Paralysis Quotes

Oh these dumb dumb dumb Okies, they'll never change, how com-pletely and how unbelievably dumb, the moment it comes time to act, this paralysis, scared, hysterical, nothing frightens em more than what they WANT- it's MY FATHER MY FATER MY FATHER all over again! ~ Jack Kerouac

For many Westerners, "it's natural" seems to mean "it's good." This view is wrong and comes from shopping in supermarkets and living in landscaped environments. Plants evolved toxins to deter animals, fungi, and bacteria from eating them. The list of "natural" foods that need processing to detoxify them goes on and on. Early potatoes were toxic, and the Andean peoples ate clay to neutralize the toxin. Even beans can be toxic without processing. In California, many hunter-gatherer populations relied on acorns, which, similar to manioc, require a labor intensive, multiday leaching process. Many small-scale societies have similarly exploited hardy, tropical plants called cycads for food. But cycads contain a nerve toxin. If not properly processed, they can cause neurological symptoms, paralysis, and death. Numerous societies, including hunter-gatherers, have culturally evolved an immense range of detoxification techniques for cycads. By contrast with our species, other animals have far superior abilities to detoxify plants. Humans, however, lost these genetic adaptations and evolved a dependence on cultural know-how, just to eat. ~ Joseph Henrich

Followers often hesitate to act, out of fear that they'll do the wrong thing. Leaders aren't afraid to make a call, even when they're not sure if it's the right one. They'd rather make a decision and be wrong than suffer from the paralysis of indecision. ~ Anonymous

An old man in poor health, like my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young actor in the prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and working within this definite limitation, he couldn't be so jolly paralytic as I was. ~ Anonymous

Ah felt a paralysis ay emotion as time stretched out. A pervading numbness was setting in, like a dentist's anaesthetic, spreading through ma body. ~ Irvine Welsh

Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests. ~ John W. Gardner

Focusing on our individual steps can cure the paralysis and overwhelm, which sometimes occurs when staring into the future. ~ Charles F. Glassman

Many stroke survivors look back on their attack as a stroke of luck. Of course, by luck they mean horrible paralysis. ~ Dana Gould

Self distrust is good, but only if it leads to trust in God. Otherwise it ends as spiritual paralysis, inability and unwillingness to undertake any course of action. ~ Alan Cole

Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order. ~ Arthur Helps

She made me feel better than I have ever felt, better than I imagined I could feel, and it scared me, it scared me to the point of paralysis. ~ James Frey

In life and business, there are two cardinal sins. The first is to act precipitously without thought and the second is to not act at all. ~ Carl Icahn

With determination, it is possible to block out the negative things and enjoy the positive ones, despite the cons. Most importantly, it is possible to dance through everything pernicious. ~ Sarah Todd Hammer

Were the situation not so completely to her disadvantage, she might have enjoyed the prospect of Simon Hunt rendered absolutely speechless.
At first his face was blank, as if he was having tremendous difficulty absorbing the fact that she was standing before him dressed only in a chemise, corset, and drawers. His gaze slid over her, slowly coming to rest on her flushed face. Another moment or two of suffocated silence, and Hunt swallowed hard before speaking in a rusty-sounding voice. "I probably shouldn't ask. But what the hell are you doing?"
The words unlocked Annabelle from her paralysis. She certainly could not stand there and converse with him while she was clad in her undergarments. But her dignity - or the threads that remained of it - demanded that she not screech idiotically and dash for her clothes the way Evie and Daisy were doing. Settling for a compromise, she strode briskly to her discarded gown and clasped it to her front as she turned to face Simon Hunt once more. "We're playing Rounders," she said, her voice far higher-pitched than usual.
Hunt glanced around the scene before settling on her again. "Why did you - "
"One can't run properly in skirts," Annabelle interrupted. "I should think that would be obvious."
Absorbing that, Hunt averted his face swiftly, but not before she saw the sudden flash of his grin. "Never having tried it, I'll have to take your word on that. ~ Lisa Kleypas

We cannot afford the creeping paralysis that destroys the effective will of democracy - the paralysis carried by hate and rancor, between class and class, person and person, party and party, as plague is carried through the streets of a town. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

