Normal And Abnormal Quotes

I truly cannot imagine men with men, women with women, doing what they were not physically created to do, without abnormal stress and misbehavior. ~ Jerry Falwell

Guardians are necessary for children and abnormal adults, because they cannot make responsible choices for themselves. ~ Tom G. Palmer

For, as I have suggested, disruption of the unity of the self is not limited to the cases that come to physicians and institutions for treatment. They accompany every disturbance of normal relations of husband and wife, parent and child, group and group, class and class, nation and nation. Emotional responses are so total as compared with the partial nature of intellectual responses, of ideas and abstract conceptions, that their consequences are more pervasive and enduring. I can, accordingly, think of nothing of greater practical importance than the psychic effects of human relationships, normal and abnormal, should be the object of continues study, including among the consequences the indirect somatic effects." – The unity of the human being ~ John Dewey

There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm. ~ Marcel Proust

I have been putting words like 'abnormal' and 'deviant' in quotes because those categorizations are under fire now, the boundary between normal and abnormal as questionable now as are all the other boundaries that once defined social reality. ~ Walter Truett Anderson

Yes, I remember the barbed wire and the guard towers and the machine guns, but they became part of my normal landscape. What would be abnormal in normal times became my normality in camp. ~ George Takei

Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's sad that the most glorious of sexual experiences can make us feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and abnormal. ~ Sue Johanson

Even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity. ~ Camille Paglia

The idea of reverence for God is transmitted from parent to child, it is educated into an abnormal development, and thus almost indefinitely strengthened, but yet it does appear to me that the bent to worship is an integral part of man's nature. ~ Annie Besant

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose. ~ Carl Jung

ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standards in matters of thought and conduct. To be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.
A striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself, whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell. ~ Ambrose Bierce

It might, too, have been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always excites aversion, distrust, and fear. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

It wasn't until school that we realised that we were abnormal. ~ Gilbert Hernandez

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts. ~ Henry Adams

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal. ~ William James

God is my Rock. Without Him, I am nothing, not even an abnormally normal being with the desire to live, and make a difference in this world. ~ Kcat Yarza

Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth. ~ Marshall McLuhan

I called up my grandparents who I hadn't spoken to for over three years. I called my mother, who I had recently told to stop calling lest I contact the police. I sat with them all and it was normal and fun and good. I'm even ready - maybe - to speak to my father. Superman doesn't get upset at the people who shoot bullets at him. I get why, now. ~ Harvey Pekar

There was no way that these guys were going to let a bleeding, barefoot woman simply wander off alone into the streets. Two of them were already running toward her with hands reaching out in a manner that, in normal circumstances, would have seemed just plain ungentlemanly. What would have been designated, in a Western office, as a hostile environment was soon in full swing as numerous rough strong hands were all over her, easing her to a comfortable perch on a chair that was produced as if by magic, feeling through her hair to find bumps and lacerations. Three different first aid kits were broken open at her feet; older and wiser men began to lodge objections at the profligate use of supplies, darkly suggesting that it was all because she was a pretty girl. A particularly dashing young man skidded up to her on his knees (he was wearing hard-shell knee pads) and, in an attitude recalling the prince on the final page of Cinderella, fit a pair of used flip-flops onto her feet. ~ Neal Stephenson

Though she was intrigued by someone like Claude, the love affairs of a real lesbian like Petit were a matter of complete indifference to Mickey. It seemed to me that our indifference, the indifference of the 'normal' world, made the life of such women even more tragic. For they suffered from their loves, like any other woman, but without the balm of sympathy and understanding. ~ Tereska Torres

Mrs. Weasley glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. Harry liked this clock. It was completely useless if you wanted to know the time, but otherwise very informative. It had nine golden hands, and each of them was engraved with one of the Weasley family's names. There were no numerals around the face, but descriptions of where each family member might be. "Home," "school," and "work" were there, but there was also "traveling," "lost," "hospital," "prison," and, in the position where the number twelve would be on a normal clock, "mortal peril. ~ J.K. Rowling

Themes of descent often turn on the struggle between the titanic and the demonic within the same person or group. In Moby Dick, Ahab's quest for the whale may be mad and "monomaniacal," as it is frequently called, or even evil so far as he sacrifices his crew and ship to it, but evil or revenge are not the point of the quest. The whale itself may be only a "dumb brute," as the mate says, and even if it were malignantly determined to kill Ahab, such an attitude, in a whale hunted to the death, would certainly be understandable if it were there. What obsesses Ahab is in a dimension of reality much further down than any whale, in an amoral and alienating world that nothing normal in the human psyche can directly confront.
The professed quest is to kill Moby Dick, but as the portents of disaster pile up it becomes clear that a will to identify with (not adjust to) what Conrad calls the destructive element is what is really driving Ahab. Ahab has, Melville says, become a "Prometheus" with a vulture feeding on him. The axis image appears in the maelstrom or descending spiral ("vortex") of the last few pages, and perhaps in a remark by one of Ahab's crew: "The skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world." But the descent is not purely demonic, or simply destructive: like other creative descents, it is partly a quest for wisdom, however fatal the attaining of such wisdom may be. A relation reminiscent of Lear and the fool develops at the end between Ahab and the little ~ Northrop Frye

