Repelled Quotes

Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own. ~ John Le Carre

It is a blessing to have pretty people around me. I like people who are sparky, positive. Evil, dark people are repelled by me: 'Oooh no! Too much sunlight.' ~ Geri Halliwell

You're still holding my arm."
"I know."
So this was it, she thought, and struggled to keep her voice. "Should I ask you to let go?"
"I wouldn't bother."
She drew a deep, steadying breath. "All right. What do you want, Roman?"
"To get this out of the way, for both of us."
He rose. Her step backward was instinctive, and much more surprising to her than to him. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Neither do I." With his free hand, he gathered up her hair. It was soft, as he'd known it would be. Thick and full and so soft that his fingers dived in and were lost. "But I'd rather regret something I did than something I didn't do."
"I'd rather not regret at all."
"Too late." He heard her suck in her breath as he yanked her against him. "One way or the other, we'll both have plenty to regret."
He was deliberately rough. He knew how to be gentle, though he rarely put the knowledge into practice. With her, he could have been. Perhaps because he knew that, he shoved aside any desire for tenderness. He wanted to frighten her, to make certain that when he let her go she would run, run away from him, because he wanted so badly for her to run to him.
Buried deep in his mind was the hope that he could make her afraid enough, repelled enough, to send him packing. If she did, she would be safe from him, and he from her. He thought he could accomplish it quickly. Then, suddenly, it was impossible to think at all.
She tasted like heav ~ Nora Roberts

At a small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction- it fascinated rather than repelled. She sat very upright. Round her neck was a collar of very large pearls which, improbable though it seemed, were real. Her hands were covered with rings. Her sable coat was pushed back on her shoulders. A very small and expensive black toque was hideously unbecoming to the yellow, toad-like face beneath it. ~ Agatha Christie

At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled. ~ Agatha Christie

She was herself unconscious of that faint hint of offishness which hung about her and repelled advances, an arrogance that stirred in people a peculiar irritation. They noticed her, admired her clothes, but that was all, for the self-sufficient uninterested manner adopted instinctively as a protective measure for her acute sensitiveness, in her child days, still clung to her. ~ Nella Larsen

And yet he felt repelled by the teaching machines. For the entire Public School was geared to a task which went contrary to his grain: the school was there not to inform or educate, but to mold, and along severely limited lines. It was the link to their inherited culture, and it peddled that culture, in its entirety, to the young. It bent its pupils to it; perpetuation of the culture was the goal, and any special quirks in the children which might lead them in another direction had to be ironed out. ~ Philip K. Dick

Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits that would put his voice on the line. 'Grace, about bloody time,' he'd say, and make it sound like an endearment.

But she couldn't call Vaughn, because she'd left him. Which was a novelty, until Grace remembered that he'd have left her eventually if she hadn't done it first. She was never the one. She was never even the one before the one. She was the girl who seemed like a good idea at the time, but ultimately was just a phase that people went through.

That was the way it had always been. Friends and lovers came and went because there was something about her which repelled them, and she didn't have a clue what it was. It was a mystery that she couldn't solve on her own, and there wasn't a single person in the world who could help . . . ~ Sarra Manning

Every aspect of human activity he [Pierre] saw as bound up with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he decided to do, he found himself repelled by evil and falsehood, with every avenue of activity blocked off. And meanwhile he had to live on and find things to do. It was too horrible to be ground down by life's insoluble problems, so he latched on to any old distraction that came along, just to get them out of his mind. He tried all kinds of society, drank a lot, bought pictures, built things and, most of all, he read. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Natalie was one of the confident skaters weaving in and out of bodies, natural movement that succeeded because there wasn't too much thought put into it. Relaxed. It reminded him of wild particles pulled and repelled into a rapidly curving orbit. Pattern within apparent chaos. ~ Karl Drinkwater

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs Dent and Mrs Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Real life issues are not mathematical equations. We're not calculators crunching numbers. We're humans sorting through complex, multi-layered issues, and we're doing so while enduring the (sometimes profound) personal effects of our conclusions. While we want to be reasonable, we are inexorably pulled in the direction of our oldest mental habits and by our deepest life-impacting needs. We're repelled by those ideas which can jeopardize our comfort, safety, and happiness. We can try to be fair, but all the while we are fighting against our needs and fears. There are things we don't want to be true (or false). Our lives are built on certain beliefs which, if disproved, could wreck us. These are the truths that we 'can't handle'. ~ Daniel Ionson