I had the patience to sit like a fool with these people, listening to them for four hours on end, and never daring say a word or knowing what to say. I would fall into a stupor and break out in perspiration again and again. Paralysis hung over me. But it was good and beneficial. When I returned home, I would put away my longing to embrace all of humanity for a while. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sleep paralysis is something that is actually very common. Many people have it, I've had it myself. And what happens is, when you're in that REM stage of sleep, your brain is very active. You're dreaming your most during that stage, you're mind, your eyes are moving, there's a lot going on. It's like fireworks going on in your brain. ~ Shelby Harris

Catch Either/Or Thinking

Anxious perfectionists will typically think "I need to perform flawlessly at all times," with their underlying assumption being "or else it will result in disaster." This is a common type of thinking trap termed either/or thinking. In this case, the either/or is this: Either there is flawless performance or complete and utter failure, and nothing in between.
Not only can this style of thinking make you feel crushed when you don't meet your own ideal standards, but it also often leads to perfectionism paralysis. Take, for example, an artist who sees his future career prospects as becoming either the next Picasso or a penniless flop; this person doesn't see other possible outcomes in between. You can see how this would give the artist a creative block.
For other folks, their hidden assumption may be slightly different: "Either I need to perform flawlessly at all times, or other people will reject me." When I look back at my clinical psychology training, I realize I had this belief at that time. At a semiconscious level, I thought that the only way to prevent getting booted out of the program was to score at the top of the class for every test or assignment.
Ultra-high standards often arise because a person is trying to hide imagined catastrophic flaws. In this scenario, people often think that if their flaws get revealed they'll be shunned, and so the only way to conceal their defects is by always excelling. When people who hav ~ Alice Boyes

Get out of your own way ... stop the paralysis by analysis ... decide what you want, create a simple plan, and get moving! ~ Steve Maraboli

Can you remember, Acte ... how much easier our belief in Nero made life for us in the old days? And can you remember the paralysis, the numbness that seized the whole world when Nero died? Didn't you feel as if the world had grown bare and colorless all of a sudden? Those people on the Palatine have tried to steal our Nero from us, from you and me. Isn't splendid to think that we can show them they haven't succeeded? They have smashed his statues into splinters, erased his name from all the inscriptions, they even replaced his head on that huge statue in Rome with the peasant head of old Vespasian. Isn't it fine to teach them that all that hasn't been of the slightest use? Granted that they have been successful for a few years. For a few years they have actually managed to banish all imagination from the world, all enthusiasm, extravagance, everything that makes life worth living. But now, with our Nero, all these things are back again. ~ Lion Feuchtwanger

Imagining the world without us is a recipe for despair and paralysis. I actually think it's more helpful to imagine the world before us, to look back at those unstable ecosystems of the Triassic and realize that were in another phase of unstable ecosystems. Knowing that, demystifying our situation as it were, makes it easier to think about solutions. We are not looking into the unknown. The only thing unknown about the situation is how we're going to fix it, and when. ~ Annalee Newitz

We can inspire others through witness so that one grows together in communicating. BUt the worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyses: 'I am talking with you in order to persuade you.' No. Each person dialogues, starting with his and her own identity. The church grows by attracting, not proselytizing. ~ Pope Francis

is the root cause of sorrow but desire is also the root cause of action. How do we counter the paralysis of action when there is no desire to motivate us? ~ Eric Weiner

Individuals and church bodies are often caught in the paralysis of analysis. We ~ Neil T. Anderson

I'm in my 30's, and I'm still struggling with defining myself. I'm working every day to take control of things that are out of my control, and not letting them bring me down or frustrate me, to the point of paralysis. ~ Lauren Iungerich

This paralysis is my greatest mercy.7 ~ Joni Eareckson Tada

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

Now that I am older, I am rounder and softer, which isn't always a bad thing. I remember fewer names so I try to focus on someone's eyes instead. Sex is better and I'm better at it. I don't miss the frustration of youth, the anticipation of love and pain, the paralysis of choices still ahead. The pressure of "What are you going to do?" makes everybody feel like they haven't done anything yet. Young people can remind us to take chances and be angry and stop our patterns. Old people can remind us to laugh more and get focused and make friends with our patterns. Young and old need to relax in the moment and live where they are. Be Here Now, ~ Amy Poehler

