Nagging Quotes

A nagging bitch of a doubt, burrowing painlessly inside a conscience that felt perfectly clear ~ Joseph Heller

Experts in diagnostic errors provided an answer to the puzzle that had been nagging me: How was it possible for missed diagnoses to be so common and yet not perceived by doctors as a major problem? The problem is that physicians, while generally aware that mistakes happen, greatly underestimate how often they make them. In his talks to doctors on the topic, Graber often asks how many have made a diagnostic error in the past year; typically, only about 1 percent of the hands go up. 'The concept that they, personally, could err at a significant rate is inconceivable to most physicians,' he writes. In short, they think it's the other guy. This overconfidence is not necessarily their fault: doctors simply do not get the feedback needed to gain an accurate sense of their batting average. They assume their diagnoses are correct until they hear otherwise. Since there are few, if any, health care organizations that systematically measure diagnostic error rates, they typically learn of their mistakes only from the patients themselves. ~ Maya Dusenbery

As graduation loomed, I had a nagging sense that there was still far too much unresolved for me, that I wasn't done studying. I applied for a master's in English literature at Stanford and was accepted into the program. I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans - i.e., "human relationality" - that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced - of passion, of hunger, of love - bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats. At Stanford, I had the good ~ Paul Kalanithi

The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

We are the women of daylight; of clocks and steel foundries, of drugstores and streetlights, of superhighways that slice our days in two. Our dreams are pale memories of themselves, and nagging doubt is the false measure of our days. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

Once upon a time," I began. "There was a little boy born in a little town. He was perfect, or so his mother thought. But one thing was different about him. He had a gold screw in his belly button. Just the head of it peeping out.
"Now his mother was simply glad he had all his fingers and toes to count with. But as the boy grew up he realized not everyone had screws in their belly buttons, let alone gold ones. He asked his mother what it was for, but she didn't know. Next he asked his father, but his father didn't know. He asked his grandparents, but they didn't know either.
"That settled it for a while, but it kept nagging him. Finally, when he was old enough, he packed a bag and set out, hoping he could find someone who knew the truth of it.
"He went from place to place, asking everyone who claimed to know something about anything. He asked midwives and physickers, but they couldn't make heads or tails of it. The boy asked arcanists, tinkers, and old hermits living in the woods, but no one had ever seen anything like it.
"He went to ask the Cealdim merchants, thinking if anyone would know about gold, it would be them. But the Cealdim merchants didn't know. He went to the arcanists at the University, thinking if anyone would know about screws and their workings, they would. But the arcanists didn't know. The boy followed the road over the Stormwal to ask the witch women of the Tahl, but none of them could give him an answer.
"Eventually he went to the ~ Patrick Rothfuss

What would I like to get away from? Complexity. Anxiety. A feeling I've had my whole life that at any given time there's something I'm forgetting, some detail or chore, something that I'm supposed to be doing or should have already done. That nagging sensation - I get up with it, I go through the day with it, I go to sleep with it. When I was a kid, I had a habit of coming home from school on Friday afternoons and immediately doing my homework. So I'd wake up on Saturday morning with this wonderful sensation, a clean, open feeling of relief and possibility and calm. There'd be nothing I had to do. Those Saturday mornings, they were a taste of real freedom that I've hardly ever experienced as an adult. I never wake up in Elmsford with the feeling that I've done my homework. ~ Lionel Shriver

The doors to the world have been flung wide open, and the view that's available is staggering. Through technology and innovation, opportunities abound and possibilities seem endless. As inspiring as this can be, it can be equally overwhelming. The unintended consequence of abundance is that we are bombarded with more information and choices in a day than our ancestors received in a lifetime. Harried and hurried, a nagging sense that we attempt too much and accomplish too little haunts our days. ~ Gary Keller

When we are capable of living in the moment free from the tyranny of "shoulds," free from the nagging sensation that this moment isn't right, we will have peaceful hearts. ~ Joan Z. Borysenko

You'd be amazed at how much power women have over men - and the basic control is nagging ... Men are very simple creatures, like puppies. ~ Laura Schlessinger

John accepted Livia's exuberant hug. "Yup, all right. Better get up there and get married already. Time to let Blake have the pleasure of your nagging for the rest of his days," he said. ~ Debra Anastasia