Snapping shut his mobile, Dalgliesh reflected that murder, a unique crime for which no reparation is ever possible, imposes it own compulsions as well as it's conventions. He doubted whether Macklefield [the murder victim's Will attorney] would have interrupted his country weekend for a less sensational crime. As a young officer he, too, had been touched, if unwillingly and temporarily, by the power of murder to attract even while it appalled and repelled. He had watched how people involved as innocent bystanders, provided they were unburdened by grief or suspicion, were engrossed by homicide, drawn inexorably to the place where the crime had occurred in fascinated disbelief. The crowd and the media who served them had not yet congregated outside the wrought-iron gates of the Manor. But they would come, and he doubted whether Chandler-Powell's [owner of the Manor where the murder was committed] private security team would be able to do more than inconvenience them. ~ P.D. James

Here's the crux of the struggle: I want to experience your vulnerability but I don't want to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me. I'm drawn to your vulnerability but repelled by mine. As ~ Brene Brown

attracted by the body and repelled by the spirit, ~ Kahlil Gibran

All my life I have been intensely repelled by the idea of 'making an effort'. I hate this idea today as much as I did as a child. I don't know why I hate it so much; I just do. ~ Raymond Smullyan

And it makes no difference how important the provocation may be, but into what kind of soul it penetrates. Similarly with fire; it does not matter how great is the flame, but what it falls upon. For solid timbers have repelled a very great fire; conversely, dry and easily inflammable stuff nourishes the slightest spark into a conflagration. ~ Seneca.

The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative. ~ Charles Bukowski

Reading Mrs Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë after Jane Eyre is a curious experience. The subject of the biography is recognisably the same person who wrote the novel, but the effect of the two books is utterly different. The biography is indeed depressing and painful reading. It captures better, I believe, than any any
subsequent biography the introverted and puritan pessimist side of Charlotte Brontë, and conveys the real dreariness of the world of privation, critical discouragement and limited opportunity that
so often made her complain in her letters that she felt marked out for suffering.
Jane Eyre, on the other hand, is exhilarating reading, partly because the reader, far from simply pitying the heroine, is struck by her resilience, and partly because the novel achieves such an imaginative transmutation of the drab. Unlike that of Jane Austen's Fanny Price or Dickens's Arthur Clennam or John Harmon, Jane
Eyre's response to suffering is never less than energetic. The reader is torn between exasperation at the way she mistakes her resentments and prejudices for fair moral judgements, and admiration at the way she fights back. Matthew Arnold, seeking 'sweetness and light' was repelled by the 'hunger, rebellion and rage' that he
identified as the keynotes of the novel. One can see why, and yet feel that these have a more positive effect than his phrase allows. The heroine is trying to hold on to her sense of self in a world that gives it little en ~ Ian Gregor

His hands were magnets - shifting polarities - drawn and repelled to the unknown parts of another man's body. ~ Cory Ingram

Emptiness. He saw no one, only a large chamber with pewlike rows of seats and, at the far end, a casket surrounded by flowers. Off in a small sideroom an old-fashioned reed pump organ and a few wooden folding chairs. The mortuary smelled of dust and flowers, a sweet, stale mixture that repelled him. Think of all the Iowans, the thought, who've embraced eternity in this listless room. ~ Philip K. Dick

I found my eyes repelled by hers as if they were the like poles of a pair of magnets. ~ Alan Bradley

The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it hath bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. ~ John Chrysostom

What interests me, ... is why people are so repelled when, after all, everyone started life attached. In a sense, the twins have never been born because they are still tied by an umbilical cord. Relationships between women - daughters, mothers, friends - are one of my strong interests. ~ Judith Perelman Rossner

I am not so repelled by Communism: an element of Communism in politics is necessary and inevitable. In any involved society there must be a feeling that something must be done about poverty - which is the basis of communism. ~ Rebecca West

Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

Our negative thoughts actually and literally cause the blessings to be repelled. If you can picture what you want, and believe that it is on its way, by God's law it must come. Hold on to the belief, and in time you will realize it. ~ Leslie Householder

A little of him leaned to the muscularity of the homosexual. He would never practice, of course. The physical buttock act repelled him. Though sometimes he experienced a jolting warmth when Tom, one of his friends, bear-hugged him. Or gave him a bristled kiss on a bristled cheek. Certainly there was masculine voltage there. But it was safe. It was the rose border to the act. And like a voyeur, he could peer into the tropical garden from the safety of the rose border. He could experience male pillage of his sex mentally. Yes, it was safe. He would never step from the rose to the man-eating orchid. English rain and misty sun, yes. The hints, yes. But he would never take his machete into the jungle. ~ David Pinner

She just eyed them coolly, as if they were nothing to her, as if their nothingness surprised and slightly repelled her. ~ Anne Ursu

At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man's example would be my life's work. ~ Eric Clapton

I suspect that Jane Austen's practice of denying herself the aid of figurative language which, as much as any of her other habits of expression, repelled Charlotte Brontë, and has alienated other readers, conscious with a dissatisfaction with her style that they have not cared to analyse. ~ Mary Lascelles

I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that, what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to be. ~ Norman Mailer

I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity. ~ I. F. Stone

When we find delight in another person, we've actually found something joyful inside ourselves that involves a shift in our awareness, a shift in our perception, because the same person is not necessarily attractive to other people.In relationship, whenever we're drawn to someone or repelled by someone, they're both mirrors of the self. We're attracted to people in whom we find traits that we want or desire in our own selves. And we are repelled by people in whom we find traits that we're denying in ourselves. So relationship is a true mirror of where we are in our evolution in consciousness. ~ Deepak Chopra

We actually respond to one another's energy more than to people's exact words or actions. In any situation, your taking or giving of energy is what you are actually doing. Everybody can feel, suffer, or enjoy the difference, but few can exactly say what it is that is happening. Why do I feel drawn or repelled? What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros! It always draws, creates, and connects things. ~ Richard Rohr

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told - in the English phrase - to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

What kind of holiness does the Western Church manifest today? To answer this, we need only ask: Are the prostitutes and tax collectors of our day attracted to us or repelled by us? ~ Gregory A. Boyd

Let our government be like that of the solar system. Let the general government be like the sun and the states the planets, repelled yet attracted, and the whole moving regularly and harmoniously in several orbits. ~ John Dickinson

When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was travelling in a parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great-grandmother of the eldest pyramid; and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had ever dared to see. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

All of Robert Caro's biographies are exceptional, in part because of Caro's fundamental ambivalence about power. He sees its necessity and use for getting things done, even as he is often repelled by watching power at close range. His masterpiece on Robert Moses, The Power Broker, describes the evolution of Moses from idealist to pragmatist as he became one of the most powerful figures in the 20th century. ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer

Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. ~ George Orwell

I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh. ~ Rebecca West

He was repelled by the pettiness that reduced life to mere existence and that turned men into half-men. He wanted to lay his life on a balance, the other side of which was weighted with death. He wanted to make his every action, every day, yes, every hour and minute worthy of being measured against the ultimate, which is death. ~ Milan Kundera

Whom are we attracted to? People who have the same traits as we have, but more so. We want to be in their company because subconsciously we feel that by doing so we, too, might manifest more of those traits as well. By the same token we are repelled by people who reflect back to us traits that we deny in our own selves. So if you are having a strong negative reaction to someone, you can be sure that they possess some traits in common with you, traits that you are not willing to embrace. If you were willing to accept those qualities, then they wouldn't upset you. ~ Deepak Chopra

The most interesting characters are those you're drawn to, then repelled by, and then come to understand. All that tension - I live that. But I don't plan the tension. It's just something that should happen. ~ Rachel Weisz

It rested flat on a surface. A cushion or a mattress. The toes curled up. Then another foot appeared, suspended in air until a leg extended. He started backward, repelled by whatever could twist and turn so freakishly. ~ Barry Brennessel

