Discomfort Quotes

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“When attention turns into indifference or love fades away into a grey zone of discomfort, only imagination can bring us back to the limelight of life. ("Is that all there is?")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“A thousand times today I've started to open my mouth, started to squeak out, "Can you tell me...? But then I'd look into the front seat, at my mother's silent shaking, my father's grim profile, the mournful bags under his eyes, and all the questions I might ask seemed abusive. Assault and battery, a question mark used like a club. My parents are old and fragile. I'd have to heartless to want to hurt them.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, Double Identity

“No matter how sweet is smells, if you know it will give you a discomfort later, don't even attempt to taste it. Discipline yourself to stay out of sin!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“The sudden silence is horrifying, and it seems to catch my mother off guard. A tiny whimper escapes her, the sound amplified in the stillness. Surely, my father hears her now; surely he and I can't go on pretending she isn't crying.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, Double Identity

“Discomfort begets discomfort in others.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“She'd slept terribly the night before. The room, the bed, were both comfortable enough, but she'd been plagued with strange dreams, the sort that lingered upon waking but slithered away from memory as she tried to grasp them. Only the tendrils of discomfort remained.”
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

“Speak

because your
voice is currency,

and their comfort isn't worth
your silence.”
― Rudy Francisco, I'll Fly Away

“I'm uncomfortable with verbs; they expect too much.”
― Caitriona Lally, Eggshells

“When you suffer,” Rostam went on, “you can choose to endure, or you can choose to overcome.” He gestured around them, to the vast expanse of the meadow. “Here, even in the midst of your discomfort, there existed elements of relief, if only you had bothered to search.”
― Tahereh Mafi, All This Twisted Glory

“There's sometimes a tugging feeling you get to push further when you aren't being challenged enough or when things get too comfortable.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Discomfort it temporary. A photo is forever.”
― Kipling Swehla

“Don’t be too comfortable with employment; discover yourself and see what you can achieve for yourself”
― Sunday Adelaja

“If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.”
― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

“He described the experience as being 'a little bit less fun, perhaps, than chain-smoking for ninety minutes while handcuffed to a dowager with asthma who used to teach Health and smells incontinent.”
― Adam Levin, The Instructions

“Katsa kicked off her shoes, hitched up her skirt, and climbed into the fountain, sighing as the cold water ran between her toes and lapped at her ankles. it was a great improvement over her shoes. She would not put them on again tonight.”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“In the nine years since [Robert] Harris’s novel [Conclave] was published our culture has, if anything, become more enamored with certainty, not less — which is really saying something. Ours is a culture, a society, that seems fantastically certain of certainty. Certainty rules our political discourse, an our-side-is-right-the-other-side-wrong absolutism that the internet helps to empower. As Warzel and Caulfield lamented in The Atlantic recently, ours is a culture “where every event — every human success or tragedy — becomes little more than evidence to score political points... It is a culture where you never have to change your mind or even confront uncomfortable information.”

You don’t need to be Wittgenstein to recognize that certainty as a habit of the mind, as an epistemological reflex, ain’t been doing us any favors — not at the level of the individual or the society. Certainty is a state of final judgment — one might even say terminal judgment. Certainty is the opposite of curiosity and open-ness, and about the worst form of knowing there is because it brooks no discussion, no amelioration, no correction, no testing.”
― Junot Díaz

“Moving into the discomfort is often the best way to understand and make peace with it.”
― B.B. Aspen, The Dreams of the Descendants

“La humanidad y todo lo que comportaba se le antojaba excesiva.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“It is never that people hate the truth for the sake of hating the truth. Like anything else, they only hate it when it makes them uncomfortable, or when it makes them look bad; and the deeper they're invested in an untruth, the more they will hate the actual truth.”
― Criss Jami

“No one rises as a true leader until they refuse the comfort of staying unawakened.”
― SunDeep Mehra

“I was overwhelmed by an undefinable sensation, too serene to be called anxiety, but unpleasant enough not to go unnoticed.”
― Guadalupe Nettel, The Accidentals: Stories

“Dressed that way, he looked almost like any other New Yorker. It was only he nervous shifting of his eyes that hinted at discomfort, but not with the city, nor with being on land. With his own skin. No matter where we went, he never felt at home.

I recognized that feeling. I'd inherited it.”
― Heidi Heilig, The Girl from Everywhere

“The more you practice sitting with the discomfort, the more you gently (and repeatedly) redirect your cast toward something new, the more your nervous system starts to believe you. It starts to whisper, “Hey… maybe we’re okay now. Maybe we can rest. Maybe we don’t have to hustle for our worth.”
― Ronen Dancziger, The Therapist's Handbook for Healing Your Simpsons Syndrome: Unhook from Your Inner Chaos Characters with CBT, ACT, and a Little Humor

“I did not make any of the correct political reflections. I never do when things are happening. It seems to be always the case when I get mixed up in war or politics. I am conscious of nothing save physical discomfort and a deep desire for this damn nonsense to be over. Afterwards I can see the significance of events but while they're happening I merely want to be out of them.”
― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

“Living authentically means aligning our outer actions with our inner beliefs and desires. It starts with knowing yourself: your values, your likes and dislikes, your boundaries. ... It may mean facing discomfort, disappointing others, or redefining success. Yet the peace that comes from living in alignment is profound”
― Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"

“Presence is the practice of fully inhabiting where you are, with openness and attention, rather than rushing past toward what comes next. Presence does not mean every moment is blissful. Sometimes the present holds discomfort, uncertainty, or boredom. To be present is not to deny these, but to allow them space without immediately trying to escape.”
― Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"

“this world’s a goddamn twilight zone — people wired wrong, hearts half-asleep. so i try to move through it with a little grace, even when everything in me wants to scream. existence doesn’t have to make sense; it just has to be. i stopped chasing purpose a long time ago. now it’s just me, breathing through the discomfort, finding small ways to make the worst parts slightly less unbearable.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Living Colorful Beauty

“Regalia Mason liked to be early to meetings; it was an interesting way of making others feel uncomfortable. If the most important person in the room is early, even those who are on time feel as though they are late.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Tanglewreck