c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
If there is a moral to this part of the story, and I distrust morals in the same way that I distrust beginnings, it is simply this: know that with which you deal.
— Neil Gaiman, The Doll's House
Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
Morals are like social classes, there are poor and rich people.
— Eyden I., Woman's Book: Only For Men
Sometimes we punish ourselves the most.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!
— Leo Tolstoy, The First Step: An Essay on the Morals of Diet, to Which Are Added Two Stories
I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners."Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Sometimes we punish our selves the most.
— William Shakespeare
But if the Bible is not everywhere literally true, which parts are divinely inspired and which are merely fallible and human? As soon as we admit that there are scriptural mistakes (or concessions to the ignorance of the times), then how can the Bible be an inerrant guide to ethics and morals? Might sects and individuals now accept as authentic the parts of the Bible they like, and reject those that are inconvenient or burdensome?
— Carl Sagan
I’m just saying that once that have an excuse, people will do anything. They do what they are told, and they take their money and they think it’s all okay because it’s just their job, while their real self is what happens after work, when they’re bouncing a baby on the knee, or writing poems about snowflakes or whatever.
— Paul Murray, The Mark and the Void
There is but one rule of conduct for a man: to do the right thing. The cost may be dear in money, in friends, in influence, in labor, in a prolonged and painful sacrifice; but the cost not to do right is far more far more dear: you pay in the integrity of your manhood, in honor, in truth, in character. You forfeit your soul's content and for a timely gain, you barter the infinities.
— Lucius H. Bugbee
individuals are concerned notwith the moral issue of realizing these standards, but withthe amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression thatthese standards are being realized. Our activity, then, islargely concerned with moral matters, but as performers wedo not have a moral concern in these moral matters. Asperformers we are merchants of morality. Our day is givenover to intimate contact with the goods we display and ourminds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but itmay well be that the more attention we give to these goods,th e more d is ta n t we feel from them and from those who arebelieving enough to buy them. To use a different imagery,the very obligation and profitablility of appearing always ina steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forcesus to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways ofthe stage.
— Erving Goffman
If anthropological data suggests something short of the ideal, that is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge and universal desire to evade it. The first one we owe to our creation. The second we owe to our fall.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Anyway, there were thousands of Kantoreks, all of them convinced that they were acting for the best, in a way that was the most comfortable for themselves.But as far as we are concerned, that is the very root of their moral bankruptcy.
— Erich Maria Remarque
A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.
— Stephen Sondheim, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1981-2011, With Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes, and Miscellany
Modernization, socialization, and progression doesn’t alter nor permit discarding the morals and the laws one should abide themselves too.
— Avra Amar Filion, The Ellison Effect
In some stories, it's easy. The moral of "The Three Bears," for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house." The moral of "Snow White" is "Never eat apples." The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
— Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win, and their participants know it.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
I value ethical standards, of course. But in a culture like ours – which devalues or dismisses the reality and power of the inner life – ethics too often becomes an external code of conduct, an objective set of rules we are told to follow, a moral exoskeleton we put on hoping to prop ourselves up. The problem with exoskeletons is simple: we can slip them off as easily as we can don them.
— Parker J. Palmer
The generation that bought the most shoes and crippled the moral footing
— Dean Cavanagh
Everybody wants to be part of a success story, But no one want to be the writer of this story.
— innocent eneojo felix
Napoleon would always be extremely fastidious when it came to other people's morals, although his own were frequently questionable.
— Leslie Carroll, Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds
Now I was nothing but a shade of grey - my moral compass ambiguous.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Onyx
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same 	 —“troublous storms that tossThe private state, and render life unsweet.”These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts.
— Edmund Burke
Flies purify the air, and plays--the morals.
— Anton Chekhov
What I should do and what I want to do are two opposing forces. I have no idea which way I am going to end up.
— Ava Zavora, Forever Elude Me
We do the right things at the wrong time because we think we are doing the right thing and the wrong things at the wrong times simply because we want to.
— Zack Somuyiwa
What is worse? Taking the life of a person who wants to live or taking death from a person who wants to die.
