Overcoming Confusion Quotes

I don't know where I'm going on this path. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to be confused, before you could find clarity; you had to suffer, before you could find peace. These were the only ways, life could happen. Of course you were confused before you found clarity. If you weren't confused, then you would already be clear. Of course you were lost before you were found. If you were already found, then you wouldn't be lost. Of course there would be suffering before peace. If there was already peace, then there wouldn't be suffering. One necessarily came before the other. ~ T. Scott McLeod

One of the saddest sights of the slums is to see the thrifty wife of the working man, with her rosy brood of children, used to country air and sunshine, used to space, privacy, good surroundings, cleanliness, quiet, shut up amid the noise and dirt and confusion, in the gloom of the slum. ~ Albion Fellows Bacon

Real power isn't the ability to harm or meddle, Real power is overcoming your frailty when every sinew of your mind tells you it's impossible. Real power is facing up to your problems when you want to hid from them. Real power is picking yourself up from a fall and redoubling your efforts. Real power is the strength to choose what is right. ~ Tony Moyle

Some people will just go with the flow of things and sway in life, while others will fight against the currents and go upstream to reach their destiny. ~ Anthony Liccione

Not only subjective poverty is never overcome by growth, but absolute poverty is increased by it ... Absolute misery grows while wealth increases. ~ Joan Robinson

Although she missed the singing by the children from the school opposite her apartment, she didn't teach her own pupils to sing 'We Shall Overcome' in any language, because she wasn't sure that Overcoming was anywhere on anyone's horizon. ~ Arundhati Roy

Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat - chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange. ~ Don Roff

Choice in every form is conflict. Contradiction is inevitable in choice; this contradiction, inner and outer breeds confusion and misery. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Some people find clarity threatening. They like muddle, confusion, obscurity. So when somebody does no more than speak clearly it sounds threatening. ~ Richard Dawkins

The rush I got from crime was better than that of glue, drink or hash. I loved playing cat and mouse with the local coppers. He Who Dares Wins, the SAS motto, was very applicable to my life then. ~ Stephen Richards

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know
... nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves. ~ Pema Chodron

The world is weary of hate. We see the fatigue overcoming the Western nations. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. ~ Lady Bird Johnson

The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology. ~ Basil Bunting

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing ... not healing, not curing ... that is a friend who cares. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

A keen sense of humor helps us to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerated the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable. ~ Billy Graham

No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they who have suffered are able to save. ~ Annie Besant

Never underplay a child's sadness.

Travis, Dr. Richard L. (2013-12-22). Overcoming Depression in Teens and Pre-Teens, p. 67 ~ Dr. Richard Travis

(The wind does not like to be confused. confusion ruins its sense of direction and direction is everything to the wind.) ~ Erin Morgenstern

Most of all, learning to fail well means overcoming our natural instincts to blame someone - maybe ourselves - whenever something goes wrong. ~ Megan McArdle

I'm afraid to walk in public, because people look at me. But I'm not going to stop. I'm afraid because if I want to commune with my friend Shad (Meier), I have to ask him to cut my chicken for me. But I did it. And I'm afraid to go back and see my teammates and coaches because I know that I'll feel envy. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because fear is just a feeling, and if you can acknowledge that fear, digest that fear and overcome it, the rewards are incredible. ~ Steve Gleason

The actor, like the modern man of reason, must have his place determined and his lines memorized before he goes on stage. (...) The public itself has been soothed to such an extent by scripted debates imbued with theoretically "right" answers that it no longer seems to respond positively to arguments which create doubt. Real doubt creates real fear. (...)
De Gaulle found a sensible compromise, given the times. He reserved his public thinking for the printed page and on those pages he allowed himself to ask fundamental questions. But when he spoke, it was either with reason or with emotion - that is to say, with answers or with mythology. He divided himself between the man of letters, who knows how to live with doubt, and the man of state, who is the epitome of certainty. the brilliance of this approach could be seen in the frustration and sometimes fury of the opposing elites.
The truism today is that mythological figures and men of power should not think in public. They should limit themselves to affirming truths. Stars, after all, are rarely equipped to engage in public debate. They would abhor the idea that the proper way to deal with confusion in society is to increase that confusion by asking uncomfortable questions until the source of the difficulties is exposed. ~ John Ralston Saul

You, yesterday's boy,
to whom confusion came:
Listen, lest you forget who you are.
It was not pleasure you fell into. It was joy.
You were called to be bridegroom,
though the bride coming toward you is your shame.
What chose you is the great desire.
Now all flesh bares itself to you.
On pious images pale cheeks
blush with a strange fire.
Your senses uncoil like snakes
awakened by the beat of the tambourine.
Then suddenly you're left all alone
with your body that can't love you
and your will that can't save you.
But now, like a whispering in dark streets,
rumors of God run through your dark blood. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. ~ William James