There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging. ~ Lemony Snicket

How fares the thumb, boy? well? Aye, merry, 'tis the sign of the penis. With the women, look you, observe the ear. The parts appear and come together. So obesity and malice. So grumbling and nagging. So gossip, envy, spite, and avarice. Slowly settling into. So feminine weakness. Heartless piety. Savage morals. They come together. No more goody geedge. Ruthless, lifelong revenge. Zrrr. Grease in a cold pan. Stay off from gingerly lobed and delicately whorled ones. Thus appear the parts. Mind your uncle, boy, who knows. And the men then. Lewd speech and slovenly habits. And the peasant's suspicion, his cruelty and rancor, his anger, drunkenness, pig-headed ignorance and bestiality. Inevitable they should be parts. Hoolyhoohoo. All in the normal course of nature. And they were saying we had evolved. What did it mean? But, he said in a voice that was clearly audible, I protest this world of unilluminated cocks. He caught the sense of his own words - so absurd - and his body began to shake - half in laughter, half in despair. ~ William H. Gass

There's only one way kids will wear helmets, and that's if their parents are nagging them to. They will never wear helmets because some state passes a law requiring it. ~ Dave Barry

Eventually, competition and adventure wane, and I enter my ibuprofen phase. Tweaky hamstrings and achy knees restrict mileage, but I continue running for health, sanity, and the ritual of a Sunday trail run with like-minded buddies. We discuss the nagging injuries that bedevil us, and remember the good old days when we were kings. ~ Don Kardong

Professionals have to decide on which subjects they are prepared to give nagging rights ~ David Maister

Dear Reader, may God protect you from bad books, police and nagging, moon-faced, fair-haired women. ~ Francisco De Quevedo

People lose their powers (siddhi) by nagging; therefore know 'as it is'. Know all these relations as being worldly (laukik, of the non-Self), and do not believe them to be beyond-worldly relations (alaukik, of the Self). Discover that something whereby you experience peace amidst the puzzle. This discovery is indeed within you. ~ Dada Bhagwan

No matter how hard I look, a nagging sense of unease won't disappear. Perhaps the only way to find the HEIMAT that I've lost is to look back; to move beyond the abstract shame and ask those questions that are really difficult to ask - about my own hometown, about my father's and mother's families. To make my way back to the towns where each of them is from. To return to my childhood, go back to the beginning, follow the breadcrumbs, and hope they'll lead the way home. ~ Nora Krug

Show me 12 drunkards and I will show you 12 nagging wives. ~ Charles Spurgeon

We must eliminate nagging with its complaining and contentious spirit because it focuses attention on self rather than on the other person. ~ Robert E. Fisher

It came as a surprise to us, as I suspect it does to many, that marriage changed us. We'd felt as though we'd always had those rings, wrapped about our fingers, like the scraggly garlands of those first, revelatory conversations. But those real rings, wooden as they were, began to set their roots, and that settling, the calming feeling of having been planted into the same plot to flourish, was a relief from that once-nagging question of loneliness. No matter what happened now, even if we'd found ourselves lonelier than we'd ever been, we'd know that that plot of land was our own to cultivate. Each moment was now a dual-moment, each of our lives a dual-life. The open road, that atlas, the open-faced moon and that wine were the first conscious recognitions of our floating life. One that perhaps we'd have created on our own, but now no longer had to. ~ Megan Rich

Get married to some nagging broad and always own last year's model, vote Democrat - ~ Stephen King

It's odd to see pictures of your parents before your own birth, before your nagging presence altered their lives forever. ~ Bill Holm

I am keenly aware that the security we enjoy is frail, and could easily be disrupted. Secretly, a nagging fear gnaws at me: what has really been learned from the lessons of Auschwitz and the Third Reich? Do we really understand what happened there and how we might prevent such events in future? ~ Daniel Waterman

Your sense of paralysis will be intensified if your family and friends are in the habit of pushing and cajoling you. Their nagging should statements reinforce the insulting thoughts already echoing through your head. Why is their pushy approach doomed to failure? It's a basic law of physics that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Any time you feel shoved, whether by someone's hand actually on your chest or by someone trying to boss you around, you will naturally tighten up and resist so as to maintain your equilibrium and balance. You will attempt to exert your self-control and preserve your dignity by refusing to do the thing that you are being pushed to do. The paradox is that you often end up hurting yourself. ~ David D. Burns

