Masochistic Quotes

Sex had nothing to do with feeling good, everything to do with superficialities, and was always accompanied by a masochistic agenda to feel anything but dead inside. ~ Justin Donner

Golfers have a tendency to be very masochistic. They like to punish themselves for some reason. A lot of them like tough courses. ~ Jack Nicklaus

In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust. ~ Jennifer Birkett

I was a self-centered bore. I was masochistic, and only thought I was happy. When I woke up and said, "there must be something wrong with me", I grew up. Because I never understood myself, how could I hope to understand anyone else? That's why I can truly say that now I can give a woman love for the first time in my life, because I can understand her. ~ Cary Grant

The sexual fantasies of masochistic women have another curious and, unfortunately, predictable element. They almost always focus on the woman imagining how she can make herself more desirable, more appealing to the man. She turns herself into a princess; she glorifies her appearance. Virtually never does she envisage what she would find desirable in a male partner. In her fantasies she attempts to idealize herself, but she tends to include the man pretty much as he is. ~ Natalie Shainess

Instead of Gnostics, we have Existentialists and God-is-dead theologians, instead of Neo-Platonists, devotees of Zen, instead of desert hermits, heroin addicts and Beats (who also, oddly enough, seem averse to washing), instead of mortification of the flesh, sado-masochistic pornography; as for our public entertainments, the fare offered by television is still a shade less brutal than that provided by the Amphitheatre, but only a shade and may not be so for long. ~ W. H. Auden

Everyone in a decadent society, Lorrain urges, is guilty. Everyone loves masking murder and everyone takes masochistic pleasure in the risk of discovery and punishment. ~ Jennifer Birkett

The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former; neither can live without the other. The difference is only that the sadistic person commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates, and that the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated. This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; in a deeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as that which they both have in common: fusion without integrity . ~ Erich Fromm

Edward: So the lion fell in love with the lamb.
Bella:What a stupid lamb.
Edward:What a sick masochistic lion. ~ Stephanie Meyer

I'm not a masochistic reader. If something is just too dense or not enjoyable, even though I'm told it should be good for me, I'll put it down. That said, most of what I read would be considered high-end or good for you, I suppose. But, I also think that reading should be enjoyable. ~ Josh Radnor

Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing. ~ Isaac Asimov

Many masochistic characters engage in the game of failure to cover an inner feeling of superiority. ~ Alexander Lowen

This might sound masochistic or narcissistic, I don't know, but when I'm not playing the game, the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness, in a lot of ways, when I'm not playing. ~ Abby Wambach

The important thing is not to be masochistic. Women are so hard on themselves. Don't do that. No one is keeping score. ~ Simon Doonan

If Frank were to see me like this," she thought, "he would put me to bed with a couple of sleeping pills, and call that smug Dr. Mensley to have a look at my mind. And Dr. Mensley would check my ambivalences and my repressions and my narcissistic, voyeuristic, masochistic impulses. He would tighten my screws and readjust me to reality, fit me into a comfortable groove, and take the pale beast out of me to make me a talking doll. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

His blood rushed through his veins like lava as his cock turned rock hard. "Get a hold of yourself. You're not some horny teen chasing after the first girl who smiled at you."
True, but there was something about this woman. Something that put a slow burn in his blood.
Yeah, she wants to beat your ass, you masochistic bastard.
-Syn ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Honestly, there is something seductive about being the kind of person who can just take it. Challenging myself to absorb more and more hate is a masochistic form of vanity. ~ Lindy West

We as human beings are slightly masochistic. Everybody is ridden with insecurities and they manifest themselves in different ways, whether you're a pleaser, you're mean, you're super-duper sweet and get walked on, or you're a gossip that talks about someone else. ~ Kristen Bell

One of the things that helps use cope with loss is the fact that while memories may remian, the emotions associated with them will fade like old photographs. At the same time, there is a masochistic desire to retain those feelings spurred on by the dread of losing the power they hold. Sometimes I can't think of anything more awful than simply being human. ~ James Pratt

-- I'm wary of all morning people. There is something unsettling about a person who likes to leave the comforts of a warm bed and soft pillow. Absolutely masochistic. ~ K.T. Mara

I have more than once tried to analyse this apparently deliberate form of self-torture that seems common to so many people in face of the extinction of a valued life, human or animal, and it springs, I think, from a negation of death, as if by summoning and arranging these subjective images one were in some way cheating the objective fact. It is, I believe, an entirely instinctive process, and the distress it brings with it is an incidental, a by-product, rather than a masochistic end. ~ Gavin Maxwell