If they succeed in creating an inclusive structure in virtually any peaceful form, Iraq succeeds. If they fail, the U.S.-led coalition fails almost regardless of its military success and that of the new Iraqi forces, and Iraq will move towards division, paralysis, civil conflict and/or a new strongman. ~ Anthony H. Cordesman

OPTION PARALYSIS: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none. ~ Douglas Coupland

Civilization is paralysis. ~ Paul Gauguin

Having to be somewhere at a specific time and performing according to others' expectations can put pressure on them and create a paralysis of will. Because many people with AS are highly intelligent, they may have a hard time with teachers that are not up to par in their eyes, and bosses that don't run things as well as they could. If they don't quit because of any of the above, the know-it-all nature of an intelligent Aspie has been known to upset a few bosses here and there, causing termination of employment. As a result, many have gone through a series of jobs and have had unsatisfactory experiences which get more discouraging as the years pass. ~ Rudy Simone

How do I dance with the fear? Fear is not the enemy. Paralysis is the enemy. ~ Seth Godin

We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis. ~ Saul Alinsky

We took a hike in Malibu and shared ice cream. I stayed with him while he had walking pneumonia, heating soup and pouring him glass after glass of ginger ale and feeling his fevered forehead as he slept. He warned me of the life that was coming for me if I wasn't careful. Success was a scary thing for a young person, he said. I was twenty-four and he was thirty-three ("Jesus's age," he reminded me more than a few times). There was something tender about him, broken and gentle, and I could imagine that sex with him might be similar. I wouldn't have to pretend like I did with other guys. Maybe we would both cry. Maybe it would feel just as good as sharing a bed. On Valentine's Day, I put on lace underwear and begged him to please, finally, have sex with me. The litany of excuses he presented in response was comic in its tragedy: "I want to get to know you." "I don't have a condom." "I'm scared, because I just like you too much." He took an Ambien and fell asleep, arm over my side, and as I lay there, wide awake and itchy in my lingerie set, it occurred to me: this was humiliating, unsexy, and, worst sin of all, boring. This wasn't comfort. This was paralysis. This was distance passing for connection. I was being desexualized in slow motion, becoming a teddy bear with breasts. ~ Lena Dunham

Business leaders, labor unions, governors, mayors, congressmen and presidents have all complained about a lack of funding for years, but aside from a one-time cash infusion from the stimulus program, nothing much has changed. There is still no consensus on how to solve the problem or where to get the massive amounts of money needed to fix it, just another example of political paralysis in Washington. ~ Steve Kroft

Ambivalence and contradiction energize nearly every figure Michaelangelo carved, from the adolescent Madonna of the Stairs onward...But the four allegories atop the sarcophagi raise them to a symphonic crescendo. Each is a battleground of conflicting emotions and motives, in which will and paralysis battle for supremacy. ~ Eric Scigliano

As I sat up I turned my head to the side, but immediately straightened it again when I felt a sharp pain shoot through my neck. ~ Jennifer Starzec

Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West. ~ Walter Lippmann

Frankly, the people who whine the most about how hard their lives are have very rarely experienced much to be disappointed about. They seem to find solace in their most negative memories, using these as a blank check that abdicates them from all personal responsibility. "I am how I am because of the pain of my past. If you had experienced what I have experienced, you would understand my bitterness, my anger, my paralysis, my despair. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus

There is, to be sure, sometimes only a small difference between being alert to possible danger and allowing oneself to become terrified to the point of paralysis by seeming or imagined portents. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza's principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect that human life, with all that is contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair. - about Spinoza ~ Bertrand Russell

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. ~ Peter Joseph

Those who are skilled in archery bend their bow only when they are preparing to use it; when they do not require it, they allow it to remain unbent, for otherwise it would remain unserviceable when the time for using it arrived. So it is with man. If he were to devote himself unceasingly to a dull round of business, without breaking the monotony by cheerful amusements, he would fall imperceptibly into idiocy, or be struck by paralysis ~ Herodotus

It was a kind of paralysis you would get from tendonitis and I would last about five to ten minutes into the set and it would set in and I really couldn't play. ~ Leo Kottke

The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS. ~ Winston S. Churchill