Then came the second Amsterdam discovery, although the principle was known elsewhere. Bank deposits ... did not need to be left idly in the bank. They could be lent. The bank then got interest. The borrower then had a deposit that he could spend. But the original deposit still stood to the credit of the original depositor. That too could be spent. Money, spendable money, had been created. Let no one rub his or her eyes. It's still being done-every day. The creation of money by a bank is as simple as this, so simple, I've often said, that the mind is slightly repelled. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

What was new to our ears these days, and thrilling to hear, was the steadiness and justice of those who spoke, the abscence of panic and exaggeration the quiet insistence on legal processes as opposed to trial by suspicion. McCarthyism so repelled the English that they take special care not to be infected by it. ~ Martha Gellhorn

We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there. This need not have been so. We could easily imagine people who did not have this relation to such pictures. Who, for example, would be repelled by photographs, because a face without color and even perhaps a face in reduced proportions struck them as inhuman. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

No, the Duke of Wakefield would never be a darling of the feminine members of society. Something about him was so opposite to female that he almost repelled the softer sex. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

When Stephen talked about stalking chamois his whole expression changed. The features became more aquiline, the nose sharpened, the chin narrowed, and his eyes-steel blue - somehow took on the cold brilliance of a northern sky. I am being very frank about my husband. He attracted me at those times, and he repelled me too. This man, I told myself when I first met him, is a perfectionist. And he has no compassion. Gratified like all women who find themselves sought after and desired - a mutual love for Sibelius had been our common ground at our first encounter - after a few weeks in his company I shut my eyes to further judgment, because being with him gave me pleasure. It flattered my self-esteem. The perfectionist, admired by other women, now sought me. Marriage was in every sense a coup. It was only afterwards that I knew myself deceived. ("The Chamois") ~ Daphne Du Maurier

I think the proper attitude toward fighting sports is one of ambivalence. You can be drawn to them, but you should also be repelled by them. ~ Jonathan Gottschall

Sometimes rebuffing him was a difficult, but this evening Margo whispered something about the prohibition on sex during the Yom Kippur holiday--as if they were a family of rabbis!--and he gave in and turned on his side. Rejected and repelled, he would fall into his nighttime sleep; in just a few moments she would hear that sound she hated, the heavy breathing that would rise to his nostrils and turn into a saw-like din, and Margo would wonder whether to shake him or let him be. If she awaken him, there was a chance he might start probing all over again; if she let him snore, he would disrupt her thinking, and she would not be able to give herself over to the brilliant idea she had come up with while staring in the mirror. ~ Anat Talshir

From the standpoint of logic, a child is rather horribly perfect. A baby may be even more perfect, but so alien to an adult that only superficial standards of comparison apply. The thought processes of an infant are completely unimaginable. But babies think, even before birth. In the womb they move and sleep, not entirely through instinct. We are conditioned to react rather peculiarly to the idea that a nearly-viable embryo may think. We are surprised, shocked into laughter, and repelled. Nothing human is alien.

But a baby is not human. An embryo is far less human. ~ C.L. Moore

People were entranced by flame and repelled by human suffering, and wasn't that some kind of design flaw? ~ Joe Hill

We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain. ~ Edward Dahlberg

The Learned, who strive to ascend into Heaven by means of learning, appear to Children like dead horses, when repelled by the celestial spheres. ~ William Blake

During the twenty-one year rule of Amir Abdul Rahman (1880-1901), one of Afghanistan's more pro-British rulers, only one school was built in Kabul, and that was a madrassa. Condemned to play a passive part in an imperial Great Game, Afghanistan missed out on the indirect benefits of colonial rule, the creation of an educated class such as would supply the basic infrastructure of the postcolonial states of India, Pakistan and Egypt.