— Jo Nesbø, The Snowman
But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears', for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house". The moral of 'Snow White' is "Never eat apples". The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
— Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window
Dishonesty is like a boomerang. Just when you think all is well, it hits you in the back of your head.
— Pavan Choudary, How A Good Person Can Really Win
What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free—or moral—personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one’s fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.
— R.M. Maciver
What conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox so worthy of being born in our time
—  and what will become of virtue when one has to get rich at all cost?The ancient political thinkers forever spoke of morals and of virtue
The morals of societies are defined by how they treat a strange woman.
— M.F. Moonzajer
In insisting that personal habit and political action be one and the same, absolutist moralizing limits the possibilities of both.
— Heather Paxson, The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America
Eagle rises to the top of the precipice with its wings; man, to the top of the honour, with his morals!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
First people lose their hair, then their vices, then their motivation. Then a toupee brings it all flowing back.
— Bauvard, Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic
Often,our immediate reaction to a sudden crisis help us save ourselves. Our response to gradual crises that creep up upon us, on the other hand,may be so adaptive as to ultimately lead to self-destruction.
— Amish Tripathi, The Oath of the Vayuputras
Life is short. Life is uncertain. But we know that we have today. And we have each other. I believe that for each of us, there is a place on the frontlines.
— Eric Greitens, The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL
There’s not really such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, there’s just like…humanity. And it gets broken sometimes.
— Isaac Marion, The New Hunger
Till it does come, you know, we women never mean to have anybody. It is a thing of course among us, that every man is refused, till he offers.
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion. “ The Prince, XVIII, 5
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
True politics cannot take a single step without first paying homage to morals, and while politics itself is a difficult art, its combination with morals is no art at all; for morals cuts the Gordian knot which politics cannot solve as soon as the two are in conflict.
— Immanuel Kant, Basic Writings
One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
— René Sterne
Was there ever a great true love? Anyone who became the object of my obsession and not simply my affections?...I could not let myself become that unmindful. Isn't that what love is - losing your mind? You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally - that's the worst, I think, deficient morals.
— Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning
My friends, I like them; my morals, I like them more!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
We middles see the world in shades of grey rather than in the clear blacks and whites of committed animal activists and their equally vociferous opponents
— Hal Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals
The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady.
— William Wilberforce, Real Christianity
I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.
— Jim Butcher, Cold Days
Raffe arches his brow at me. ‘You should be with a nice human boy. One who takes your orders and puts up with your demands. Someone who dedicates his life to keeping you safe and well fed. Someone who can make you happy. Someone you can be proud of.’ He waves his hand at the Watchers. ‘There’s nobody like that in this lot.’ I glare at him. ‘I’ll be sure to pass him by you first before I’ – settle for – ‘choose him.’ ‘You do that. I’ll let him know what’s expected of him.’ ‘Assuming he survives your interrogation,’ says Howler. ‘Big assumption,’ says Cyclone. ‘I’d like to be there to watch,’ says Hawk. ‘Should be interesting.
— Susan Ee, End of Days
And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.
— D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
— C. Northcote Parkinson
Maggie scoffed. "Denial will not save you when Cupid's arrow find its mark.""If i see Cupid anywhere in the vicinity, I'm ripping his chubby little arms off." Vanda yanked the door open to Romatech.
— Kerrelyn Sparks, Forbidden Nights with a Vampire
...and he just sat back and stared at the tube, almost interested in what was happening, trying to find the ability to believe in that lie so he could believe the one within.
— Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream
For nothing is so hard to hear as that which is half known, and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying to one's self what one fears is true, and one never resents so bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right to resent.
— Susan Glaspell
If you been feeling or acting crazy, think about it perhaps you are.
— Victoria Addino
The thing about denial is that it doesn't feel like denial when it's going on.
— Georgina Kleege, Sight Unseen
Dreams of innocence are just that
—  they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.
Go ahead, look at the message. You know you want to.”“No, it doesn’t matter.”“Then why do you keep staring at it like it’s the last piece of food on earth?
