Flannery O'Connor Quotes

So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!

It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

Fighters can say whatever, but what they are feeling inside, it's totally different.

The limitations of pleasure cannot be overcome by more pleasure.

All objective pleasure in the long run must bring pain, because of the fact of change or death.

Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.

Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?

If there is no enjoyment in this world, there would not be so much suffering. As suffering really is the frustration of our attempts to enjoy.

The wise individual doesn't get too attached to any of life's pleasures, knowing that wonderful science is hard at work proving it's bad for him.

There is no such thing as pure, unalloyed pleasure; some bitter ever mingles with the sweet.

In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a 'disease of affluence', a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world.

Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.

Every nerve that can thrill with pleasure, can also agonize with pain.

People want to believe that every marriage is perfect balance but it isn't. One person always loves more deeply than the other

One beach-colored. One brown. One Loved. One Loved a Little Less.

Like most men, my father is interested in action. And this is why he disappoints my mother when she tells him she doesn't feel well and he offers to take her to the doctor. He is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.

I mean I never feel I feel what I ought to feel.

The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.

A deadness occurs in relationships when people are no longer willing to tell each other how they really feel. When people first fall in love they're more willing to do this because they're still getting to know each other and dependency has not yet set in. As soon as it does, though, people often stop sharing their true feelings out of fear of loss.

Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.

Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.

The biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched with sick envy.