Afghanistan's resolute backwardness in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was appealing to Western romantics. Kipling, who was repelled by the educated Bengali, commended the Pashtun tribesmen- the traditional rulers of Afghanistan and also a majority among Afghans- for their courage, love of freedom, and sense of honour. These cliches about the Afghans, which would be amplified in our own time by American journalists and politicians, also had some effect on Muslims themselves. ~ Pankaj Mishra

She spoke about it with such emphasis (somewhat affected) that I could see at once that I was hearing the manifesto of her generation. Every generation has its own set of passions, loves, and interests, which it professes with a certain tenacity, to differentiate it from older generations and to confirm itself in its uniqueness. Submitting to a generation mentality (to this pride of the herd) has always repelled me. After Miss Broz had developed her provocative argument (I've now heard it at least fifty times from people her age) that all mankind is divided into those who give hitchhikers lifts (human people who love adventure) and those who don't (inhuman people who fear life), I jokingly called her a "dogmatist of the hitch." She answered sharply that she was neither dogmatist nor revisionist nor sectarian nor deviationist, that those were all words of ours, that we had invented them, that they belonged to us, and that they were completely alien to them. ~ Milan Kundera

We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it. ~ Richard Foster

I began this lifelong lesson. If human beings eat a thing, and if I am not so violently repelled by my own upbringing that I cannot speak, and if it is visually clean within reason, and if I am not allergic to the offering, I will sit at the table and with all the gusto I can manufacture I will join in the feast.

P.S. I call this a lifelong lesson for I have not fully learned it and I am often put to the test... ~ Maya Angelou

Harry uttered an inarticulate yell of rage: In that instant, he cared not whether he lived or died. Pushing himself to his feet again, he staggered blindly toward Snape, the man he now hated as much as he hated Voldemort himself
"Sectum - !"
Snape flicked his wand and the curse was repelled yet again; but Harry was mere feet away now and he could see Snape's face clearly at last: He was no longer sneering or jeering; the blazing flames showed a face full of rage. Mustering all his powers of concentration, Harry thought, Levi
"No, Potter!" [ ... ] Snape's pale face, illuminated by the flaming cabin, was suffused with hatred just as it had been before he had cursed Dumbledore.
"You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them - I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so ... no! ~ J.K. Rowling

Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for. ~ Christopher Hitchens

When I then turned toward the scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. ~ Jimmy Carter

Science can't explain why two specific people are magnetically drawn to each other instead of repelled. Only love can. ~ Colleen Oakley

The phobic has no other object than the abject. But that word, "fear"- a fluid haze an elusive clamminess- no sooner has it cropped up than it shades off like a mirage and permeates all words of the language with nonexistence, with a hallucinatory, ghostly glimmer. Thus, fear having been bracketed, discourse will seem tenable only if it ceaselessly confront that otherness, a burden both repellent and repelled, a deep well of memory that is unapproachable and intimate: the abject. ~ Julia Kristeva

Some people are motivated by fear - fear of poverty, fear of losing their partner's love, or fear of gaining weight, for instance. Fear is an ineffective motivator because it results in poor decision making and low creativity. Other people sense your fears and insecurities, and they are repelled, as opposed to being inspired to help you. There is no power or magic in fear, but there's unlimited power and magic in fear's opposite: love and joy. With success, then, attitude ~ Doreen Virtue

His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just
a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his
discourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither
disgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on
the contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to
more orderly, contented, hopeful lives. ~ Arthur Quiller-Couch

Georgette was a hip queer. She (he) didn't try to disguise or conceal it with marriage and mans talk, satisfying her homosexuality with the keeping of a secret scrapbook of pictures of favorite male actors or athletes or by supervising activities of young boys or visiting turkish baths or mens locker rooms, leering sidely while seeking protection behind a carefully guarded guise of virility (fearing that moment at a cocktail party or in a bar when this front may start crumbling from alcohol and be completely disintegrated with an attempted kiss or groping of an attractive young man and being repelled with a punch and - rotten fairy - followed with hysteria and incoherent apologies and excuses and running from the room) but, took a pride in being a homosexual by feeling intellectually and esthetically superior to those (especially women) who weren't gay (look at all the great artists who were fairies!); and with the wearing of womens panties, lipstick, eye makeup (this including occasionally gold and silver - stardust - on the lids),long marcelled hair, manicured and polished fingernails, the wearing of womens clothes complete with a padded bra, high heels and wig (one of her biggest thrills was going to BOP CITY dressed as a tall stately blond ( she was 6'4 in heels) in the company of a negro (he was a big beautiful black bastard and when he floated in all the cats in the place jumped and the squares bugged. We were at crazy pad before going and were blasting like crazy, and ~ Hubert Selby Jr.