It's wonderful for me to see what 'We Will Rock You' has done. 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions' have kind of transcended the normal framework of where music is listened to and appreciated - they've become part of public life, which I feel wonderful about. ~ Brian May

Think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it - our life - hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly. But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! if only the cataclysm doesn't happen this time, we won't miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India. The cataclysm doesn't happen, we don't do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn't have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening. ~ Alain De Botton

This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called "literary economics," as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the "new economic history." A man does what he can, and in the more elegant - one is tempted to say "fancier" - techniques I am, as one who received his formation in the 1930s, untutored. A colleague has offered to provide a mathematical model to decorate the work. It might be useful to some readers, but not to me. Catastrophe mathematics, dealing with such events as falling off a height, is a new branch of the discipline, I am told, which has yet to demonstrate its rigor or usefulness. I had better wait. Econometricians among my friends tell me that rare events such as panics cannot be dealt with by the normal techniques of regression, but have to be introduced exogenously as "dummy variables." The real choice open to me was whether to follow relatively simple statistical procedures, with an abundance of charts and tables, or not. In the event, I decided against it. For those who yearn for numbers, standard series on bank reserves, foreign trade, commodity prices, money supply, security prices, rate of interest, and the like are fairly readily available in the historical statistics. ~ Charles P. Kindleberger

Her laugh was sad and taciturn, seemingly detached from any feeling of the moment, like something she kept in the cupboard and took out only when she had to, using it with no feeling of ownership, as if the infrequency of her smiles had made her forget the normal way to use them. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

She explained why all the normal acts of life had become small acts of rebellion and political insubordination to her and to other young people like her. All her life she was shielded. She was never let out of sight; she never had a private corner in which to think, to feel, to dream, to write. She was not allowed to meet any young men on her own. Her family not only instructed her on how to behave around men - they seemed to think they could tell her how she should feel about them as well. What seems natural to someone like you, she said, is so strange and unfamiliar to me. ~ Azar Nafisi

Getting organized in the normal routines of life and finishing little projects you've started is an important first step toward realizing larger goals. If you can't get a handle on the small things, how will you ever get it together to focus on the big things? ~ Joyce Meyer

We cultivate inner stillness through the practice of contemplation or awareness. Behind the normal goings-on of everyday life, we try to have a consistent wakefulness. We learn to watch what we are thinking, what other people are thinking, and what is the spiritual truth of any given situation. We live in two realms. One is the visible human realm. The other is the invisible spiritual realm. This is not obvious to anyone except those who do the same thing. Then it is instantly recognisable. ~ Donna Goddard

She had realised that they couldn't be together. She didn't want to make a romantic drama out of it, she didn't want to sigh and mope or scream hysterically to impress others with how awful it all was, even though she felt as if something fundamental, deep within her, had been taken away from her. She was simply trying to cope, to get on with her own normal life. Which, she knew, was something he could not be a part of. ~ Harriet Evans

I think everyone thinks their family is insane, and every family is insane. There is no real normal. ~ Seth Gabel

[I]t is useful at times to admit to yourself that you don't know your way and to be open to help from unexpected places. Doing that makes available to you inner and outer energies and allies that arise out of your own soulfulness and selflessness. [...] [G]etting caught up in the normal human tendencies of self-cherishing and arrogance, and ignoring the larger order of things, will ultimately lead to ans impasse in your life in which you are unable to go forward, unable to go back, and unable to turn around. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

A tick of amusement flashed in Tomas' eyes. "I can see you are not quite comfortable with leaving your quarters just yet, so may I order you some food?" Helena lifted her chin. She was determined to bury her fear, and that included her wobbly knees that seemed to recognize she was talking to a lion who, under normal circumstances, viewed her as a tasty gazelle. "Sausage Pizza and ... Dr. Pepper." Tomas stared for several moments, fear filling his eyes. "I am certain we can find you a pizza, but I was not aware you are ill and require a doctor. Niccolo will have my head." This was going to be a very, very long day. ~ Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

I was looking the other day at the calendar and I was like oh my gosh we only have two weeks left and I've been on tour since June I don't know how I'm going to switch back into normal life. It's been so much fun. ~ Demi Lovato

In this prison camp, the Gestapo state brain-police planet Earth, what is normal is insane and what is insane is normal. But it doesn't pay to tell that to the local politicians or other organizational structures that run the place that. They didn't crucify Christ because they liked what he said. ~ Frederick Lenz

My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal. ~ Julius Evola

When I grew up in France, I was a normal size. And then I came to the United States and I gained 20 pounds. ~ Mireille Guiliano

...the news should help us with mourning the twisted nature of man and reconciling us to the difficulty of being able to imagine perfection while still not managing to secure it – for a range of stupid but nevertheless unbudgeable reasons...The news currently resists giving us the single most calming response one can offer to certain problems: evidence that they are normal and that they belong to a species which is intrinsically (rather than exceptionally) imperfect. ~ Alain De Botton

Play is basic to all normal and healthy children. It provides pleasure and learning and a minimum of risks and penalties for mistakes. ~ Frank Caplan

Go to sleep, dweller-baby. I'll kill Elowin as soon as we find her." He didn't sound like he was kidding. Each word was low and laced with truth.