What unknown abilities had filled this void? Was the world somehow brighter, more tangible, without the nagging interference of language? Was the absence of words actually a form of freedom? I've often tried to quiet that constant voice in my mind, to try to experience the world the way they might - but always the questions rush in faster than I can carve out a moment of true silence. ~ Eli Horowitz

You don't know what the story is about when you're in the middle of it. All you can do is keep walking. At the beginning, you have buoyancy and a little arrogance. The journey looks beautiful and bright, and you are filled with resolve and silver strength, sure that you will face it with optimism and chutzpah. And the end is beautiful. You are wiser, better, deeper. The end is revelation, resolution, a soft place to land. But, oh, the middle. The middle is fog, exhaustion, loneliness, the daily battle against despair and the nagging fear that tomorrow will be just like today, only you'll be wearier and less able to defend yourself against it. All you can ask for, in the middle, are sweet moments of reprieve in the company of people you love. For a few hours, you'll feel protected by the goodness of friendship and life around the table, and that's the best thing I can imagine. ~ Shauna Niequist

24 Better to live on the corner of a roof than to share a house with a nagging wife. ~ Anonymous

For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a gigantic coffee table,
how much difference in everyday life would that make? Granted, this is a pretty
farfetched example; you can't rearrange facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planet
earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the
clutter - those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international
dateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean,
for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of a
lifetime would the equator be a significant factor? ~ Haruki Murakami

The "brightness" of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions. ~ Paul Goodman

One of chief pieces of advice I give to aspiring rationalists is "Don't try to be clever." And, "Listen to those quiet, nagging doubts." If you don't know, you don't know what you don't know, you don't know how much you don't know, and you don't know how much you needed to know. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

It starts as a little nagging noise inside my skull, reminding me of what I think I know, and what I can never ever really know. And the noise sets to work inside my head, perpetuating its same pattern until it has grown so loud and so great, it is the only thought I can have. The only obsessive, earth-shattering sound of not mattering that I can hear. It's entirely made up of the pain felt by something already hurt too much. It's like the ruins of something destroyed by being hurt, and how awful it is to exist so alone, as ruins. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

When Tommy asked me to speak to the students, I immediately told him no. I was finally comfortable talking to people individually about my faith, but I still didn't want anything to do with public speaking. But then I thought about the idea for three or four days and it was really nagging at me. I called Tommy back and told him to line it up.
When I arrived at the classroom a few days later, there were about fifty kids there. I stood in the front of the class and told them I was a hunter and fisherman, but I loved the Lord, and I told them why. I went through my entire testimony and shared the Gospel with them. I was so nervous talking to them that every time I tried to turn a page in my Bible, I ripped about three pages! My hand was shaking so badly that I couldn't stop ripping pages! I kept looking up to see if anyone had noticed how nervous I was. I couldn't wait for my talk to end.
But after I was finished talking, a young boy came up to me. He had tears in his eyes.
"Thanks, mister," he said. "I really needed to hear that."
I couldn't believe God had used a simple guy like me to have this kind of impact on a kid. ~ Jase Robertson

This points to a nagging and important question about free-market ideologues: Are they 'true believers', driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment, as is often asserted, or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered greed while still invoking an altruistic motive? ~ Naomi Klein

Well, I know better what I don't want. I don't want somebody who's always nagging me to be something I'm not. And I don't want somebody who thinks she knows what's best for me and who maneuvers around trying to get me to do things her way."

Kate frowned. "Nobody wants anyone like that. It's like saying, 'I don't want someone who'll poke me in the eye with a sharp stick.' Forget what you don't want. What do you want? ~ Jennifer Crusie

One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterward. ~ Rudyard Kipling

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of "happily ever after" films. But some victors didn't feel too good about their spoils. They'd seen too much by then. Too much warfare, too much poverty, too much greed, all in the service of rapacious progress. A bundle of unfinished business lingered from the Depression - nagging questions about ingrained venality, mean human nature, and the way unchecked urban growth threw society dangerously out of whack. Writers and directors responded by delivering gritty, bitter dramas that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it - and liked it. ~ Eddie Muller

My head is held up high, irrespective of the circumstances. If situations are to define your Self Worth, then keep nagging! ~ Somya Kedia

Usually I'm frustrated when I look at my films and I don't believe that I've made a real transformation beyond my usual sets of gestures and expressions. I still have this nagging feeling that it's me, that I didn't create a unique character. ~ Helena Bonham Carter