The Heiligenstadt Testament"

Oh! ye who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you! My heart and mind were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, aggravated by unskillful physicians, deluded from year to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a lasting affliction (the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove impracticable).

Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing! - and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men, - a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

Then Faust descends into the realm of the Mothers - the spiritual world; he succeeds in bringing up with him the spirit of Helena. But he is not ripe enough to unite this spirit with his own soul. Hence the scene where desire stirs in Faust, where he wishes to embrace the archetype of Helena with sensual passion. He is therefore thrust back. That is the fate of everyone who seeks to approach the Spiritual World harboring personal, egotistical feelings; he is repelled like Faust. He must first mature; must learn the real relationship between the three members of man's nature: the immortal spirit which goes on from life to life, from incarnation to incarnation; the body, commencing and ending its existence between birth and death, and the soul between the two of them. Body, soul and spirit - how they unite, how they mutually react - that is the lesson Faust must learn. The archetype of Helena, the immortal, the eternal, that passes from life to life, from one incarnation to the other, Faust has already tried to find, but was then immature. Now he is to become ripe so that he is worthy to truly penetrate into the spirit realm. For this purpose he had to learn that this immortality comes to man only when he can be re-embodied repeatedly within physical existence - have new lives extending from birth to death. Therefore must Goethe show how the soul lives between spirit and body, how the soul is placed between the immortal spirit and the body which exists only between birt ~ Rudolf Steiner

However much he denied it, he always hoped that they'd be kinder to each other one day, like people who were grateful to survive something instead of people still fighting to survive. Wherever that small seed of hope resided, it no longer exists, and what they were to each other is what they will always be. Tethered somehow. Dawn together by a force that should've kept them close but repelled them instead. ~ Jung Yun

I've been simultaneously drawn to and repelled from Hollywood for years. ~ Jess Walter

Sweet Goddess! she thought suddenly. I have never even spoken to him. I know nothing about the man, nothing at all.
What if he tries to get me into some sordid little room and force himself on me, like an animal? How will I fight him off? All alone, not able to cry for help?
No, it will not be like that, it could not be. I would have known if he were that kind of man, and felt repelled. He could not sing and write such beautiful verses, and look so fine if he were not the man I want him to be. Yes, when we meet, it will be as it is in his songs. He will obey, do exactly what I tell him and no more. Oh, I have hoped so long for this. Goddess of Love, let it be beautiful. ~ Robert Shea

He was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns - of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin), the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Many, although injured themselves, supported relatives who were worse off. Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression whatsoever. ~ John Hersey

A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, CRIMESTOP. CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. ~ George Orwell

Ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe. ~ Herbert Marcuse

For a long time, I felt instinctively irritated - sometimes repelled - by scientific friends' automatic use of the word 'mechanism' for automatic bodily processes. A machine was man-made; it was not a sentient being; a man was not a machine. ~ A.S. Byatt

Chemical cheating will be decisively routed when fans become properly repelled by it. They will recoil in disgust when they understand that athletes who are chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued. ~ George F. Will

The Calvinistic system involves a positive truth: the election to eternal life by free grace, and the negative inference: the reprobation to eternal death by arbitrary justice. The former is the strength, the latter is the weakness of the system. The former is practically accepted by all true believers; the latter always has been, and always will be, repelled by the great majority of Christians. ~ Philip Schaff

Children of course are monstrously conventional, repelled at once by whatever is off-center, out of whack, unmanageable. And being an only child I had been coddled a good deal (also scolded). I was awkward, precocious, timid, full of my private rituals and aversions. ~ Alice Munro

Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that he is likely to be cocksure of himself, particularly when dealing with an older woman, and there is no telling how swelled up with self-importance he may become. Besides, Kazu felt a physical repugnance for youth. A woman is more keenly aware than a man of the shocking disharmony between a young man's spiritual and physical qualities, and Kazu had never met a young man who wore his youth well. She was moreover repelled by the sleekness of a young man's skin. ~ Yukio Mishima