Narcissistic fathers leave their daughters with deep doubts about whether a man can love them, since the first important man in their life was so in love with himself that he had no love left for them. If you are a daughter of a narcissistic father you may have withdrawn from men and bound yourself to mother, either overtly or emotionally. Or you may be engaged in a self-destructive attempt to be his kind of girl, whatever that is, as you try desperately to extract his love. Perhaps you have transferred this into a masochistic position with other men, finding a narcissistic man incredibly attractive as you try to master the mystery of winning his love. And narcissistic men appeal to you because you wish you could be that way yourself - assertive, not giving a damn, self-important - but you lack the confidence to do it yourself so you identify with the man who has their quality, even if it's at your expense. (I have often seen this revealed in those instances where a woman has suffered through a degradingly submissive and abusing relationship with a man, or a series of men, and then, gaining the strength to break that kind of bondage, violently overturns the tables and abuses that man, or the next man in her life, as degradingly as she was misused. It's not just revenge, but the release of hidden desire to be powerful and to be able to control father and make him beg for her love.) ~ Howard M. Halpern

Why do people even take photographs, anyway? They're just reminders of what once was and what you'll never get back. It's so masochistic.-Dom ~ Daria Snadowsky

For those with drive, wit, vision, ego and a masochistic outlook, there is always room. ~ K Callan

so the lion fell in love with the lamb...what a stupid lamb...what a sick masochistic lion ~ Stephenie Meyer

At best, we conceive happiness; never felicity, prerogative of civilizations based on the idea of salvation, on the refusal to savor one's sufferings, to revel in them; but, sybarites of suffering, scions of a masochistic tradition, which of us would hesitate between the Benares sermon and Baudelaire's Heautontimoroumenos? I am both wound and knife - that is our absolute, our eternity. ~ Emil Cioran

Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult. ~ Laurence Olivier

In the authoritarian philosophy the concept of equality does not exist. The authoritarian character may sometimes use the word equality either conventionally or because it suits his purposes. But it has no real meaning or weight for him, since it concerns something outside the reach of his emotional experience. For him the world is composed of people with power and those without it, of superior ones and inferior ones. On the basis of his sado-masochistic strivings, he experiences only domination or submission, but never solidarity. Differences, whether of sex or race, to him are necessarily signs of superiority or inferiority. A difference which does not have this connotation is unthinkable to him. ~ Erich Fromm

People think I take some sort of masochistic pleasure out of putting out music that's gonna be unpopular. ~ Billy Corgan

Like some crazed masochistic yo-yo ~ Melina Marchetta

We should forever forswear the masochistic process wherein we seek another's approval before we have even asked ourselves whether that person's views deserve to be listened to. ~ Alain De Botton

Over the course of seventy years, Isobel had learned how indiscriminately unkind Life could be. She also knew that cataloguing and reviewing examples of such cruelty was, in itself, a masochistic exercise. One that she'd habitually and rigorously trained herself to refrain from engaging in. Better to focus on those events that demonstrated the grace and beauty with which Life could perform, without rival, when bestowing on her captive audience a distinctively intermittent yet consistently welcomed generosity of spirit. ~ Ella J. Fraser

I was many things. I was submissive. I was masochistic. I was trusting. I was a sexual slave. But obedient? Not as much. ~ C.D. Reiss

Freud wrote that love involves the undervaluation of reality and the overvaluation of the desired object. While the correct valuation of a person is an odd, if not impossible idea, we might say Freud meant something like this: for various reasons, many of them masochistic, we become involved with others who cannot possibly give what we ask for; we can wait as long as we wish, but they do not have it, and one day, if we bear to abandon our fantasy and see clearly, we might face reality straight on. We will then look elsewhere for fulfillment, to a place where our needs can, in fact, be satisfied. ~ Hanif Kureishi

All of my roles have had their own unique set of challenges, and I enjoy that in some perverse, masochistic way. I'm always dying though! Maybe I have some kind of fetish. ~ Jared Leto

If we mean by love the passionate affirmation and active relatedness to the esssence of a particular person, if we mean by it the union with another person on the basis of the independence and integrity of the two persons involved, then masochism and love are opposites. Love is based on equality and freedom. If it is based on subordination and loss of integrity of one partner, it is masochistic dependence regardless of how the relationship is rationalized. Sadism also appears frequently under the disguise of love. To rule over another person, if one can claim that to rule him is for that person's own sake, frequently appears as an expression of love, but the essential factor is the enjoyment of domination. ~ Erich Fromm

In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love
a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal
masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject. ~ Edward Hirsch