— Victoria Michaels, Trust in Advertising
If there’s one thing I learned in Alanon, it’s that you got to face the music because it just grows louder when you ignore it.
— Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise
Why do you fight it?" I whisper."Because this is wrong. I lost my head for a moment. I'd blame the alcohol but that would be a lie.
— N. Michaels, Emerald Eyes
With respect to the acceptance of dissociative disorders, as with most issues in life, it is counterproductive to spend time trying to convince people of things they don't want to know.
— Warwick Middleton
She had locked something away,something deep inside.A truth that she had once known,but chose to forget.And she couldn't break free.So I decided to search for it.I went deep into the recess of her mindand found that secret place.And I broke in..
— Christopher J. Nolan, Inception: The Shooting Script
People with a style of denial and blaming are definitely on the list of unsafe people to avoid. 10.
— Henry Cloud, Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't
You told me, if something is not used it is meaningless, and took my temperature, which I had thought to save for a more difficult day. In the mirror, every night, the same face, a bit more threadbare, a dress worn too long. The moon was out in the cold, along with the restless, dissatisfied wind that seemed to change the location of the sycamores. I expected reproaches because I had mentioned the word love, but you only accused me of stealing your pencil, and sadness disappeared with sense. You made a ceremony out of holding your head in your hands because, you said, it could not be contained in itself.
— Rosmarie Waldrop
How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
For all this talk about us being a nation at war with child abuse, and for all the media hype about witch-hunts and false allegations — and don't ever let anyone use the word witch-hunts about this; there were no witches — the fact remains that in 1994, it is extremely difficult to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse. And the external forces of denial are almost overwhelming. If a case as verified as mine meets with denial, I dread to think about the experience of people who don't have the kind of corroboration that I do. And I really worry that we're getting close to a point where it's going to be impossible to prosecute child molesters, because we don't believe children, and now we don't believe adults. (Cheit "Paper presented at the Mississippi Statewide Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect" Jackson, April 29 1994.)
— Ross Cheit
It was that culture of denial that allowed my abuse to take place to start with. Did you know that it wasn't until 1984 that the Department of Health added the category of "sexual abuse" to its list of harms that can befall children? When I was being raped and made pregnant at the age of 11, it wasn't just my own dissociative process that told me that it wasn't happening; it was society too. "We don't have a category for that. Computer says no."͏
— Carolyn Spring, Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices
To be alone with myself in the space of silence is horrifying, for I know with the utmost certainty that in that space I will hear the very things that I constantly use the clamor to drown out. And so the question becomes, how long can I keep up all the noise?
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial.
— John Bradshaw, Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem
I find few more satisfying exhibitions of power and control than deliberately creating desire - only to capriciously deny it...
— Rika, The Joy of Denial
The capacity of sex offenders for denial, rationalization, and minimization of their deviant behavior is confirmed by Salter's (1995) finding that the population she has interviewed seemed rather proud of their ability to manuipulate their victims into remaining attached and loyal to them. Salter notes that frequently child abusers target their victims by calculating their probably vulnerability relative to other children, recognizing that those already being abused by others are better prey than the never-molested children.
— Harvey L. Schwartz, Dialogues With Forgotten Voices: Relational Perspectives On Child Abuse Trauma And The Treatment Of Severe Dissociative Disorders
Lies that cause survivors to deny or recent abuse memories and experiences ⸱ The alters who are designated to live in the "real world,” going to school or college and holding jobs while interacting with others in adulthood, are trained, usually at home by parents, to disbelieve any memories that might come up.⸱͏ Children are taught to believe that they got the idea that they were abused from something they read or saw on television or from someone else’s experience or from a therapist. (This is a basic argument of those who attempt to discredit these experiences in the public eye and among professionals.)⸱ Children are also taught that if they experience ﬂashbacks of awful abuses, those must be dreams or imagination or signs that they are crazy. Nothing bad really happened to them
— Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.
— Friedrich Neitzsche
How was it that we were all so blind?