I lay there for three whole days, totally paralyzed. My friends helped me to the bathroom and anywhere else I needed to move; but I have very vague impressions of those days because it was a time of complete darkness for me. Somebody told me later that what I had was a form of hysteria: my body and my mid fled into paralysis. There was nothing wrong with me organically, but somewhere inside I suffered a complete breakdown. ~ Diet Eman

Try to imagine a man setting out for the day without a single prejudice ... Inevitably he would be in a state of paralysis. He could not get up in the morning, or choose his necktie, or make his way to the office, ... or, to come right down to the essence of the thing, even maintain his identity. ~ Richard M. Weaver

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness ... Permanence means paralysis and death. Only, in movement, with all its pain, is life. ~ Jacob Burckhardt

They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death. ~ Anton Chekhov

I can't today," I said. "Maybe tomorrow?"
"Can't tomorrow," said Quinn. "I have a family thing. I guess we're logistically star-crossed, Juliet."
Sometimes Quinn calls me Juliet because of how we had to do that scene together, and whenever he does it's good for another bout of brain paralysis. So all I could manage back was "Oh."
"But I'll talk to you later, okay?" he said.
I didn't even try to say anything else but just nodded, wondering as I did what would happen next. The steps had largely emptied by then.
But before I could do much wondering, Quinn's lips were on mine.
And this time it definitely counted. ~ Jennifer Sturman

Somewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen, the average child begins to suffer from an atrophy, the paralysis of curiosity and the suspension of the power to observe. The trouble, I should judge, to lie with the schools. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Nothing is beautiful, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man - and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something "ugly." His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride - all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of "ugly." Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition - even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol - all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, "ugly." A hatred is aroused - but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness - it is the deepest hatred there is. It is be ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight Of The Idols

Are you in there? If not here, then where'd you go?
They say the living arena Earth and the dead are out,
But where are those trapped in-between high and low?
Where exactly are you wandering about?

Why would this happen to a human being?
I want to curse God and call him a fake,
But I am too desperate to risk ruining
The chance he may choose to help today. ~ Karl Kristian Flores

For the Orthodox tradition, then, Adam's original sin affects the human race in its entirety, and it has consequences both on the physical and the moral level: it, results not only in sickness and physical death, but in moral weakness and paralysis. But does it also imply an inherited guilt? Here Orthodoxy is more guarded. Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms, as if it were some physical 'taint' of guilt, transmitted through sexual intercourse. This picture, which normally passes for the Augustinian view, is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The doctrine of original sin means rather that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men's suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider. It is here, in the solidarity of the human race, that we find an explanation for the apparent unjustness of the doctrine of original sin. Why, we ask, should the entire human race suffer because of Adam's fall? Why should all be punished because of one man's sin? The answer is that human beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, are interdependent and coinherent. No man is an island. We ~ Kallistos Ware

Part of what kept him standing in the restive group of men awaiting authorization to enter the airport was a kind of paralysis that resulted from Sylvanshine's reflecting on the logistics of getting to the Peoria 047 REC - the issue of whether the REC sent a van for transfers or whether Sylvanshine would have to take a cab from the little airport had not been conclusively resolved - and then how to arrive and check in and where to store his three bags while he checked in and filled out his arrival and Post-code payroll and withholding forms and orientational materials then somehow get directions and proceed to the apartment that Systems had rented for him at government rates and get there in time to find someplace to eat that was either in walking distance or would require getting another cab - except the telephone in the alleged apartment wasn't connected yet and he considered the prospects of being able to hail a cab from outside an apartment complex were at best iffy, and if he told the original cab he'd taken to the apartment to wait for him, there would be difficulties because how exactly would he reassure the cabbie that he really was coming right back out after dropping his bags and doing a quick spot check of the apartment's condition and suitability instead of it being a ruse designed to defraud the driver of his fare, Sylvanshine ducking out the back of the Angler's Cove apartment complex or even conceivably barricading himself in the apartment and not responding to ~ David Foster Wallace