I had to wonder, though, if there's something about a murderer, particularly a confident one, that gives him a certain charisma or charm that I, in particular, am susceptible to.
I mean, there's a reason more women are attracted to Dracula than repelled by him.
I made a resolution to myself. From now on, I'd assume that every man I was attracted to was a murderer until proven otherwise.
Perhaps it wasn't the most promising strategy for starting a relationship, but I might live longer. ~ Lee Goldberg

the NetMind 'knocked' ... ageless and childish. Today she caught the tumble of roses it threw into her mind in its version of hello, and laughed ... its roses were followed by torrent of images Faith could barely process ... She showed the NetMind a hand, palm-out, their by-now familiar signal for 'slow-down' ... Worried, she sent it an image of a woman colored in darkness ... The image she'd sent was returned to her, but with the DarkMind scrubbed out ... An image of a thousand tears overlaid the snapshot of the PsyNet.
The PsyNet was dying ... She sent the NetMind an image of arms outstretched, an offer of help.
The response was of a globe, but a globe colored in the shades of the Net - white stars against a background of black velvet. Around that globe was a shimmering shield that repelled her hands.
The Net wasn't ready for help.
But there were cracks in the shield. She touched a finger to one crack, and knew that was Judd. The one next to it, Walker. And not far from them, Sascha. So many fine, fine cracks. ~ Nalini Singh

I was as repelled by the French as I was attracted by their country. ~ Margaret Anderson

The moment when you are most repelled by a child's behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child. ~ Ann Voskamp

I was repelled by the sleazy reality of the totalitarian countries: politicians were shameless. There were corruption, pollution, shoddy goods, long lines, and suicide everywhere, but the leaders kept boasting about their great achievements and bright tomorrows. I saw all this and tried to show it in my pictures as simply and straightforwardly as I could. All I wanted to do was record how all these poor people adapted to lies and suffering, how they got used to it, how, in fact they were bound to miss it when it was over. ~ Antonin Kratochvil

unless an evil thought is born in a twisted mind, human nature is repelled by crime. However, civilization has given us needs, vices and artificial appetites which sometimes cause us to repress our good instincts and lead us to wrongdoing. ~ Alexandre Dumas

It is a moral achievement on the part of the doctor who ought not to let himself be repelled by sickness and corruption. ~ Carl Jung

God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word. ~ W. H. Auden

For, as I said a little way back, perfect souls are in no way repelled by trials, but rather desire them and pray for them and love them. They are like soldiers: the more wars there are, the better they are pleased, because they hope to emerge from them with the greater riches. ~ Teresa Of Avila

Cats are possessed of a shy, retiring nature, cajoling, haughty, and capricious, difficult to fathom. They reveal themselves only to certain favored individuals, and are repelled by the faintest suggestion of insult or even by the most trifling deception. ~ Pierre Loti

They jogged along in silence, Jem playing with the thong of the whip, and Mary aware of his hands beside her. She glanced down at them out of the tail of her eye, and she saw they were long and slim; they had the same strength, the same grace, as his brother's. These attracted her; the others repelled her. She realised for the first time that aversion and attraction ran side by side; that the boundary line was thin between them. The thought was an unpleasant one, and she shrank from it. Supposing this had been Joss beside her ten, twenty years ago? She shuttered the comparison at the back of her mind, fearing the picture it conjured. She knew now why she hated her uncle. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

She threw her arms around him and kissed his bristly face. He kissed her back, inhibited somewhat by being unable to stop grinning. "I must stink," he said between kisses. "I haven't changed my clothes for a week." "You smell like a cheese factory," she said. "I love it." She pulled him into her bedroom and started to take his clothes off. "I'll take a quick shower," he said. "No," she said. She pushed him back on the bed. "I'm in too much of a hurry." Her longing for him was frantic. And the truth was that she relished the strong smell. It should have repelled her, but it had the opposite effect. It was him, the man she had thought might be dead, and he was filling her nostrils and her lungs. She could have wept with joy. ~ Ken Follett

At the same time, we both remember we have an audience. Kiaran looks rather repelled by the whole exchange, and Aithinne has her head slightly tilted in unabashed interest.

Aithinne says to Kiaran, "That's lovely. Isn't that lovely? You didn't greet me like that when I saved you."

"I was unconscious," Kiaran reminds her.

"Oh. That's right. ~ Elizabeth May

Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts - voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast. ~ Frank Herbert

It had formerly been my endeavor to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. ~ Charlotte Bronte