— Joan Coleman, Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder
Have you ever been lying in bed, darkness all around, when suddenly there's an odd sound? You know you weren't dreaming; you know you heard it for sure and you know it's not commonplace. You know it's an intrusive sound, a sound that doesn't belong there, and even though it makes no sense, even though it might be an intruder or God knows what, you roll over and forget it...but have you ever wondered what you'd find if you didn't?
— Greg F. Gifune, The Bleeding Season
How do I validate him in the face of such profound personal loss and the outrageous denial by the medical community?
— Mary Dimmock, Severe ME : Notes for Carers
Many survivors struggle to believe the abuse happened. They don’t want to believe it. It’s too painful to think about. They don’t want to accuse family members or face the terrible loss involved in realizing “a loved one” hurt them
—  they don’t want to rock the boat.
Like Pascal, Nietzsche, and Simone Weil, Kierkegaard is one of those writers whom it is very difficult to estimate justly. When one reads them for the first time, one is bowled over by their originality . . . and by the sharpness of their insights. . . . But with successive readings one’s doubts grow, one begins to react against their overemphasis on one aspect of the truth at the expense of all the others, and one’s first enthusiasm may all too easily turn to an equally exaggerated aversion. Of all such writers, one might say that one cannot imagine them as children. The more we read them, the more we become aware that something has gone badly wrong with their affective life; . . . it is not only impossible to imagine one of them as a happy husband or wife, it is impossible to imagine their having a single intimate friend to whom they could open their hearts.
— W.H. Auden
It looks like freedom but it feels like death, it's something in between I guess. It's closing time.
— Leonard Cohen
It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to.
— Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
It is soon to be springThe Christmas toys barely played with I have a glass soldier whose head can turn The epaulettes interchangeable Soon flowers will bloom Lawrence from the garden shed will give us  each a cup of seeds I am to wait I said
— George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
She had been expecting me and was ready. She gave a long slow soundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercy didn't prevent its hurling at me the largest finest coldest 'Never!' I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to take full in the face. I took it and was aware that with the hard blow the tears had come into my eyes. So for a while we sat and looked at each other; after which I slowly rose. I was wondering if some day she would accept me; but this was not what I brought out. I said as I smoothed my hat: 'I know what to think then. It's nothing!
— Henry James, The Figure in the Carpet
They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened Exodus (1960) screenplay
— Dalton Trumbo
His hands come down on my face. “There are a lot of things I want to do to you, Ella, but I promise you, killing you isn’t one of them.” His mouth slants over mine, his tongue delving deep, and I want to resist. I do. I try. But his lips are warm when mine are cold, and the taste of him, passion and fire, and yes, demand, burns through me, tempting me, taking me. And for just a moment, I can’t seem to help myself. I want to be possessed by this man. I want to be consumed, so I kiss him back. I kiss him like it’s my last kiss, because maybe it is.
— Lisa Renee Jones
Sometimes buried memories of abuse emerge spontaneously. A triggering event or catalyst starts the memories flowing. The survivor then experiences the memories as a barrage of images about the abuse and related details. Memories that are retrieved in this manner are relatively easy to understand and believe because the person remembering is so flooded with coherent, consistent information.
— Renee Fredrickson, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on.
— Elizabeth Howell, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-Of-Knowing: Psychoanalysis and the Experience of Uncertainty
What most people call spontaneous recall usually involves memories that have been denied, not repressed. The survivor has always been aware that the sexual abuse happened, but he or she has studiously avoided thinking about it. A catalyst sets the memory process in motion, but the essential factor in the memory surfacing is the readiness of the survivor to deal with the reality of abuse.
— Renee Fredrickson, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
Oftentimes what we do to minimize a problem maximizes it! Embrace truth helps us to let go!
— Evinda Lepins, Back to Single
To heal from child sexual abuse you must believe that you were a victim, that the abuse really did take place. This is often difficult for survivors. When you’ve spent your life denying the reality of your abuse, when you don’t want it to be true, or when your family repeatedly calls you crazy or a liar, it can be hard to remain firm in the knowledge that you were abused.