I have a great editor and I enjoy, in a masochistic way, being ruthless about my own performance. There's an initial point in the editing, if you're directing yourself, especially in my case, where you go, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, I can't watch this." And then, there's a point where you become hard-nosed and just take your neurosis away and go, "What's working? That's okay. That's okay. We can lose that, and lose that." You get objective about it. ~ Ralph Fiennes

I'm starting to think it was a mistake to introduce you to the whole gang," he said.
Rafe was still hitting on Layla; Layla was fighting with him, insisting that fairies didn't turn good people into monsters, they just exposed the monstrousness that was already there; and Freddie was doing his best to play peacemaker, or etiquette coach from 1850, or whatever he thought he was doing. Henley was watching the group from outside, leaning against the window, smoking a cigarette. Viv was sawing into an apple tart with a masochistic grin on her face.
"No wonder you're such a freak," Mira said finally. ~ Sarah Cross

I feel like I am floating in plasma
I need a teacher or a lover
I need someone to risk being involved with me.
I am so vain
and I am so masochistic.
How can they coexist? ~ Francesca Woodman

Acceptance doesn't mean masochistic pessimism, but joyful support of and participation in the great cosmic drama. ~ Nathan J. Johnson

It seems that it is only in the United States that an almost masochistic attack on the position of its own oil companies exists. ~ John J. McCloy

But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I've failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don't get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me. ~ Emma Thompson

Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy. ~ Idries Shah

Of course, the hustler doesn't proclaim his trade to the outside world, for typically he has neither a masochistic urge to be put down nor the reactive hostility to majority opinion that one finds in the flamboyant homosexual or "professional Negro" or "professional Jew" and the like. ~ Ned Polsky

A friend of mine, Phil Lomax, told me this story about a blind man with a pistol shooting at a man who had slapped him on the subway train and killing an innocent bystander peacefully reading his newspaper across the aisle and I thought, damn right, sounds just like today's news, riots in the ghettos, war in Vietnam, masochistic doings in the Middle East. And then I thought of some of our loudmouthed leaders urging our vulnerable soul brothers on to getting themselves killed, and thought further that all unorganized violence is like a blind man with a pistol. (Preface) ~ Chester Himes

Do you not comprehend this in America, how your unions have been all but destroyed in the last 30 years? Do you not understand why your local US Postal Service offices are cracked, neglected, and almost derelict buildings, with their staffs downsizing and limiting their days of service? The corporately owned US Congress is destroying the postal service as part of its act, playing you for a fool while wearing a two-party (two-headed) monster mask. One sadistic party acts as a wrecking ball hurled at a wall of political inertia that is the second and masochistic party. ~ John Hogue

And so the lion fell in love with the lamb ... " he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.
"What a stupid lamb," I sighed.
"What a sick, masochistic lion. ~ Stephenie Meyer

The dentist swiveled on his heels and disappeared, leaving me there to massage my jaw back into feeling after its brief, masochistic marriage to the top of my wooden desk. ~ Jonathan Lethem

You could kill me, Alice, he looked at me seriously. That's how much you mean to me. As foolish and masochistic as that makes me, you are so much to me that even if it destroys me to be with you, I'll be with you! ~ Amanda Hocking

Marie Calloway has a very specific literary personality that the reader is intrigued by: she's masochistic, loves to experiment, is quickly bored and intermittently self-hating, very hip, rebellious. Figuring her out is a gripping adventure. ~ Edmund White

I love sex ... It should be animalistic, it should be sadistic, it should at times be masochistic ... There are few rules and moral conventions. ~ Jayne Mansfield

She disinterred the wickedness in normality, cataloguing the ways conformity and repression tip into psychosis, persecution, and paranoia, into cruelty and its masochistic, injury-cherishing twin. Like ~ Shirley Jackson

To decide to film a movie again shot by shot, you must be masochistic to a certain degree because it is a much greater challenge. ~ Michael Haneke

The mind, at times, takes masochistic delight in suffering. ~ Saurbh Katyal

The following morning, after those goals were met, Marcus and I were back on the road, off to the Potato State.

"Gem State," Marcus corrected when he heard me call it that on our drive.

"What?"

"Idaho's the Gem State, not the Potato State."

"Are you sure?" I asked, making no attempt to hide my skepticism. "I hear about Idaho potatoes all the time. No one's ever like, 'Wow, my engagement ring has a rare Idaho diamond in it.'"

A smile played on his lips as he kept his eyes on the road. "Pretty sure," he said.