Even if they're not Asian or super rich ... everyone has a nagging mother. Everyone has that obnoxious uncle, or that cousin who's a bit too snobby. ~ Kevin Kwan

A God who knew the answer to that question would indeed know everything and have everything. For that reason he would be unmotivated to do anything or create anything. There would be no purpose to act in any way whatsoever. But a God who had one nagging question - what happens if I cease to exist? - might be motivated to find the answer in order to complete his knowledge ... The fact that we exist is proof that God is motivated to act in some way. And since only the challenge of self-destruction could interest an omnipotent God, it stands to reason that we ... are God's debris. ~ Scott Adams

There's not one positive thing about being broke. The worst of it is the day-to-day grind of it all. You never know when that treadmill is finally going to buckle and hurl you into the wall. So you find yourself having to run faster and faster, just to keep from falling off. You can adjust to the hunger and the tiredness for the most part, having to choose between feeding yourself and feeding your electric meter; but one thing you can't adjust to is the nagging anxiety. Whoever designed this loathsome system must think we're all living these wonderful lives where money grows in the palms of our hands.

There's never any reassurance that everything is going to be okay; a promise that tomorrow will be slightly more bearable than today. Every minute of your life is consumed by a relentless feeling that time will only ever lead you to the worst possible outcome. And why - when you haven't eaten a decent meal in two weeks and you've spent the last four days lying on a mattress just to conserve energy - should you believe any differently? ~ Rupert Dreyfus

Guilt, Ameline discovered, was a terrible, unruly think, like toothache - dull nagging, persistent, never far from attention. Just when you got used to its rumbling, ruminating presence, it would lash out, stike you down, stio you dead in your tracks. The worst thing was, it was entirely unpredicatable. ~ Lesley Lokko

This is worse than death. Now i have to spend eternity with my nagging wife and mother-in-law. what did i do to deserve this? ~ John Corwin

I would. I could stand on my feet without you." "And the tide would still go out without my pushing it. The spring will still melt the snow without my warm breath nagging it. You're a person, all on your own, with hopes and thoughts and dreams completely separate from mine. Do you think I want a woman who needs to lean on me to be complete? I don't, dearling, I want only you, as whole and self-sufficient and tender as you are. I want to know that if I die tomorrow, you can support my father's grief and raise my son to manhood. ~ Christina Dodd

Quiet the noise around you; soften its pitch. Our deepest stories are our best teachers. Let the weapons of the weak - the poison, the nagging, the gossip - burn themselves to ash. Cast them to the wind. Take back the permission to succeed. Make it yours. ~ Elissa Altman

I started to feel that nagging sense of shame again, an acute awareness of my own inability to share in his [my grandfather's] optimism. ~ Tea Obreht

The absurd is a shadow cast over everything we do and even if we try to live life as if it has meaning as if there are reasons for doing things the absurd will linger in the back of our minds as a nagging doubt that perhaps there is no point. ~ Albert Camus

And it's nagging at you, but you can't quite put your finger on it? It's like that, all the time. Just this feeling of wrongness. Like the world doesn't make sense any more without him in it.' A ~ Emma Kavanagh

Nagging questions remain: Where is the line between making the most of one's potential and reaching for the unattainable? Where is the line between education as a tool and education as a kind of magic? The line is blurred and that is why when education fails, disillusionment is so bitter. ~ Henry Anatole Grunwald

The constant nagging in your mind of undone things pulls you out of the present
tethers you to a mind-set of the future so that you're never fully in the moment and enjoying what's now. ~ Daniel Levitin

The first step into getting in the zone is to turn off your judgment switch. Let go, and move away from a nagging inner voice, questions, or anything that prevents you from getting things done. Other negative thoughts might include not being productive out of fear that your work will turn out to be unacceptable. Don't worry about the quality of work you are creating. You have to keep your energy flowing and continue to contribute, that's the most important part, whether the work is good or not. We become stagnant and procrastinate because we want things to be just right; we want to feel inspired and good, before we start working. This is counter intuitive because once we start working, that is when we will begin to feel inspired from the creation of our own work. Get your dream energy rolling now. ~ Christian Cee