"Next time, just say like … sleep well, or something normal," I said. "Not go to sleep, I'll be murdering someone in no time. It doesn't sound as comforting as you think it does. ~ Jaymin Eve

I'll always be broken," I went on. "Because when I came here, no one fixed me. It's not that they didn't care to fix me. These crazy, wonderful people I met at Craneville didn't fix me because they didn't think I needed to be fixed. And it wasn't because they were 'crazy'…it was because they were the only people who knew that I could only face the world out there again as someone different. As someone who wasn't perfect, who wasn't normal, who didn't have all the answers…someone who was somehow 'fixed' by being broken. ~ Tabitha Freeman

I knew I wanted to be an actress, but I hadn't ever really told anyone. I'd always got quite good grades, so people assumed I would go and do a 'normal' job. My dad took me to my first audition for drama school and picked me up without anyone knowing, really. ~ Kimberley Nixon

When you know that something's going to happen, you'll start trying to see signs of its approach in just about everything. Always try to remember that most of the things that happen in this world aren't signs. They happen because they happen, and their only real significance lies in normal cause and effect. You'll drive yourself crazy if you start trying to pry the meaning out of every gust of wind or rain squall. I'm not denying that there might actually be a few signs that you won't want to miss. Knowing the difference is the tricky part. ~ David Eddings

In young women, I find that a feeling of anxiety is normal and moves to the forefront of repressed feelings when the possibility of fulfilment of the wish first appears. It is a well-defined form of anxiety: You feel that the enemy is within; its characteristic ardour compels you, with inflexible urgency, to do what you do not want to do; you feel the end, the transient, before which you vainly may attempt to flee to an uncertain future. You might ask: Is this all? Is this the high point with nothing more beyond? ~ Sabina Spielrein

There are many activities that human beings have been doing "forever." We might argue from that perspective that eating meat should be allowed to continue. Men have been raping women for thousands of years; does that mean that it is normal and should be allowed to continue? ~ Sharon Gannon

He cannot tolerate feelings of frustration as a more normal person can, and he is poorly able to rid himself of those feelings except through antisocial activity ... ~ Truman Capote

Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.15 And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them. ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

Everyone has fantasies and the variations in these visions of passion vary widely. It is a natural experience that occurs in every human being. Having a rich fantasy life is not only enjoyable, but psychologically "normal. ~ K. Kiker

How're the cats?" he asked, smiling a little. He did miss Angel Marie. Hell, he missed them all.
"Feral," Benny sniffed. "And horny. Every time one of us walks in, they all start humping our shoes."
"They're fixed," Shane mumbled, but the conversation was oddly reassuring. It sounded normal, and like home.
"Tell that to the big fuzzy brown one ... ."
"Orlando Bloom?"
"Yeah, whatever. Last time I was there that damned animal violated my knitting."
Shane lost a battle with a laugh and then whined because it hurt his ribs.
"Violated?"
[ ... ]
"Let's just say that wool is no longer virgin," she quipped dryly, and Shane's chest shook. ~ Amy Lane

I'm grateful that on a lot of casts I've gained friends for life. But it's more of a rare thing than a normal thing. I have a small group of friends, and I just, uh, feel fulfilled by the people that are in my life. ~ Matt Czuchry

There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things. ~ Jon Ronson

We are so prone to expect to become good Christians by some sudden experience that lifts us all at once to higher ground without the gradual climb. We forget that we are to "grow in grace" and that normal growth is not a matter of fits and starts. ~ Vance Havner

It's not just humans who have trisomies of the sex chromosomes. One day you may be happily amazing your friends with your confident statement that their tortoiseshell cat is female when they deflate you by telling you that their pet has been sexed by the vet and is actually a Tom. At this point, smile smugly and then say 'Oh, in that case he's karyotypically abnormal. He has an XXY karyotype, rather than XY'. And if you're feeling particularly mean, you can tell them that Tom is infertile. That should shut them up. ~ Nessa Carey

A little white woman, . . . [a] tiny little white woman I could fit in my pocket.' . . . 'And I don't know why I'm surprised. You don't even notice it – you never notice. You think it's normal. Everywhere we go, I'm alone in this… this sea of white. I barely know any black folk any more, Howie. My whole life is white. I don't see any black folk unless they be cleaning under my feet in the fucking café in your fucking college. Or pushing a fucking hospital bed through a corridor . . . 'I gave up my life for you. I don't even know who I am any more.' . . . 'Could you have found anybody less like me if you'd scoured the earth? . . . My leg weighs more than that woman. What have you made me look like in front of everybody in this town? You married a big black bitch and you run off with a fucking leprechaun? ~ Zadie Smith

Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that there's any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about ... ~ James Franco

Being lonely does not mean that we are abnormal, love-starved, oversexed, or alienated. Perhaps all it means is that we are incurably human and sensitive to the fact that God made us for an ecstatic togetherness in a body with divine love and with all other persons of sincere will. ~ Ronald Rolheiser