicholas Sparks

We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy' ... This is because gaiety is link to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone. ~ Emil Cioran

We hold within ourselves the medicinal materials to mend self-inflicted injuries sustained while traversing the thorny obstacle course of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted. ~ Oscar Wilde

It was clear to me that if we allowed the Freedom Ride to stop at that point, just after so much violence had been inflicted, the message would have been sent that all you have to do to stop a nonviolent campaign is inflict massive violence, ~ Diane Nash

If a woman was not free, it could be for two reasons. Her lack of freedom could be inflicted, in which case it constituted oppression. Or it could be chosen, in which case it represented a moral fault. In both cases, it was absolute evil. ~ Hazel Rowley

People are complicated, and they hurt each other. Effie Linton had known this for a long time, just as she knew that sometimes those wounds were inflicted deliberately, over and over, and not with fists or weapons. Sometimes, they did it with love. ~ Megan Hart

It's always the same. When you come out of it and take a look around, the sight of wounds that you have left on the people who care for you makes you wince more than those you have inflicted on yourself. Though I am devoid of regret or remorse for almost anything I have done, if there is a corner for these feelings then it lies with that awareness. It should be enough to stop you from ever going back down there, but it seldom is. Anthony Loyd, My War Gone By, I Miss It So. ~ Ken Bruen

For the shark, "Evil" is the fisherman's harpoon; for the tarantula, "evil" is the sting of the hunter wasp which was inflicted the day before; he lives but paralyzed, sustenance for the larvae of the wasp. For stupid men, "evil" are the men of genius that try to make them think. ~ Marcelo Ramos Motta

He had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out about them as one has to find out--through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood and his own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and confused. Each thing he learned was so simple and obvious, once he grasped it, that he wondered why he had not always known it. And what had he learned? A philosopher would not think it much, perhaps, and yet in a simple human way it was a good deal. Just by living, my making the thousand little daily choices that his whole complex of heredity, environment, and conscious thought, and deep emotion had driven him to make, and by taking the consequences, he had learned that he could not eat his cake and have it, too. He had learned that in spite of his strange body, so much off scale that it had often made him think himself a creature set apart, he was still the son and brother of all men living. He had learned that he could not devour the earth, that he must know and accept his limitations. He realized that much of his torment of the years past had been self-inflicted, and an inevitable part of growing up. And, most important of all for one who had taken so long to grow up, he thought he had learned not to be the slave of his emotions. ~ Thomas Wolfe

We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow promised - peace. In the county of which I write, I have been shown a meadow in which, on a quiet summer Sunday evening, a young farmer murdered the girl who had loved and trusted him; and yet, even now, with the stain of that foul deed upon it, the aspect of the spot is - peace. No species of crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries about Seven Dials that has not been also done in the face of that rustic calm which still, in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-mournful yearning, and associate with - peace. ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon

We've got to get back to old-fashioned politics that's in touch with the people we seek to represent and to avoid self-inflicted wounds. ~ David Blunkett

A true Christian is made by faith and love toward Christ. Our sins do not in the least hinder our Christianity, according to the word of the Savior Himself. He deigned to say: not the righteous have I come to call, but sinners to salvation; there is more joy in heaven over one who repents than over ninety righteous ones. Likewise concerning the sinful woman who touched His feet, He deigned to say to the Pharisee Simon: to one who has love, a great debt is forgiven, but from one who has no love, even a small debt will be demanded. From these judgments a Christian should bring himself to hope and joy, and not in the least accept an inflicted despair. Here one needs the shield of faith. ~ Letters Of St. Herman Of Alaska

Automation won't take your job, but the self-inflicted imprisonment of industrial isolation will. ~ Richie Norton

I have often wondered at the extreme fecundity of the press, and how it comes to pass that so many heads on which nature seemed to have inflicted the curse of barrenness should teem with voluminous productions. ~ Washington Irving

It is true. I did fall asleep at the wheel. We nearly went right off a cliff down into a gorge. But there were extenuating circumstances."
Ian snickered. "Are you going to pull out the cry-baby card? He had a little bitty wound he forgot to tell us about, that's how small it was. Ever since he fell asleep he's been trying to make us believe that contributed."
"It wasn't little. I have a scar. A knife fight." Sam was righteous about it.
"He barely nicked you," Ian sneered. "A tiny little slice that looked like a paper cut."
Sam extended his arm to Azami so she could see the evidence of the two-inch line of white marring his darker skin. "I bled profusely. I was weak and we hadn't slept in days."
"Profusely?" Ian echoed. "Ha! Two drops of blood is not profuse bleeding, Knight. We hadn't slept in days, that much is true, but the rest . . ." He trailed off, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at Azami.
Azami examined the barely there scar. The knife hadn't inflicted much damage, and Sam knew she'd seen evidence of much worse wounds. "Had you been drinking?" she asked, her eyes wide with innocence. Those long lashes fanned her cheeks as she gaze at him until his heart tripped all over itself.
Sam groaned. "Don't listen to him. I wasn't drinking, but once we were pretty much in the middle of a hurricane in the South Pacific on a rescue mission and Ian here decides he has to go into this bar . . ."
"Oh, no." Ian burst out laughing. "You're n ~ Christine Feehan

But that pain is then inflicted onto other people, often many other people, all because we lack the courage to stand up and be accountable for all the things both good and bad, we have done in our lives. So by lying, that pain, rather than staying where it belongs, with the person who has done something wrong, is handed out to the innocent. To be a liar therefore is to be a coward. ~ Peter B. Lockhart

To the lost, transfixed among the self-inflicted ruins,
All that is non-air (if this indeed is not deception)
Is agony immobilized. While Time,
The endless idiot, runs screaming round the world. ~ Carson McCullers

Hatred of oppression seems to me so blended with hatred of the oppressor that I cannot separate them. I feel that no other injury could be so hard to bear, so very very hard to forgive, as that inflicted by cruel oppression and prejudice. ~ Charlotte Forten Grimke

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~ Novalis