But that's part of what makes America wonderful, is we always had this nagging dissatisfaction that spurs us on. That's how we ended up going west, that's how we
"I'm tired of all these people back east; if I go west, there's going to be my own land and I'm not going to have to put up with this nonsense, and I'm going to start my own thing, and I've got my homestead." ... It is true, though, that that restlessness and that dissatisfaction which has helped us go to the moon and create the Internet and build the Transcontinental Railroad and build our land-grant colleges, that those things, born of dissatisfaction, we can very rapidly then take for granted and not tend to and not defend, and not understand how precious these things are. ~ Barack Obama

Girls find it rather fun to tease my about my height and the joy I find in the games boys play. Please. I could find a lot of things to say about their stupid makeup and perfect hair! But don't get me wrong. Every girl is a true girl on the inside, so I don't mind the frilly clothes and the constant nagging of combes in my hair all the time. I just think that if boys can wear slacks and do so many things, why can't girls? ~ Halina

And he still had those two big nuts in his pocket that he'd picked up from the Purdys' barn workshop, the one with the green-and-yellow overspray on the floor, a green-and-yellow spray that didn't match the hard green and yellow of the John Deere, but did match the green and yellow of fair fire hydrants . . . and those nuts in his pocket. Why would you need a whole bag of big nuts, but no bolts? You wouldn't - unless they were shrapnel. And that nagging intuition he'd had by the Varied Industries building: he'd been walking by fire hydrants all morning, the same yellow and green as the overspray on the Purdys' barn floor. A bomb. The Purdys had built a bomb. The farm kid who'd been brain-injured by IEDs in Iraq had built himself an IED. A bomb disguised as a fire hydrant that was probably standing on the Concourse, right where the candidates would be marching by, right on the curb. ~ John Sandford

I am disappointed with myself. I am disappointed not so much with the particular things I have done as with the aspects of who I have become. I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be. ~ John Ortberg Jr.

Don't count on the power of your love or your nagging to create something that wasn't there to begin with. ~ Harriet Lerner

I'm a person who's fine saying 'No.' I like saying to myself, "no gossiping," "no nagging." ~ Gretchen Rubin

Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh. ~ William S. Burroughs

The impulse to lie, to continue to wallow in secrets as he had for years, was only the faintest whisper now, a nagging sense of stepping too far on an uncharted path, easily overridden by need to tell her. If he couldn't tell her, at least he could find some comfort in confidence. ~ Anthony Ryan

When sleep leaves the body like smoke and man, sated with secrets, drives the overworked nag of quarrel out of its stall, then the fire-breathing union begins anew ... ~ Nelly Sachs

A new thing I've been doing is just making sure I clear off my desk and try to only touch a piece of paper once, so I get the mail, open it up, deal with it then. My son's homework, or what I get from his teachers, the same way. That way, it's not nagging me, things to add to my to-do list. ~ Adina Porter

The miraculous power of love to create a context in which people naturally blossom into their highest potential. Neither nagging, trying to get people to change, criticizing or fixing can do that. ~ Marianne Williamson

Don't get depressed about not being where you want to be. This nagging feeling of anxiety is actually called ambition. Ambition is your friend. ~ Atom Egoyan

Zane was pretty sure that worries and bossing were related, like a pair of old aunties. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

When did the body first set out on its own adventures? Snowman thinks; after having ditched its old travelling companions, the mind and the soul, for whom it had once been considered a mere corrupt vessel or else a puppet acting out their dramas for them, or else bad company, leading the other two astray. it must have got tired of the soul's constant nagging and whining and the anxiety-driven intellectual web-spinning of the mind, distracting it whenever it was getting its teeth into something juicy or its fingers into something good. It had dumped the other two back there somewhere, leaving them stranded in some damp sanctuary or stuffy lecture hall while it made a beeline for the topless bars, and it had dumped culture along with them: music and painting and poetry and plays. Sublimation, all of it; nothing but sublimation, according to the body. Why not cut to the chase?
But the body had its own cultural forms. It had its own art. Executions were its tragedies, pornography was its romance. ~ Margaret Atwood

There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest. And the girls will be picked up from school, and dropped off again in the morning. Your eldest daughter can remember her inhaler, and your youngest will take her gym kit with her, and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy to love you. ~ Anne Enright

She was like a nagging itch, repellent and at the same time tempting. ~ Stieg Larsson

Sugar can cause fatigue and it can also build up on your joints. It can lead to those injuries where you've got nagging pain on those joints. ~ Dwight Howard