As the new year began, [Patricia Highsmith] felt completely paralysed, incapable of reading or picking up the phone. 'I can feel my grip loosening on my self,' she wrote. 'It is like strength failing in the hand that holds me above an abyss.' She wished there was a more awful-sounding word for what she was feeling than simply 'depression'. She wanted to die, she said, but then realised that the best course of action would be to endure the wretchedness until it passed. Her wish was, 'Not to die, but not to exist, simply, until this is over'. ~ Andrew Wilson

I became entirely given over to extreme dread. The fear was so powerful that it seemed to make my personality completely evaporate ... 'Whitley' ceased to exist. What was left was a body and a state of raw fear so great that it swept about me like a thick, suffocating curtain, turning paralysis into a condition that seemed close to death ... I died and a wild animal appeared in my place. ~ Whitley Strieber

I suppose I should have laughed even more uproariously at what happened next; as a newly anointed convert to the Old Comedy, I should have bounded to my feet, cried aloud, "Hallelujah!" and sung the praises of He Who Created Us, He Who Formed Us from the Mud, the One and Only Comic Almighty, OUR SOVEREIGN REDEEMER ARISTOPHANES, but for reasons all too profane (total mental paralysis) I could only gape at the sight of nothing less than the highly entertaining Aristophanic erection that Pipik had produced ... ~ Philip Roth

Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, "Done is better than perfect." I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Analysis paralysis occurs when you overthink and underwork. ~ Orrin Woodward

She's a bike. A tart. A slut. She'll be buried in a Y-shaped coffin. A baggage. A hussy. She's the good time that was had by all. A wanton floozy." She looked closely at him, but he still seemed to be stuck on cricket. "A nymphomaniac."
The use of a technical term shook him from his paralysis. Realisation flooded his face and a silent "Oh!" filled his mouth. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

Lost is not a place. It's a soul in paralysis... waiting to feel moved. ~ Alfa H

The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost! ~ A.B. Simpson

Depression isn't the almighty ruler of your destiny. Even its familiar traits - grief, anger, despair - you find that you can use in other ways. I can create with them in my writing and my life, mix them up with excitement and pleasure. I can name that terrible, numbing paralysis and know it will pass. ~ Margo Jefferson

When a branch of mathematics ceases to interest any but the specialists, it is very near its death, or at any rate dangerously close to a paralysis, from which it can be rescued only by being plunged back into the vivifying source of the science. ~ Andre Weil

Morals are an acquirement, like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis, no man is born with them. ~ Mark Twain

Life too near paralyses art. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the cities of the European Franks, women roam about exposing not only their faces, but also their brightly shining hair (after their necks, their most attractive feature), their arms, their beautiful throats, and even, if what Ive heard is true, a portion of their gorgeous legs; as a result, the men of those cities walk about with great difficulty, embarrassed and in extreme pain, because, you see, their front sides are always erect and this fact naturally leads to the paralysis of their society. Undoubtedly, this is why each day the Frank infidel surrenders another fortress to us Ottomans. ~ Orhan Pamuk

All the scientists who are working on solving the problem of curing paralysis say that it won't do you any good if you don't keep your body in shape. ~ Christopher Reeve

When the traumatic event is the result of an attack by a family member on whom victims depend for economic and other forms of security (as occurs in victims of intrafamilial abuse) victims are prone to respond to assaults with increased dependence and with paralysis in their decision-making processes. Thus, some aspects of how people respond to trauma are quite predictable - but individual, situational and social factors play a major role in the shaping the symptomatology. ~ Marion F. Solomon

Wolfe nodded. "That's a point, certainly, but it's not inexplicable. Looking at his face, which appears rigid in paralysis, I doubt if he'll explain for us, not now at least. I offer alternatives: some incident may have alarmed him and precipitated action, or he may not have known that if Miss Eads died before June thirtieth the Softdown stock, the bulk of her fortune, would go to others. I think the latter more likely, since he was offered, through Mr. Irby, a cash settlement of one hundred thousand dollars and wouldn't even discuss it. ~ Rex Stout

To be sure, depression, anxiety, and prolonged stress can cause specific physical symptoms, but these symptoms are not limitless, nor are they actually unexplained. When doctors invoke these labels for symptoms as diverse as vomiting, paralysis, and sever, unending pain, it is the concept of the somatoform disorders--hysteria dressed up in modern garb-- that allows them to do so. ~ Maya Dusenbery