— Ellen Bass, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
All people express a fondness for truth and sincerity, yet many people prefer to live with their illusions and delusions. A person’s sincere desire to believe only what is true oftentimes does not trump their ingrained resistance to truths that fail to coincide with their deeply held desires. People reject truth because it undercuts what they wish was true and despise or discredit anyone whom offers a different version of truth than they are prepared to accept.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
In his recent guest editorial, Richard McNally voices skepticism about the National Vietnam Veteran’s Readjustment Study (NVVRS) data reporting that over one-half of those who served in the Vietnam War have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or subclinical PTSD. Dr McNally is particularly skeptical because only 15% of soldiers served in combat units (1). He writes, “the mystery behind the discrepancy in numbers of those with the disease and of those in combat remains unsolved today” (4, p 815). He talks about bizarre facts and implies many, if not most, cases of PTSD are malingered or iatrogenic. Dr McNally ignores the obvious reality that when people are deployed to a war zone, exposure to trauma is not limited to members of combat units (2,3). At the Operational Trauma and Stress Support Centre of the Canadian Forces in Ottawa, we have assessed over 100 Canadian soldiers, many of whom have never been in combat units, who have experienced a range of horrific traumas and threats in places like Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. We must inform Dr McNally that, in real world practice, even cooks and clerks are affected when faced with death, genocide, ethnic cleansing, bombs, landmines, snipers, and suicide bombers ...One theory suggests that there is a conscious decision on the part of some individuals to deny trauma and its impact. Another suggests that some individuals may use dissociation or repression to block from consciousness what is quite obvious to those who listen to real-life patients." Cameron, C., & Heber, A. (2006). Re: Troubles in Traumatology, and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory/Reply: Troubles in Traumatology and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory. Canadian journal of psychiatry, 51(6), 402.
— Colin   Cameron
In 2006, there is no army of recovered memory therapists, and Dr McNally’s assumptions about patients with PTSD and those working in this field are troubling. Owing to past debates, those working in the PTSD field are perhaps more knowledgeable than others about malingered, factitious, and iatrogenic variants.Why, then, does Dr McNally attack PTSD as a valid diagnosis, demean those working in the field, and suggest that sufferers are mostly malingered or iatrogenic, while giving little or no consideration is given to such variants of other psychiatric conditions? Perhaps the trauma field has been “so often embroiled in serious controversy” (4, p 816) for the same reason Dr McNally and others have trouble imagining the traumatization of a Vietnam War cook or clerk. One theory suggests that there is a conscious decision on the part of some individuals to deny trauma and its impact. Another suggests that some individuals may use dissociation or repression to block from consciousness what is quite obvious to those who listen to real-life patients."Cameron, C., & Heber, A. (2006). Re: Troubles in Traumatology, and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory/Reply: Troubles in Traumatology and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory. Canadian journal of psychiatry, 51(6), 402.
— Colin   Cameron
Yolanda Gampel utilizes an expanded concept of the "uncanny" to outline the results of violence: Those who experience such traumas are faced with an unbelievable and unreal reality that is incompatible with anything they knew previously. As a result, they can no longer fully believe what they see with their own eyes; they have difficulty distinguishing between the unreal reality they have survived and the fears that spring from their own imagination.
— Nicole Waller, Contradictory Violence: Revolution and Subversion in the Caribbean
It was early in my career, and I had been seeing Mary, a shy, lonely, and physically collapsed young woman, for about three months in weekly psychotherapy, dealing with the ravages of her terrible history of early abuse. One day I opened the door to my waiting room and saw her standing there provocatively, dressed in a miniskirt, her hair dyed flaming red, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a snarl on her face. “You must be Dr. van der Kolk,” she said. “My name is Jane, and I came to warn you not to believe any the lies that Mary has been telling you. Can I come in and tell you about her?” I was stunned but fortunately kept myself from confronting “Jane” and instead heard her out. Over the course of our session I met not only Jane but also a hurt little girl and an angry male adolescent. That was the beginning of a long and productive treatment.
— Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Denial is a very effective human trick. People often tell how a situation was "unbearable," though, clearly, they have borne it. Lived to tell, so to speak.