Coward, says the nagging voice inside my head. You should talk to him. Find out what he has to say.
What if he says we belong together?
Well, then you'll have to deal with that. But at least you won't be running away.
I think it's more of a brisk walk.
Whatever.
I'm having an argument with myself. And I'm losing. So not a good sign. ~ Cynthia Hand

Women, it is said, possess corresponding power. Through consciousness-raising, women found that women's so-called power was the other side of female powerlessness. A women's supposed power to deny sex is the underside of her actual lack of power to stop it. Women's supposed power to get men to do things for them by nagging or manipulating is the other side of the power they lack to have their every need anticipated, to carry out the task themselves, or to invoke physical fear to gain compliance with their desires without even having to mention it. Once the veil is lifted, once relations between the sexes are seen as power relations, it becomes impossible to see as simply unintented, well-intentioned, or innocent the actions through which women are told every day what is expected and when they have crossed some line. ~ Catharine A. MacKinnon

Douglas Ainslie: Look. Can you hear yourself? Can you? Do you have any idea what a terrible person you have become? All you give out is this endless negativity, a refusal to see any kind of light and joy, even when it's staring you in the face, and a desperate need to squash any sign of happiness in me or ... or ... or ... anyone else. It's a wonder that I don't fling myself at the first kind word or gesture that comes my way, but I don't, ou ... ou ... ou ... out of some sense of dried-up loyalty and respect, neither of which I ever bloody get in return.
Jean, his wife: [long pause] I checked my emails. There's one from Laura. ~ Deborah Moggach

Honestly, he blamed Jace and Colt for that little nagging feeling in his heart that insisted something was missing. Was he lonely? Hell, he didn't know. ~ Kindle Alexander

Today we tell girls to grow up to be or do whatever they want. But the cultural pressure to become a mother remains very strong; rare is she who doesn't at least occasionally succumb to the nagging fear that if she remains childless, she'll live to regret it. ~ Kate Bolick

Writers want publicity all the time, and they are always nagging their agents and publishers to give them more publicity, but, when you get it, it's kind of soul-destroying. ~ Kate Thompson

Meanwhile, as we read, two little girls slept as if couched on zephyrs on the south side of the parlor floor, in a room that had bunny wallpaper ... and a bookcase crammed with the collected Beatrix Potter. Snow White was in a youth bed and Rose Red was in a crib, and next to them was the little blue and white guest room that one of them would have one day. Because I recognize emotions only in retrospect, I didn't know that I was happy. As always, there was something nagging at my mind's corners. But I did know that I had all that it is proper in this world to wish for. ~ Mary Cantwell

Be black or white with no shades of gray. In other words, don't be a nagging mother. ~ Clinton Anderson

Something was nagging at me that I was trying to resist. Was it then or was it later that the thought came to me: if God really does exist, and is not just a myth, it must have a consequence for the whole of life. It was not a comfortable thought. ~ Jennifer Worth

I never say 'nagging.' I think that 'nagging' is a term that men created to get women to pipe down some. But, it's a trap that we've created. We created several terms for women to back you down. Nagging means to stop asking me questions, then we get away with more. I think it's a term men created. ~ Steve Harvey

put: your son needs to become self-motivated so you can stop nagging him. Good luck! This ~ Daryl Capuano

We're tired of the nagging and debating that adults do so well. We don't care anymore [..] the kids don't write to us about their political views. Call it ignorance. Call it naive. Call it unrealistic. We call it relief. ~ Ryan Smithson

We will never outrun the nagging of original divinely inspired purpose. ~ T.F. Hodge

Though he was tired of loneliness - tired down to the depths of his heart - that was really not was troubled him most. What tortured him was the hunger in his soul. A longing. A quiet voice that could not be stilled. Not a threatening voice - or a nagging one. But a persistent calling. Like a parent who calls an errant child back to dinner. Or a father who calls for a son to join him down at the pier for a fishing trip; like a voice echoing off the lake. It was a strangely familiar voice that was calling. A little like the memory of a reunion, long forgotten. Why did he resist it, even fear it? Why would he not respond to a call that came to him in a way that sounded, and felt, so much like family? ~ Craig Parshall

Every night when I go out on stage, there's always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I'm always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I'm not going to offend! ~ Don Rickles

Right before you head out running, it can be hard to remember exactly why you're doing it. You often have to override a nagging sense of futility, lacing up your shoes, telling yourslef that no matter how unlikely it seems right now, after you finish you will be glad you went. It's only afterward that it makes sense, although even then it's hard to rationalize why. You just feel right. After a run, you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled. ~ Adharanand Finn

