Irritation quotes
108 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into your lousy habitual patterns, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you."
"Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are."
"Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation."
"Will it not be wise to allow the friendship between nations to rest upon deep and permanent things? Irritations of the cuticle must not be confounded with heart failure."
"I've found that worry and irritation vanish into thin air the moment I open my mind to the many blessings I possess."
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"England would be better off without Canada; it keeps her in a prepared state for war at a great expense and constant irritation."
"Etiquette enables you to resolve conflict without just trading insults. Without etiquette, the irritations in modern life are so abrasive that you see people turning to the law to regulate everyday behavior. This frightens me; it's a major inroad on our basic freedoms."
"Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered?"
"With awareness there comes choice. And so you are able to say: "I allow this moment to be as it is". And then, suddenly, where before there was irritation, there is now a sense of aliveness and peace. And out of that comes right action."
"This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we go."
"If you do not know how to take care of yourself, and the violence in you, then you will not be able to take care of others. You must have love and patience before you can truly listen to your partner or child. If you are irritated you cannot listen. You have to know how to breath mindfully, embrace your irritation and transform it. Offer ONLY understand and compassion to your partner or child - This is the true practice of love."
"Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back."
"Being short and seeing a promoter take the stock up is very irritating. It's not worth it to have that much irritation in your life."
"Embracing conflict can be a joy when we know that irritation and frustration can lead to growth and the re-engergizing of ourselves and others. Hot heads and cold hearts never solved anything."
"Satisfied is a word I use only in reference to my country, and I'll never be satisfied for my country. For this reasons I go on taking difficult paths, and between a paved road and a footpath that goes up the mountain, I choose the footpath. To the great irritation of my bodyguards."
"Quite often, ambition operates on a level of irritation. Not even jealousy, just irritation."
"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."
"Children have a remarkable talent for not taking the adult world with the kind of respect we are so confident it ought to be given. To the irritation of authority figures of all sorts, children expend considerable energy in "clowning around." They refuse to appreciate the gravity of our monumental concerns, while we forget that if we were to become more like children our concerns might not be so monumental."
"My encounter with another world and another culture and the beginnings of an attachment to them had set up an irritation, barely perceptible but incurable-rather like unrequited love, like a symptom of the hopelessness of trying to grasp what is boundless, or unite what cannot be joined; a reminder of how finite, how curtailed, our experience on earth must be"
"Grown people know that they do not always know the why of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. Hence the irritation they show when children keep on demanding to know if a thing is so and how the grown folks got the proof of it. It is so troublesome because it is disturbing to the pigeonhole way of life."
"Even as we slog through the trials, persecutions, irritations, temptations, distractions, apathy, and just plain weariness of this world, the gospel points us to heaven where our King Jesus — the Lamb of God who was crucified in our place and raised gloriously from the dead — now sits interceding for us. Not only so, but it calls us forward to that final day when heaven will be filled with the roaring noise of millions upon millions of forgiven voices hailing him as crucified Savior and risen King."
"Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation."
"As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do - anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of - your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry."
"To give and receive advice - the former with freedom, and yet without bitterness, the latter with patience and without irritation - is peculiarly appropriate to geniune friendship."
"The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations set into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get ride of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience, but anyhow, make a pearl. And it takes faith and I love to do it."