A perspective that allows you to consistently make decisions based on the right set of criteria. Positivity and forward thinking. I work on that one every day, and every day I get a little better. Better at knowing that there is no obstacle that I cannot overcome. Nothing I can be faced with that I won't grow mentally stronger and wiser from having endured. ~ Adam Rodriguez

(the pharmakon is neither remedy now poison, neither good nor evil, neither the inside nor the outside, neither speech nor writing; the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the complement of an inside, neither accident nor essence, etc.; the hymen is neither confusion nor distinction, neither identity nor difference, neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiling, neither the inside nor the outside, etc.; the gram is neither a signifier nor a signified, neither a sign nor a thing, neither a presence nor an absence, neither a position nor a negation, etc.; spacing is neither space nor time; the incision is neither the incised integrity of a beginning, or of a simple cutting into, nor simple secondarity. Neither/nor, that is, simultaneously either or; the mark is also the marginal limit, the march, etc.) ~ Jacques Derrida

I'm quite happy there is a man in the world who can overcome my record, finally. ~ Larisa Latynina

thought we were supposed to get her drunk and put her panties in the freezer," Jolene said, her pretty face scrunched in confusion. "I think you're mixing up your female-bonding customs," I told her. "That's 'thirteen-year-olds at a sleepover,' not 'vampire boyfriend may or may not have cheated on you, but either way, he's an emotionally unavailable asshat. ~ Molly Harper

Humor enables us to deal with and overcome many of the most painful and difficult situations in our lives. ~ Frederick Lenz

Blame doesn't empower you. It keeps you stuck in a place you don't want to be because you don't want to make the temporary, but painful decision, to be responsible for the outcome of your own life's happiness. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Out of ignorance, out of confusion, arise the true words. ~ Marty Rubin

The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem. ~ Bell Hooks

Dean watched her quietly as a storm of confusion whirled through his mind. What he could say to comfort her right now eluded him as words lingered beyond the grasp of his thoughts. He resigned himself to the fact there was no possible solace he could provide as she dressed briskly. ~ Jill Thrussell

I guess, the hardest obstacles I've had to overcome in my life are deaths of people close to me. ~ Guy Burnet

And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the word words is an anagram of sword. Well-used words cut through ambiguity and confusion like a sharp sword in the hands of an expert swordsman. ~ Anu Garg

We talk about mental toughness all the time. That's the biggest thing good teams have, that they can overcome adversity. ~ Bryan Murray

Then he had run, unarmed and bleeding, trusting to the maze like confusion of the ruins to evade the monster behind him. ~ John Flanagan

One pit held the tangled severed legs of men, blood caked over kneecaps or shredded thigh muscle. Another pit held a confusion of forearms and hands. They were the graves of amputations – he'd seen them in the field, behind the surgical tent where the screams echoed long after their issuing mouths had closed unconscious. ~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

He caught the look on her face, a mixture of distaste and confusion which eventually resolved into something more cryptic. Women usually needed to be acquainted with him a little longer before he saw that expression on their faces. ~ Kate Atkinson

I'm afraid there's a big confusion in the world between nuclear power and nuclear arms. ~ Abdus Salam

The idea that being scientific simply means being irreligious is a particularly naive one. It has caused a lot of confusion and will get us nowhere. ~ Mary Midgley

Reagan believed the power of truth restated the world and re framed the world. I am a Reaganite. I'm proud to be a Reaganite. I will tell the truth, even if it's at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid. ~ Newt Gingrich

Don't try to talk - just breathe. Another long, slow one…another. Good girl." As Annabelle gradually recovered her breath, the panic began to fade. He was right…it was easier if she didn't struggle. The sound of her fitful gasping was underlaid by the mesmerizing softness of his voice. "That's right," he murmured. "That's the way of it." His hand continued to move in a slow, easy rotation over her chest. There was nothing sexual in his touch - in fact, she might have been a child he was trying to soothe. Annabelle was amazed. Who would have ever dreamed that Simon Hunt could be so kind? Filled with equal parts of confusion and gratitude, Annabelle fumbled for the large hand that moved so gently on her chest. She was so feeble that the gesture required all her strength. Assuming that she was trying to push him away, Hunt began to withdraw, but as he felt her fingers curl around two of his, he went very still. "Thank you," she whispered. The touch made Hunt tense visibly, as if the contact had sent a shock through his body. He stared not at her face but at the delicate fingers entwined with his, in the manner of a man who was trying to solve a complex puzzle. Remaining motionless, he prolonged the moment, his lashes lowering to conceal his expression. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Hurt and confusion mixing with anger to form a dangerously flammable cocktail. ~ Miranda Dickinson

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness. ~ Stewart L. Udall

It's okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That doesn't give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because you don't like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond what is comfortable. ~ Ashly Lorenzana