I wasn't masochistic enough to argue random trivia with a former Alchemist, but when we crossed the border into Idaho and started seeing license plates that said FAMOUS POTATOES, I felt pretty confident about who was in the right on this topic. ~ Richelle Mead

Mr. Wilson affirms that "the only characteristic Nabokov trait" in my translation (aside from an innate "sado-masochistic" urge "to torture both the reader and himself," as Mr. Wilson puts it in a clumsy attempt to stick a particularly thick and rusty pin into my effigy) is my "addiction to rare and unfamiliar words." It does not occur to him that I may have rare and unfamiliar things to convey; that is his loss. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I poured myself another glass of wine (white, now warm and disgusting, but I was in a masochistic mood) ~ Linda Gillard

To limit yourself to a label of "alcoholic" is masochistic and false if you have awakened a deeper spiritual identity within and have come to know your true self as unconditioned pure awareness. This doesn't mean that recovering alcoholics don't have to be concerned with relapsing, they must always remain vigilant. The power of addiction should not be underestimated. This exercise in vigilance can become a spiritual tool of liberation as well. Always being aware of choosing between real happiness and false happiness is also the discrimination required to attain enlightenment. ~ Deepak Chopra

When it comes to love, I realize that I am masochistic. They might consider me crazy for loving you despite everything that we have been through. You may not be worth the pain, but if it's from you, I really don't mind the devastation. I don't want to ever let you go. I may deserve better than you, but you're just the same, aren't you? You are me. There is no difference. Tomorrow I will feel the same as I did the day before. You are the only one I could love this way, and that's not something I ever want to give up. ~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force. ~ Camille Paglia

Whipping, caning, chains, restraints, the cat-o'-nine tails and many other devices beloved of the Marquis de Sade are employed in more extreme sado-masochistic relationships. A spanking, though, s every girl knows, is more about pleasure than pain. ~ Chloe Thurlow

I wasn't ready to leave. Some masochistic shred of my being didn't want to walk away from him yet, even though staying defied logic and common sense. ~ Pepper Winters

I think I've still got a bit of a sado-masochistic streak in me, because if I'm not going to be restricted by corsets and covered in lace, then I still wind up wearing an ape-mask over my face. I do wonder how I get myself in these situations! ~ Helena Bonham Carter

and only much later, when Mascha wanted a child, did I realize that love is a deadly poison, a vice, a vice that one wants to see shared, & that if one of the two involved is smitten, the other is often no more than a passive participant, or vixxtim, or possessed. And Moravagine was possessed.

Love is masochistic. These cries & complaints, these sweet alarms. this anguished state of lovers, this suspense, this latent pain that is just below the surface, almost unexpressed, these thousand & one anxieties over the loved one's absence, this feeling of time rushing by, this touchiness, these fits of temper, these long daydreams, this childish fickleness of behavior, this moral torture where vanity & self-esteem, or perhaps honor, upbringing & modesty are at stake, these highs & lows in the nervous tone, these leaps of imagination, this fetishism, this cruel precision of senses, whipping & probing, the collapse, the prostration, the abdication, the self-abasement, the perpetual loss & recovery of one's personality, these stammered words & phrases, these pet-names, this intimacy, these hesitations in physical contact, these epileptic tremors, these successive & even more frequent relapses, this more & more turbulent & stormy passion with its ravages progressing to the point of complete inhibition & annihilation of the soul, the debility of the senses, the exhaustion of the marrow, the erasure of the brain & even t ~ Blaise Cendrars

I started out in stand-up when I was 18, which is really masochistic, and I did it really till I started going in movies. I did it for about three years out in LA. ~ Debra Winger

And then, for some masochistic and stupid reason, we had sex again. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

I decided the map was clearly written by masochistic-doodling ancient Egyptians because everything was hieroglyphics and unreadable doodads.

I cursed the map.

"BY MOTHRA'S NIPPLES! I FUCKING HATE THIS MAP!"

Irrational anger bubbled to the surface and all I could think about was murdering the map. I would show the map who was boss.

I was boss.

Not some evil, wrong map from hell. I had no choice but to hit the map against the steering wheel several times, grunting and releasing a string of curses that would have made my sailor father proud. And maybe blush.

Then I opened my driver's side door, still grunting and raging, and slammed the map against the car, threw it on the ground, stomped on it, kicked it, and just generally assaulted it in every way I could think of. I'm a little embarrassed to admit, in my mindlessness I was also taunting the map, questioning its virility, flipping it the bird, and cursing now in Spanish as well as English.

It was the most cardio I'd done in over twelve months.

Stupid map, making me do cardio. I'll kill you! ~ Penny Reid