When she fucked up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And that could have happened to me, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it in spite of having lost her. ~ John Green

ALS is, in my opinion, the cruelest disease. At least with cancer, there's a glimmer of hope. You can come up with a game plan and you can fight. ALS is terminal. In all cases. Nobody has ever beaten ALS. I don't say this to be callous or melodramatic; indeed, I saw its effects up close. Worst of all, it affects only the body, so as people become progressively and inevitably more paralyzed, they are keenly aware of everything that is happening to them. Think about that: You are 100 percent aware of your own paralysis. The ~ Bryan Bishop

Before I knew it, I was once again being whisked down the hallways at the new hospital into an even bigger room, one that, unbeknownst to me, would be my home for what would feel like a long, long time. ~ Jennifer Starzec

You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action. ~ William James

The point is simple: talking about the problems of the world without talking about some accessible solutions is the way to paralysis rather than progress. ~ Abhijit V. Banerjee

Blossom

In April
the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there's fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood - we are more
than our hunger and yet
we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered
into the body of another. ~ Mary Oliver

Living in the land of, "What if ... ?" leads to emotional paralysis. It sets the stage for doom and gloom thinking. It prevents us from experiencing the beauty of the present moment. Happiness resides in the here and now. It can not thrive in a prison of the past or in the worry of future outcomes that may or may not, happen. We need to trust that we have the divine wisdom within ourselves and through the support of others, to climb the treacherous terrain this human existence brings. It is worth the struggle. The view from the top is extraordinary. Onward and upward! ~ Jaeda DeWalt

There are many ways to be crippled, I've learned over the years, many forms of paralysis. ~ Christina Baker Kline

It was like being a prisoner on death row who survives month after month and becomes accustomed to the life, while he registers with an objective eye the horror of the new arrivals: registers it with the same numbness tha he brings to the murders and deaths themselves. All survivor literature talks about this numbness, in which life's functions are reduced to minimum, behavior becomes completely selfish and indifferent to others, and gassing and burning are everyday occurences. In the rare accounts by perpetrators , too, the gas chambers and ovens become ordinary scenary, the perpetrators reduced to their few functions and exhibiting a mental paralysis and indifference, a dullness that makes them seem drugged or drunk. ~ Bernhard Schlink

Above all, political discussion is stunned by a delusion about science. This term has come to mean an institutional enterprise rather than a personal activity, the solving of puzzles rather than the unpredictably creative activity of individual people. Science is now used to label a spectral production agency which turns out better knowledge just as medicine produces better health. The damage done by this misunderstanding about the nature of knowledge is even more fundamental than the damage done to the conceptions of health, education, or mobility by their identification with institutional outputs. False expectations
of better health corrupt society, but they do so in only one particular sense. They foster a declining concern with healthful environments, healthy life styles, and competence in the personal care of one's neighbor. Deceptions about health are circumstantial. The institutionalization of knowledge leads to a more general and degrading delusion. It makes people
dependent on having their knowledge produced for them. It leads to a paralysis of the moral and political imagination. ~ Ivan Illich

That most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning tehy have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for this is 'analysis paralysis.' ... That other people can often see things about you that you yourself canno see, even if those people are stupid ... That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. ~ David Foster Wallace

He checks the horns. They're small: not truncated like Hellboy's, but wee, budding, trainer-bra efforts. Definitely not the thing that killed Dazza. In demon terms, he's looking at a midget or a waen. He recalls the ten second rule, and though they only clashed for a moment, it was more than enough. He understands. He has the measure. There is no paralysis by fear. There will be no subconscious surrender to superior mental force and aggression.
In short, he can take this cunt. ~ Christopher Brookmyre

Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers. ~ Erich Fromm

Theta programming, Phillips said, "involved the surgical implantation of sodium/lithium powered high frequency receiver/transducers coupled to a multi-range discharge capacitor that , when signaled by remote control would electronically stimulate designated parts of the brain to signal the victim to respond according to his or her hypnotic program.
"These "Delgado" experiments were only partially successful," Phillips said, "with a high mortality and paralysis rate. However, the technical mind control equipment evolution has advanced to levels well beyond the grasp of most people. Non-implanted, non-programmed victims will hold the largest majority since, in the 1990's breakthroughs were made which allow mind control without either implant or trauma base".
The new Theta programming," Phillips said, "operates by computer driven satellite directed energy. Now, anybody can become a target of the new technology. ~ Walter H Bowart