— Lorna Jane Cook, Outside Wonderland
I want to thank everyone out there who has chosen not to drive after they have had something to drink.
— Audrey Kishline, Face to Face
In my experience, it is entirely possible to watch something happen and not to see it at all.
— Anna Funder, All That I Am
My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like it was no big deal.
— Erin Merryn, Stolen Innocence: Triumphing Over a Childhood Broken by Abuse: A Memoir
Maybe we can stay in denial together forever?' I suggest....'No, I mean, maybe there's a town called Denial, and we can literally move there and forget about college.
— Emily Henry, The Love That Split the World
Denial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone.
— Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
(Sometimes it seems that haters are just fans who are in denial.)
— Steve Maraboli
A refusal on the part of psychiatrists and therapists to validate the horrors of their patients' tortured past implies a refusal to take seriously the unconscious psychological mechanisms that individuals need to use to protect themselves from the unspeakable. Such a denial is, however, no longer ethical, for it is in the human capacity to dissociate that lies part of the secret of both childhood abuse and the horrors of the Nazi genocide, both forms of human violence so often carried out by 'respectable' men and women.
— Felicity De Zulueta, From Pain to Violence: The Traumatic Roots of Destructiveness
After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.
— Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
While I’d like to believe in the possibility of a love that doesn’t involve denial, I haven’t seen an example yet.
— Phoebe Rusch
I had to feel sorry for Bubba's wife. In AA we called it denial. We take the asp to our breast and smile at the alarm we see in the eyes of others.
— James Lee Burke
She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.
— Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth
If I believed a giant Platypus was coming to liberate humanity and save us all, it would still make more sense than the climate denial people do......
— Steve Merrick
Okay, well...how's that water feeling, then?' 'Excuse me?' 'The Nile warm this time of the year?
— J.R. Ward, Lover Unbound
It's important to avoid mirrors if one is unprepared to accept their daily news, and I think, in something as insignificantly devastating as appearance, denial is more socially constructive than despondency. Not that there's anything especially wrong with me--just the usual.
— Rivka Galchen, American Innovations: Stories
Why do we procrastinate leaving? The denial phase is a humbling one. It takes a while to come to terms with our miserable luck. Rowley puts it this way: 'Fires only happen to other people.' We have a tendency to believe that everything is OK because, well, it almost always has been before.
— Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
One sure way I can avoid facing myself is by refusing to look into the face of God.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough, Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone: Simple Truths for Profound Living
Since when has outright denial of truth become a Nigerian factor?
— Sunday Adelaja
Not everything needed to be processed. Some things needed to be ignored and slept on.
— Max Wirestone, The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss
Continuous denial of rational arguments represents a contempt of common sense.
— Eraldo Banovac
If you always want to have whatever you want any time you want it with no delays, and denial of self, you would end up ruining your life.
— Sunday Adelaja
He slumped down into the pen, and the puppies immediately leapt on him. "Perhaps I'll see you later tonight.""If you're lucky," Celaena purred, and walked away. She smiled to herself as they strode through the castle.Eventully Nehemia turned to her. "Do you like him?"Celaena made a face. "Of course not. Why would I?"You converse easily. It seems as if you have...a connection.""A connection?" Celaena choked on the word. "I just enjoy teasing him.""It's not a crime if you consider him handsome. I'll admit I judged him wrong; I thought him to be a pompous, selfish idiot, but he's not so bad.""He's a Havilliard.""My mother was the daughter of a chief who sought to overthrow my grandfather.""We're both silly. It's nothing.""He seems to take great interest in you."Celaena's head whipped around, her eyes full of long-forgotten fury that made her belly ache and twist. "I would sooner cut out my own heart than love a Havilliard," she snarled.They completed their walk in silence, and when they parted ways, Celaena quickly wished Nehemia a pleasant evening before striding to her part of the castle.
— Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass
Avoidance is paying forward that which I would be much wiser to pay off.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Denial has rented a room in my head and frequently stomps around slamming doors.
— Sarah Noffke, Awoken
Denial couldn't be maintained.
— Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
If you want to know the real character of man, intentionally and timely give him the test of 3d’s; delay, denial and disappointment
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
In very rare cases, people will be self-satisfied and content within themselves. More often than not the very same people who choose to live alone are simply in denial after a painful experience or the failure in an intimate relationship.
— Nityananda Das, Divine Union
Vanishing cream for the mind, English writer Jeremiah Creedon calls it.It's beholding the mote in your brother's eye, says the Bible, while disregarding the beam in your own.Denial is refusing to listen to the voice that awakens you in the night and whispers, "You know, you really are an incredible jerk and you ought to do something abou
— Lionel Fisher, Celebrating Time Alone: Stories Of Splendid Solitude
We cannot live side by side with obviously distressed people unless they are to blame and we are innocent. Nothing inside them or the way they live can be allowed to disturb our lives.
— David  Brandon, Tao of Survival: Spirituality in Social Care and Counselling
It is not what you don’t know that hurts you; it is what you do know, which is not the truth that does your spirit the most harm.
— Shannon L. Alder
If you look at your average contemporary person, the potential for tragedy is immense. The people and things we love and value are strewn across the globe. Any number of health disasters can befall you or them.The truth is depressing. We are going to die, most likely after illness; all our friends will likewise die; we are tiny insignificant dots on a tiny planet. Perhaps with the advent of broad intelligence and foresight comes the need for confabulation and self-deception to keep depression and its consequent lethargy at bay. There needs to be a basic denial of our finitude and insignificance in the larger scene. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah just to get out of bed in the morning.
— William Hirstein, Brain Fiction: Self-Deception and the Riddle of Confabulation: Self-Deception and the Riddle of the Confabulation
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear so don't look and they'll stay farther away than you expect they would.
— Brian Spellman
At the beach, fifty years later, the old man understands finally that much of what he disavowed in himself before recognizing its irretrievable value, most of the heartache he caused himself and those who chose to love him, came out of that repudiation of his true self.Such is the power of denial, the old man now realizes: a comforting ally in our struggles for survival, a fierce foe in our quest for ourselves. Denial finds us when we feel most alone, and only alone can we banish this demon that bars the long way home.
— Lionel Fisher
I had this dream, see, where I saw the whole world melt. I was standing on La Cienega and from there I could see the whole world and it was melting and it was just so strong and realistic like. And so I thought, Well, if this dream comes true, how can I stop it, you know? How can I change things, you know? So I thought if I, like pierced my ear or something, like alter my physical image, dye my hair, the world wouldn't melt. So I dyed my hair and this pink lasts. I like it. It lasts. I don't feel like the world is gonna melt anymore.
— Bret Easton Ellis
Denial is the lid on our emotional pressure cooker: the longer we leave it on, the more pressure we build up. Sooner or later, that pressure is bound to pop the lid, and we have an emotional crisis.
— Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
You can hold on to the smallest doubt and take comfort in it, stay in denial and go on with your carefree life, until one day you're finally cornered by a truth that can no longer be ignored.
— Glenn Beck, The Overton Window
Apparently, denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
— Z.B. Heller, The Chronicles of Moxie
I will go to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, but I shall go not as a member of the MacHeath clan — no, I shall go as a free runner. I reject you. I deny you, I refuse and repudiate you as my clan.
— Kathryn Lasky, Watch Wolf
Kicking the can down the road implies that we’re accepted the galling reality that whatever it is that we’ve avoiding, it’s something that’s not going to go away; at least on its own.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
We've been working out of our tin can for half a decade. Nobody suggests moving into a brick-and-mortar office; nobody wants to peer through glass windows, in a building with a foundation, and admit that the insomnia emergency is now a permanent condition.
— Karen Russell, Sleep Donation
It was clear that the house was run on a certain system, of either great pomposity or great denial - it was too early for her to make up her mind about which one it was.
— Noorilhuda, The Governess
He hadn't "abused" alcohol, but had spent almost four years sitting in a chair drinking jug wine around the clock and looking, variously, at the wall, the window blind, and the TV screen.