Are you planning on asking my daughter's permission to ravish me as I deserve? If so, please take heed when she informs you that I am lonely and need a woman in my life. She's been nagging me for the last five years to find one."
"In your dreams, bat boy. ~ Katie MacAlister

When you write, you believe in something no one else can see. You spend lots of time committed to a project for which there are no assurances, no guarantees. Being a writer subjects you to the same doubts, the same unpopularity, the same nagging questions that believers struggle with. Writing is communing with the unseen… ~ Heather Sellers

Complains are like the clouds that produce no rain no matter how thick they gather. Never depend on your complaint thinking they are stair cases. Drop that thing. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

If you accept others as equals, you embrace them unconditionally, now and forever. But if you let them know that you tolerate them, you suggest in the same breath that they are actually an inconvenience, like a nagging pain or an unpleasant odour you are willing to disregard. ~ Arthur Japin

One speaker in Church directs, "You can't do everything. Don't run faster than you have strength". The next says, "Push yourself. You can always do more." One person advises, "Don't worry about what you can't do" at the same time someone else says, "You can do anything you put your mind to." In one hymn we sing, "I need thee every hour," and in another we sing, "We will work out our salvation". In this world of mixed messages, I never can seem to escape the nagging though, "If only I were better organized or if only I tried harder." Satan tempted Christ with the word if. He often comes to me with the words if only. ~ Brad Wilcox

Between the onion and the parsley, therefore, I shall give the summation of my case for paying attention. Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences. It can cost him time and effort, but it pays handsomely. If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil's Cathedral. Or how much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the inside of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses and the juice of pine trees to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. No doubt his wife urged him to get up and do something useful. I am sure that he was a stalwart enough lover of things to pay no attention at all to her nagging; but how wonderful it would have been if he had known what we know now about his dawdling. He could have silenced her with the greatest riposte of all time: Don't bother me; I am creating the possibility of the Bach unaccompanied sonatas.

But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him - every t ~ Robert Farrar Capon

How does it happen that, on the one hand, we all share not just a sense that there is such a thing as justice, but a passion for it, a deep longing that things should be put to rights, a sense of out-of-jointness that goes on nagging and gnawing and sometimes screaming at us - and yet, on the other hand, after millennia of human struggle and searching and love and longing and hatred and hope and fussing and philosophizing, we still can't seem to get much closer to it than people did in the most ancient societies we can discover? ~ N. T. Wright

I'm talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we're too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they're too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. ~ Jessica Valenti

Lady Middleton resigned herself ... Contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject, five or six times every day. ~ Jane Austen

Students will sometimes decide that they don't like where they are sitting, and I probably won't notice if they re-seat themselves over by their friend. And they are right. I'm very busy in class. So if I don't have a serious consequence, it's worth it for them to take that gamble, and pretty soon it becomes rampant. Then I start nagging, and I hate nagging. So on the first time, I warn them that what they are doing is actually in the category of defiance which should earn them a referral, or at least a detention. ~ Kristen Coad

Vimes' meeting with the Patrician ended as all such meetings did, with the guest going away in possession of an unfocused yet very nagging suspicion that he'd only just escaped with his life. ~ Terry Pratchett

Human life is not for suffering criticism. If it is the truth and there is no nagging or insistence upon it, others will accept it in their hearts. And if it is the truth and you nag or insist upon it, it will not touch others. ~ Dada Bhagwan

I'm sorry, Genna," he said. "Really, I am. I didn't want to hurt you." "You didn't," she said, backing away from him as she tried to ignore the pain nagging her chest that suggested otherwise. Man, it did hurt. It hurt like a son of a bitch. "I'm just disappointed, Jackson. ~ J.M. Darhower

Unclear goals create unclear results. You need to know where you're going, and have faith that you will get there. Your intuition has been nagging at you to get moving on your goals. It's time to listen and obey your intuition, because that's how you'll get the joy, freedom, and security you want and deserve. Everyone has goals, because everyone has a divine assignment. You'll clearly understand your divine assignment by listening to and obeying your intuition. You are very, very qualified to fulfill your divine assignment. These assignments are never given by mistake or accident. Every time you finish one step of your intuitive instructions, you will be given another set of them. Don't fret about not knowing what to do in the future; you will be guided every day of your life. ~ Doreen Virtue