Maya had one of those sudden "pow" moments sneak up on her, the ones all parents experience, when you are simply overwhelmed by your love for your child, when you are awestruck and you can feel something rising inside of you and you just want to hold onto it and yet, at the same time, that caring, that fear of losing this person, scares you into near paralysis. How, you wonder, will you ever relax again, knowing how unsafe the world is? Lily ~ Harlan Coben

Maud Shade was eighty when a sudden hush
Fell on her life. We saw the angry flush
And torsion of paralysis assail
Her noble cheek. We moved her to Pinedale,
Famed for its sanitarium. There she'd sit
In the glassed sun and watch the fly that lit
Upon her dress and then upon her wrist.
Her mind kept fading in the growing mist.
She still could speak. She paused, and groped, and found
What seemed at first a serviceable sound,
But from adjacent cells impostors took
The place of words she needed, and her look
Spelt imploration as she fought in vain
To reason with the monsters in her brain. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

By midmorning eight of the horses stood tied and the other eight were wilder than deer, scattering along the fence and bunching and running in a rising sea of dust as the day warmed, coming to reckon slowly with the remorselessness of this rendering of their fluid and collective selves into that condition of separate and helpless paralysis which seemed to be among them like a creeping plague. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Outwardly one's life may suffer every kind of limitation, from bodily paralysis to miserable surroundings, but inwardly it is free in meditation to reach out to a sphere of light, beauty, truth, love, and power. ~ Paul Brunton

Well, you have the public not wanting any new spending, you have the Republicans not wanting any new taxes, you have the Democrats not wanting any new spending cuts, you have the markets not wanting any new borrowing, and you have the economists wanting all of the above. And that leads to paralysis. ~ Michael Bloomberg

Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly. ~ Ayn Rand

I woke up one morning, and I couldn't move my arm. It was the oddest thing, the paralysis. I called up a friend and said, "I think I've had a stroke," and, in fact, that's what my doctor told me. It wasn't terrible, but it was enough to scare me. Now I think about death all the time. I have my death arm, my right arm. ~ Doris Lessing

Confidence means non-paralysis, a willingness to act, and act decisively, to start new things and cut failing ventures off. ~ Tom Peters

[Daughter], I want to release you. IF you hate me or want to reject me, I understand. If you curse me, then want to atone, I also understand. I expect to be your home plate: kicked, scuffed, but always returned to. I expect to be the earth from which you spring.
But if I release you too much, what will you have to fight against?
You need my acceptance, but you may need my resistance more. I promise to stand firm while you come and go. I promise unwavering live while you experiment with hate. Hate is energy too -- sometimes brighter-burning energy than love. Hate is often the precondition for freedom.
No matter how I try to disappear, I fear I cast too big a shadow. I would erase that shadow if I could. but if I erased it, how would you know your own shadow? And with no shadow, how would you ever fly?
I want to release you from the fears that bound me, yet I know you can only release yourself. I stand here wearing my catcher's padding. I pray you won't need me to catch you if you fall. But I'm here waiting anyway.
Freedom is full of fear. But fear isn't the worst thing we face. Paralysis is. ~ Erica Jong

We can deal with our cultural and environmental crises only after we deal with our human crises of trauma, denial, and emotional paralysis. This will require that most difficult of all human endeavors, facing our own despair. This involves waking from our trance of denial, facing our own pain and sorrow, accepting the world as it is, adapting, and living more intentionally. ~ Mary Pipher

In the Middle Ages, the sin of sloth had two forms," he said. "One was paralysis, the inability to do anything - what we would see as lazy. But the other side was something called acedia - running about frantically. The sense that, 'There's no real place I'm going, but by God, I'm making great time getting there. ~ Brigid Schulte

We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into the paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers ... one saying to the other: you don't know what you are talking about! The second one says: what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know? ~ Richard Feynman

But one thing is certain-in the case of nutrition and health, the science can be confusing and can lead to "paralysis by analysis" (a state in which you take no action because you're not sure what to do). ~ Melissa Hartwig