— Gilbert Sorrentino, The Abyss of Human Illusion
All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.
— Pete Townshend, Who I Am
Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we?
— Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
— James Patterson, Nevermore
Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open fridge, staring at it longingly. The power of denial.
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! You didn't want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
The macabre who lived through the war have a story they loved to tell about the soldiers of the Foreign Legion giving a ball in the expanses around Verdun and dancing with the corpses. Alabama's continued brewing of the poisoned filter for a semiconscious banquet table, her insistence on the magic and glamor of life when she was already feeling its pulse like the throbbing of an amputated leg, had something of the same sinister quality.
— Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz
Both incest and the Holocaust have been subject to furious denial by perpetrators and other individuals and by highly organised groups such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the Committee for Historical Review. Incest and the Holocaust are vulnerable to this kind of concerted denial because of their unfathomability, the unjustifiability, and the threat they pose to the politics of patriarchy and anti-Semitism respectively. Over and over, survivors of the Holocaust attest that they were warned of what was happening in Poland but could not believe it at the time, could not believe it later as it was happening to them, and still to this day cannot believe what they, at the same time, know to have occurred. For Holocaust deniers this is a felicitous twist, for their arguments denying the Holocaust and therefore the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state capitalize on the discrepancies of faded memory. In the case of incest, although post-traumatic stress disorder, amnesia, and dissociation represent some of the mind's strategies for comprehending the incomprehensible, incest deniers have taken advantage of inconsistencies to discredit survivor testimony.
— Janet Walker, Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust
Everyone has a breaking point. Deny it, and you'll blind yourself to know when you've reached yours.
— Dorothy McFalls, The Huntress
Yet, Step 2 and AA spirituality is about nothing if it isn’t about faith in God. Many good reasons exist why AA makes a distinction between religion and spirituality, but a denial of God is not one of them. – p. 127
— Ray A., Practice These Principles: Living the Spiritual Disciplines and Virtues in 12-Step Recovery to Achieve Spiritual Growth, Character Development, and Emotional Sobriety
YOU CAN RUN, BUT CAN NOT HIDE"The statement, 'after giving it much thought', hardly becomes credible when one spends less that 24 hours in that endeavor. In fact, it is really giving something very little thought at all. In that case it becomes an issue of denial. And also, those who proclaim Christ as Lord and God as Abba, who run to Them to hide from the very issues in their lives that They desire to deal with and remove, always amaze me. We as Christians should run to God with the hope that He will reveal to us that which He intently desires to deliver us from".[Just Keeping It Real]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal
Denial exists when three beliefs intersect:1. It cannot happen. 2. It cannot happen to you.3. It cannot happen to you now.
— Johnnie Dent Jr.
Deciding denial was the better part of valor, CK pretended nothing was out of the ordinary.
— Judy Teel, Instructing an Heiress
Deep in the meadow, hidden far awayA cloak of leaves, a moonbeam rayForget your woes and let your troubles layAnd when it's morning again, they'll wash awayHere it's safe, here it's warmHere the daisies guard you from every harmHere your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them trueHere is the place where I love you.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
I am a creature of the Fey Prepare to give your soul away My spell is passion and it is art My song can bind a human heart And if you chance to know my face My hold shall be your last embrace. I shall be thy lover... I am unlike a mortal lass From dreams of longing I have passed I came upon your lonely cries Revealed beauty to your eyes So shun the world that you have known And spend your nights within my own. I shall be thy lover... You shall be known by other men For your great works of voice and pen Yet inspiration has a cost For with me know your soul is lost I'll take your passion and your skill I'll take your young life quicker still. I shall be thy lover... Through the kisses that I give I draw from you that I will live And though you think this weakness grand The touch of death your lover's hand Your will to live has come too late Come to my arms and love this fate  I shall be thy lover... I am a creature of the Fey Prepare to give your soul away My spell is passion and it is art My song can bind a human heart And if you chance to know my face My hold shall be your last embrace.
— Heather Alexander
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back."-Plato
— Jessica Clare, Stranded with a Billionaire